New Open Hardware company

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 21.07.2009 um 13:27 schrieb Werner Almesberger:

> Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>> most FOSS. Unless we restrict the Non-G-UI to commandline and
>> ncurses.
>
> I noticed that is has an escape key. So vi will be fine. What else
> could one possibly wish for, except that more GUI designers would
> draw their inspiration from the grace and style of vi ? :-)

I have a desktop machine with vi (vim, pico, ...) and a real GUI text  
editor to choose. I find myself to use vi only on remote machines with  
ssh connection. Never on localhost. Well, this is not proper user  
requirements research, but a first indication...

> Historical note: once I had Linux run on my Psion S5 and took it to
> a conference. The UI consisted of eight virtual consoles with a
> shell each, with whatever I chose to run there - typically a vi, so
> I could switch from taking notes on various topics just by changing
> consoles. Despite the device's many shortcomings, the system felt
> amazingly productive, almost on par with the HP-100LX.

When taking notes on conferences. I am regularily using my good old  
C3100. I really like the combination of QWERTY, small pen + touch  
screen to type, select text, scroll through documents etc. This gives  
magnitudes of higher productivity than any vi and multiple shells ever  
can (on a Zaurus you can even test and compare both approaches).

The HP100 was a really cool device when it came out (approx. 1992).  
And worked well. So I get the (hopefully wrong) impression that the  
current focus of Qi-Hardware is to imitate vintage computers...