My experience with the Freerunner

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Wed, 28 May 2008 19:14:46 -0400 Matt Mets <matt.mets at cibomahto.com> babbled:

> >Matt Mets wrote:
> >> I tried out the ASU software update on my GTA01 tonight, and took a 
> >> short video of it:
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ISHrtuQuGM
> >
> >Cool video!
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> >> The keyboard seems quite nice, and worked well with a stylus (better 
> >> than the video might suggest, I was working around the camera).
> >
> >What about the finger usability?
> >AFAIK the Qtopia predictive keyboard has been projected also to help in 
> >finger usability...
> 
> I wasn't able to use the keyboard with my finger.  Once a letter is pressed,
> you can't slide to a neighboring letter to change it, so it was difficult to
> correct mistakes.  There was a different keyboard on the original Qtopia
> builds that had a magnifying-key feature that seemed to make this easier.  It
> is entirely possible that I missed something here though.  I do like the
> gesture support (slide left to backspace, forward to insert space, down for
> enter, up to switch keyboards), but I would like to see something that
> indicates that gestures are being performed (perhaps a line that shows a
> trail of where your finger has been?).

to correct - just backspace! :) (left slide). the magnifying thing is possible
- but somehow i saw it as superfluous as chances are u press and release very
fast like a keypress on a normal keyboard and then notice the mistake. even so
- the dictionary lookup will be correcting if it's in the dictionary and not
too far of a typo (press too far away from intended key). admittedly the
dictionary we ship has only 5000 words - but hey. it's a simple text file. :)

> The predictive keyboard bit might help but I haven't become proficient with
> it yet.  It seemed weird that it shows two lists of possible words (one
> horizontal across the top of the keyboard, one in a dropdown box).

horizontal is for quick selecting the most likely matches for correction (or if
no matches - exactly what you typed), and if it doesn't fit u can access ALL
matches from the popup list.

> Also, when running a regular X application (remote xterm), it seemed like I
> had to press enter (or tab) to get the characters to be sent to the app,
> which made it very difficult to enter things into the terminal.  But
> usability in actual phone-apps is probably more important :-D.  Perhaps a
> direct-input mode is/could be implemented for that sort of application.

it's possible we can do this - in svn there is even a full qwerty kbd layout i
initially used - with ctrl, alt, etc. for terminal junkies, BUT for now
correction is always-on.

> The whole interface was very smooth though.  I'm suddenly much more
> optimistic about the project!
> 
> >-- 
> >Treviño's World - Life and Linux
> >http://www.3v1n0.net/
> 
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-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>