Re: [Community] [Gta04-owner] OpenPhoenux Letux/GTA04 Kernel- and Userspace-Hacking weekend

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 10:00:15AM -0500, Neil Jerram deia:
> Why "without X"?  At least until we can run Wayland on the GTA04, I think
> that X should be our common denominator.
>

I didn't mean to propose with or without X, just thinking about the current
QtMoko that works on Qt on the framebuffer directly. 

My intuition is that moving to X would mean more drastic changes, but I 
don't really know. Maybe Qt would hide everything.
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Re: [Community] [Gta04-owner] OpenPhoenux Letux/GTA04 Kernel- and Userspace-Hacking weekend

[Neil Jerram]

On 25/04/16 06:55, rhn wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016 13:19:58 +0200
"H. Nikolaus Schaller"  wrote:


Hi Xavi,


Am 25.04.2016 um 13:09 schrieb Xavi Drudis Ferran :

El Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 11:54:19AM +0200, H. Nikolaus Schaller deia:

But I have no idea if the on-screen keyboard can be rewritten in a way that it 
works with all other GUI applications (not necessarily Qt based!). You would 
get a problem if you have network-manager and can't type IP addresses... So 
this might be a big challenge (who doesn't love challenges?).
   

I don't really know. But I took a look at the qtmoko keyboard a year
or two ago (I hardly remember any detail) and got the impression that
not as it is. But then I don't know anything that could do that. In X
it is easier, I think. But without X what is the abstraction for a
keyboard this application should plug into ?


Why "without X"?  At least until we can run Wayland on the GTA04, I 
think that X should be our common denominator.


   

Good question.


Should there have to be a
keyboard driver in the kernel or something? Should it pass as a tty ?

That would be an interesting approach. Or we use a pty (or mkfifo) and
symlinks to present a virtual /dev/event node where the keyboard process
can write to...

But I am not sure if X11 will find it because it likely scans /sys for input
devices and not /dev.

I played with the input subsystem several times in the past and I can confirm 
that it's possible to create such a virtual device and get it picked up by X.

This is what xboxdrv [0] does, for example, and it can be done using uinput [1] 
in an easy way. Python bindings [2] are good for experimentation.


It is also possible to plug into one of the input method frameworks 
(xim, scim, maliit etc.) or to use XTest to inject key events into the 
target application.


Regards,
Neil

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Re: [Community] [Gta04-owner] OpenPhoenux Letux/GTA04 Kernel- and Userspace-Hacking weekend

[Neil Jerram]

On 25/04/16 04:54, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

Hi,


Am 21.04.2016 um 18:40 schrieb Neil Jerram :

Also BTW I believe there is lots of QtMoko NIH-ware that is now obsoleted by 
better components in general Linux.  For example, connman or network-manager 
instead of QtMoko's own networking management, and offlineimap or mbsync 
instead of QtMoko's own IMAP mailstore.

Well, in my experience such existing tools are rarely optimized for touch and 
finger operation on small vertical screens. So we either have to tweak them or 
write something new. Or port something old.

That is IMHO a strong point of QtMoko: that it is more or less self-contained 
for the basic operation without the need to harmonize GUI operation between 
tools written with Desktop in mind.

But I agree that it should interwork with other apps from the standard Debian 
repositories.


  The interesting parts of QtMoko for me are its UI, such as its launcher, 
phone and SMS UIs, and its on-screen keyboard.

Rewriting launcher, phone and SMS UI should be not impossible tasks.


It sounds like you've got my point exactly the wrong way round :-)

The QtMoko components that I think are _obsolete_ are the infrastructure 
parts that do not have GUIs.  (Or that are primarily non-GUI.)  So 
clearly we should be able to replace those without any significant GUI 
concerns such as touch operation.


The parts of QtMoko that I think we should _keep_ are precisely the GUI 
parts, because these are well designed and optimized for touch operation.


Regards,
Neil

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Re: [Community] [Gta04-owner] OpenPhoenux Letux/GTA04 Kernel- and Userspace-Hacking weekend

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Xavi,

> Am 25.04.2016 um 13:09 schrieb Xavi Drudis Ferran :
> 
> El Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 11:54:19AM +0200, H. Nikolaus Schaller deia:
>> 
>> But I have no idea if the on-screen keyboard can be rewritten in a way that 
>> it works with all other GUI applications (not necessarily Qt based!). You 
>> would get a problem if you have network-manager and can't type IP 
>> addresses... So this might be a big challenge (who doesn't love challenges?).
>> 
> 
> I don't really know. But I took a look at the qtmoko keyboard a year
> or two ago (I hardly remember any detail) and got the impression that
> not as it is. But then I don't know anything that could do that. In X
> it is easier, I think. But without X what is the abstraction for a
> keyboard this application should plug into ?

Good question.

> Should there have to be a
> keyboard driver in the kernel or something? Should it pass as a tty ?

That would be an interesting approach. Or we use a pty (or mkfifo) and
symlinks to present a virtual /dev/event node where the keyboard process
can write to...

But I am not sure if X11 will find it because it likely scans /sys for input
devices and not /dev.

Another idea: the X11 protocol has a mechanism that an application can
send keyboard events to the X11 sever. The application that currently
has the focus should then receive them.

> Where does network-manager get it's keystrokes from ?

Looks like something that needs to be analysed. Fortunately it is open
source... Otherwise we would not have any chance.

> I don't know how
> many front-ends for network manager there are...
> 
> The Qtmoko keyboard was simpler that X with compose keys and all the
> possibilities to generate characters combining keys (that would be
> wellcome but wasn't there).

I hope that the team can study that before we meet for the workshop.

BR,
Nikolaus
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Re: [Community] [Gta04-owner] OpenPhoenux Letux/GTA04 Kernel- and Userspace-Hacking weekend

[Neil Jerram]

On 21/04/16 15:33, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

Hi all,
finally, we have now defined the location and weekend dates:

4 & 5 June 2016 in Munich

Details about the location are updated here:

http://projects.goldelico.com/p/openphoenux/page/HackingWeekend2016/


It's wonderful that you are doing this, and I look forward to seeing the 
results.


For the kernel side of the work, there are apparently 49 open issues at 
http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-kernel/issues/.  I wonder what 
your plan is for prioritizing these?


(I think my advice would be to prioritize reducing the overall number by 
picking off the easiest issues first.  But perhaps that wouldn't be the 
best use of the experts you will have gathered together.)


Regards,
Neil

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