Openmoko on Design

[Marek Lindner]

On Wednesday, 30. July 2008 10:18:33 Al Johnson wrote:
> I agree with everything you say here. The keyboard should just appear when
> I want it and disappear when I don't. The absence of a manual override
> means that whenever it gets it wrong I can't correct it, the worst case
> being when I need to enter something but the keyboard doesn't appear.
> Conversely the presence of a manual override causes no problem even if it
> is never needed.
>
> The keyboard failing to appear is not a hypothetical scenario. Without
> manual intervention minimo was unusable because the keyboard didn't appear
> when the cursor was placed for URL entry. This is likely to be an issue
> with other apps that don't have a specific openmoko port, and we shouldn't
> have to create such a port just to use an otherwise capable app on
> openmoko. Other issues include the keyboard appearing when an edit field
> has focus although I don't want to edit it, keyboard appearing and
> disappearing frequently if a form contains mixed input types, or appearing
> over the top of the field to be edited. The field having focus although
> editing is not required is probably impossible to detect because the answer
> depends on the opinion of the user at the time.

I understand your points and they all are valid. How do we address them ? That 
brings us back to Seans mail. Openmoko will provide the minimum set of 
applications and basic functionality that empowers ordinary users to use the 
phone. We will make sure that these applications work well with the 
environment we provide. This is an ongoing process we just started compared 
to many established phone systems. 
Feel invited to extend that basic system through packages that can be 
installed. If you install an application that hasn't been ported to the 
Openmoko platform and does not support the keyboard you also should install 
the manual keyboard button or you just install a package which deativates the 
automatic keyboard behaviour right away if you don't like it.
We have to realize that the world is very diverse - we wont find a solution 
which suits for everybody in all the cases. So, we have to make it flexible. 
Again: This is a process and you can help us with that.


Marek