Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
That On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 18:03 -0700, Shawn Rutledge wrote: They have no hope of preventing multi-touch itself from becoming the accepted mainstream, and then resistive touchscreens are probably going to be seen as obsolete. That is assuming that mainstream has an interesting in the technology aside from Oh cool. As fair as I have seen it, that is not the case. That doesn't mean that we can't look into it, it just means that standardization of multi-touch panels are years away. On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 16:42 +0100, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: I have thought a bit about multitouch and its possible usecases and the longer I think about it the less exciting I find it on a mobile phone. I will admit that most implementation of these panels are not completely thought through. iPhone/iPod Touch itself happens to waist many of it's functions. The technology per se is great and I'm sure it will allow for great innovation among UI's on large monitors, tablets, and even desks. There is no denying that, desks have been the most interesting. However, on small screen systems such as the Neo (or even the iPhone) -- what do you want to do with it? The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. With some clever state logic you can zoom and rotate very efficient on unitouch systems. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? Well, more to talk about. If anything, a few case studies over uses and possibilities are worth exploring. If is gets big enough, the wiki should be employed on keeping the data... That is assume that the MT path is the one that is chosen. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. They seem pretty cool to me. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? How do you right-click on a touchscreen? The old way has been to hold down the stylus for some timeout period. But with multitouch there disassembled the iPhone (and the Air) and discovered that; I haven't found anything on Broadcom's site. So I don't understand if Apple was able to coerce them into making it exclusive. I mean, Apple bought Dell used to be attractive because they had exclusive availability for certain technologies for some period, eg in the early days only Dells had UXGA LCD at a reasonable price. So it wouldn't surprise me Apple had the same strategic deal they blew money on for exclusivity on critical technology they don't actually own the rights to. However I agree with Mickey, it is dangerous to focus overmuch on every technology that exists on any competitor product and try to stuff everything in the one device. It will be a much better device that is perfectly adapted to the intended genuinely useful use-case and that is not the same as ticking every single box in terms of features. Unless it hits a nail on the head for genuine use multitouch or other $COMPETITOR_FEATURE can just be a distraction. - -Andy -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHzr90OjLpvpq7dMoRAlMCAJ0dWlSH37zbovg2GGayjRrChCGIYgCdGWRi 0bDTfoXh0dsd8wOREPMA0A8= =0k/p -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Hi, tis me again. A little bit of forward thinking here. When I first came to OpenMoko it was a mid the torrent of the iPhone hype. I will admit that I was dissolution with the possibility that the multi-touch interface was an easy addition to OpenMoko. With some time to think and study the availability of the technology, I soon realized that my thinking on the matter was quite naive. Maybe I still am naive on the matter, but considering alot of the hard work to get GTA02 off the ground and running, I was thinking that if OpenMoko was considering the possibility of a multi-touch interface seriously maybe it is something that could be found on the next device afterwards (be it the GTA03 or something later). If that is the case, then such an input device will not appear out of thin air. At this point and time what would be realistic, would Openmoko Inc. form a partnership with supplier of the technology, does FIC Group happen to have something inhouse that could be utilized? What are the legal implications and potholes? Etc. Truth is that I love the concept behind the Openmoko phone. A phone that 'I' truly control, not my provider, not the manufacturer (not completely, anyway). A phone that grants me, 'freedom'. If anything, considering what is out there, I would like to more open-idea to establishing that sense of freedom so I only offer this chance to brain storm what else we can do to provide that. Here is hoping that I have not let the genie out of the bottle. Duv P.S.: I apologize in advance for the possibility of this discussion degrading into a flame-fest, that is not my intention. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Am Di 4. März 2008 schrieb Duvelle Jones: I will admit that I was dissolution with the possibility that the multi-touch interface was an easy addition to OpenMoko. With some time to think and study the availability of the technology, I soon realized that my thinking on the matter was quite naive. I'm investigating to squeeze some multi-touch properties out of the GTA02 4wire-resistor touchscreen, by hacking the basics and probing the ts in a couple non-recommended completely different manners. There still is a little hope... However this is not meant to distract attention from discussion of a true multi-ts for GTA03. I think this should be a capacitive one. jOERG ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
