Terminal for ASU

[Ken Restivo]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:36:27PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:05:48 +0100 Stroller <stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk>
> babbled:
> 
> > 
> > On 21 Jul 2008, at 19:47, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> > > ...
> > > the problem is the designers decided that ASU is not to have any  
> > > manual
> > > keyboard toggle button because it will disturb the design and/or  
> > > confuse users,
> > > so all apps and toolkits need modification to talk a "protocol" to  
> > > bring up the
> > > keyboard on demand (no manual controls). that is why you need to do  
> > > this.
> > > personally i think you need a manual control because, as such, many  
> > > apps and
> > > toolkits will not be changed, or they will get it wrong and give  
> > > you a keyboard
> > > when you don't want one, or decide not to give you one when you  
> > > do... but
> > > that's not my call.
> > 
> > Hi Carsten,
> > 
> > Sorry to trouble you, but who are these designers, please?
> 
> i'll let them speak up if they wish to be part of a debate on this. it's up to
> them. i am not one way or another here. not going to defend or dob-in. i have
> no vested interests one way or another. i have technical reasons why i think the
> move to remove any such manual control is a bad thing and have made them clear

> often enough. i am not going to get into it again. i am staying neutral - i
> have my professional opinions and personal ones, but my job is to implement
> what is designed by others to the best of my ability - if something is
> technically not possible or utterly infeasible - i can't do it, but removing a
> manual keyboard button is perfectly easy to do, and so it gets done.
> 
> if i hadn't made it clear.. i am being neutral on this - i am simply stating
> the facts as they are. i am not wanting to beat anyone one over this. i am
> just  stating facts. emotions and opinions thereafter are entirely those of
> people as they wish to express them - they were not intended or written here.
> just sticking to facts.
> 
> > I think  many of us would like to contribute to the ASU, seeing as  
> > how it's the future of Openmoko, so this would appear to be a  
> > limitation upon community contributions.
> 
> as such we are paid by openmoko to do what  we are told to do by the design
> department and that is what we then do. you in the community can go and do your
> own themes and patches and packages and do what u want.
> 
> > Where are the design documents which say "no keyboard toggle button  
> > should be included", please? If one wishes to contribute code or  
> > patches to ASU then I guess it's necessary to know this, or one will  
> > find patches rejected because they don't meet this design specification?
> 
> well design documents are pretty thin on the ground. i was told so in
> email/irc directly to do this. i had a manual button there originally and was
> explicitly told to remove it. i argued that this was a bad move for many

Please tell me who told you to do this so I can flame him :-) He ruined my whole afternoon.

> technical reasons (porting of apps such as SDL games that don't use gtk or qt
> that now all need modifications, i listed the apps it will break, the reasoning
> of not always wanting a virtual keyboard (ie an entry box may be focused, but
> you just want to READ the content, not edit) etc. etc.) but it was made
> entirely clear that the button had to go - arguments or not. as i remember the
> reasons being that "it cluttered the interface", was "confusing", "unnecessary"
> and that "all applications can be modified to talk the protocol anyway". or
> something to that effect. this was a while ago so i'm a little hazy on the
> reasons - but it was something like that.
> 
> again - i'm neutral. i'm just a programmer. i just implement code.
> 


Smart move.