I think this is an interesting reading about iphone multi-touch screen: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/iphone1.htm 2008/3/4, joerg [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Am Di 4. März 2008 schrieb Duvelle Jones: I will admit that I was dissolution with the possibility that the multi-touch interface was an easy addition to OpenMoko. With some time to think and study the availability of the technology, I soon realized that my thinking on the matter was quite naive. I'm investigating to squeeze some multi-touch properties out of the GTA02 4wire-resistor touchscreen, by hacking the basics and probing the ts in a couple non-recommended completely different manners. There still is a little hope... However this is not meant to distract attention from discussion of a true multi-ts for GTA03. I think this should be a capacitive one. jOERG ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Hi guys, I have thought a bit about multitouch and its possible usecases and the longer I think about it the less exciting I find it on a mobile phone. The technology per se is great and I'm sure it will allow for great innovation among UI's on large monitors, tablets, and even desks. However, on small screen systems such as the Neo (or even the iPhone) -- what do you want to do with it? The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. With some clever state logic you can zoom and rotate very efficient on unitouch systems. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? :M: ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? maybe pressing the shift key for typing uppercase letters :P ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On Tuesday 04 March 2008, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: Hi guys, I have thought a bit about multitouch and its possible usecases and the longer I think about it the less exciting I find it on a mobile phone. The technology per se is great and I'm sure it will allow for great innovation among UI's on large monitors, tablets, and even desks. However, on small screen systems such as the Neo (or even the iPhone) -- what do you want to do with it? The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. With some clever state logic you can zoom and rotate very efficient on unitouch systems. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? Small screen systems aren't just phones, as Sean has mentioned for future OpenMoko devices. Some things need more than one channel of simultaneous input, so with unitouch systems you can't use virtual controls onscreen; you have to start adding physical controls, or suffer a limited application. Off the top of my head here are a couple: * Emulating a pair of analogue thumb controllers. I remember a text input method using simultaneous input from 2 8-way hat switches too. * Audio mixer - think portable DJ apps. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Federico wrote: So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? maybe pressing the shift key for typing uppercase letters :P Or other chording based text entry schemes... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. They seem pretty cool to me. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? How do you right-click on a touchscreen? The old way has been to hold down the stylus for some timeout period. But with multitouch there are other alternatives. One will probably emerge as the standard. You might even be able to detect different fingers by the shape of the contact patch, so different fingers have different actions. I'd like to play with it, but right now my choices are: buy an iphone and hack it; or build my own FTIR table. Without even thinking about specific use cases though, isn't it clear that multitouch is the superior technology? If you add a new capability and allow developers to play with it, new uses will emerge which nobody has yet thought of. Besides it's more durable: it won't mechanically wear out like resistive touchscreens do, and the screen can be glass instead of scratchable plastic. Maybe even could be a mineral crystal like a good watch. Maybe you are just making excuses based on the fact that you think multitouch is unobtanium at this point? It has been discovered that the necessary chip is made by Broadcom, with the model number BCM5974. Funny thing is, when you google that you just find a zillion copies of the same blog by someone who disassembled the iPhone (and the Air) and discovered that; I haven't found anything on Broadcom's site. So I don't understand if Apple was able to coerce them into making it exclusive. I mean, Apple bought Fingerworks and thereby got the technology, right? Then what... they said well we don't have a fab, do we? so they made an agreement with Broadcom to manufacture the chips on the condition that they are not allowed to sell them to anyone else? (Just guessing) Well how long do you think that will last? Maybe the exclusivity expires after some period of time; and Broadcom knows that either they will find a way to sell to everyone, or the competition will catch up and do it for them. Soon we will see another supplier, because it's too hot to be ignored. (It's also a good question, who made the chips for Fingerworks.) In a couple years there will probably be chintzy LCD multi-touch wristwatches or something. By that point it will be uninteresting. But FIC ought to try to feel their way around this situation: chat up the sales guys and FAE's at Broadcom and find out if there's any way to buy this chip. It reputedly costs a mere $3. I agree, the next Neo needs this capability. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On 3/4/08, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, I have thought a bit about multitouch and its possible usecases and the longer I think about it the less exciting I find it on a mobile phone. The technology per se is great and I'm sure it will allow for great innovation among UI's on large monitors, tablets, and even desks. However, on small screen systems such as the Neo (or even the iPhone) -- what do you want to do with it? The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. With some clever state logic you can zoom and rotate very efficient on unitouch systems. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? :M: If there will ever be a dedicated OpenMoko gaming device, it needs a multitouch screen. However, with a phone, even if it is a fully featured pocket computer, I can't think of many things where it would be useful, either. Zooming and rotating should be very doable with one finger and some thinking. In fact, much of this thinking was already done on this list months ago. When multitouch screens become cheap and easy to get, of course one should be included in every Openmoko device. For now it seems like a very low priority thing. We haven't even begun to explore the potential of a unitouch screen! I don't want much right clicking on my phone. However, if it ever becomes useful/necessary somewhere, you can always assign it to AUX+tap. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
joerg ha scritto: I'm investigating to squeeze some multi-touch properties out of the GTA02 4wire-resistor touchscreen, by hacking the basics and probing the ts in a couple non-recommended completely different manners. There still is a little hope... What's your hope exactly? Do you have some secrets to share? :P However this is not meant to distract attention from discussion of a true multi-ts for GTA03. I think this should be a capacitive one. I do agree... -- Treviño's World - Life and Linux http://www.3v1n0.net/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Federico ha scritto: So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? maybe pressing the shift key for typing uppercase letters :P Not so useful imho... We don't write so quickly on small-screen based devices to need a combination-input. For istance, the iPhone has not a such feature (its ultra-sensitive [bad] keyboard only takes a touch a time also for the shift key). -- Treviño's World - Life and Linux http://www.3v1n0.net/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Ortwin Regel ha scritto: If there will ever be a dedicated OpenMoko gaming device, it needs a multitouch screen. Well, yes I think it won't be possible to run games with an on-screen virtual gamepad as the iPhone/iPodTouch does. Do I am wrong? However, with a phone, even if it is a fully featured pocket computer, I can't think of many things where it would be useful, either. Zooming and rotating should be very doable with one finger and some thinking. In fact, much of this thinking was already done on this list months ago. I do agree, but for me these rotate and resize features imho aren't so needed as soon they're cool to see. Also using a touch-only screen they don't loose their usability: the resize, mostly, could be done simply with a scroll, while the rotation using the gimp-way (put a placeholder on the rotating fulcrum tapping, then use a finger dragging the image...). I can't find more things that really need a multi-touch screen, since I won't paint on it and I neither will do a collaborative work... :P Then I'd like to know more infos about *tapping* in Neo. I mean, in my notebooks with Synaptics touchpads I can easily use more than a finger to play some useful actions like: - Left clik with a finger tapping - Middle clik with two fingers tapping - Right clik with three fingers tapping - Vertical / Horizontal scroll with two fingers sliding [1] Well, are these features available on GTA02 too? In fact, if the answer would be yes, we could easily use the multi-fingers tapping/scrolling features to control the phone in a more comfortable way (for example allowing right-clicks no more pressure-time based, or allowing operations on images like the ones I mentioned above). Bye Treviño [1] http://tinyurl.com/2sawey (iMac like) PS: That's so strange (and funny), today exactly few minutes before the topic was started I wandered about multi-touching in Neo and how it was used in iPhone, reading and looking much of resources... :P -- Treviño's World - Life and Linux http://www.3v1n0.net/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also using a touch-only screen they don't loose their usability: the resize, mostly, could be done simply with a scroll, while the rotation This is kindof like saying what do you need a mouse for, your keyboard has arrow keys doesn't it? (or a control key... you could just move the cursor with control-k, control-l, etc.) The whole point is you don't need to use up any real estate with scroll bars: an image can fill the whole screen and yet you can still interact with it. Dragging/panning seems more intuitive, too... it's just that with such long experience with computers, we've gotten used to the status quo. As for pinching to zoom, the only thing which makes me uncertain is the alleged existence of a patent on it... either it will be licensed cheaply, or stricken down in court, or Apple will just let it go unchallenged (maybe at least in the case of open-source software), or non-Apple devices can be sold with gesture programmability, and it's up to the end user to define what it is that the pinch gesture will do. Or if Apple really succeeds in keeping that gesture for themselves, then it cannot be a standard, because other gestures will have to be invented. But the existence of the original Mac did not prevent GEM or AmigaOS or Windows from being developed, either, despite Apple's attempts to claim ownership of some ideas. They have no hope of preventing multi-touch itself from becoming the accepted mainstream, and then resistive touchscreens are probably going to be seen as obsolete. using the gimp-way (put a placeholder on the rotating fulcrum tapping, then use a finger dragging the image...). That requires at least two steps, and involves more screen clutter (at least a separate fulcrum object). Gimp takes a bit of time to learn, even if you are already familiar with Photoshop or (gods forbid) PC Paint, like I was on my first PC, without a mouse, back in 1988. :-) (yes I could draw decent monochrome pictures with only the keyboard. I sure was glad when that guy whose lawn I was mowing finally gave me a surplus optical mouse, though.) Interaction design always has room for improvement, and major new technologies like this really open up the possibilities. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
Am Mi 5. März 2008 schrieb Marco Trevisan (Treviño): joerg ha scritto: I'm investigating to squeeze some multi-touch properties out of the GTA02 4wire-resistor touchscreen, by hacking the basics and probing the ts in a couple non-recommended completely different manners. There still is a little hope... What's your hope exactly? Do you have some secrets to share? :P Well, it's basically a 4wire (2 metal coated transparent plastic foils) design: you apply + and - at X+ X- which creates a linear voltage gradient over the one foil, and you messure the voltage at any of both Y of the point where the second foil touches the first. (and vice versa xy, for other coordinate). So much for the classics. However there are a couple of other permutations to apply + and minus and/or leave open and where to probe for voltage, given you have 4 wires and 3 states (+,-,probe+open) for each one of the 4 to choose from. Hard to explain without some graphics showing a simplified circuit diagram. And then, if all this fails, there still remains the dynamic approach (pulse-response), for there are two planes creating a R-C-R-C-R... network, resembling somewhat like e.g. a coax cable. You know you can analyze coax (10Base2 ethernet, even BaseT) for position of sharp bends with an analysis of pulse response. Somewhat like hitting a drum and telling from resulting sound where there are the 2 stones on the drum membrane. All this *VERY* theoretical anyway for now, for i got scope etc, but even don't have real hw to test with it :-( (who was the guy with a fried NEO and no idea what to do with it? I had a real use for it, even better when it's broken), and i was too lazy (or too poorly gifted) to do the math yet. What i expect/hope: At least i now got diagrams, so i know what _can_ or _must_not_ be done with given hw in GTA01/02. Just dreaming for now... ;-) But i'm quite sure it's feasible to get at least kinda force feedback for the single touch. Maybe more... Amazing what 12 formulae with 5 (10) unknown variables(R) can reveal (ok, this are just numbers for instance, didn't the math yet). When it comes to dynamic pulse response analysis - with all sorts of filters and the whole scary stuff (any volunteers?), we probably even get the weight of user-C touching the screen ;-) In an ideal world. A/D converters of CPU to sample the response are not _so_ bad. All this [patent pending, (C), smells like me etc]:jOERG ;-). At least mention me, and send me a beer each day, and this is prior art. Ehrrm. This week CeBIT, let's see what's my schedule for next week. cheers jOERG ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
