Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
NoiseEHC wrote: I do not even know where to look for log files to attach to a bug report. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Reporting_bugs points you to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Attaching_Sugar_logs_to_tickets 2. I can reliably (100%) trigger the cannot connect to WPA and the dialog asks for a password endlessly bug but unfortunately I do not know how to debug that thing. To tell you the truth I do not even know where to look for the code of NetworkManager I've seen useful output in /var/log/messages. -- =S Page ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
in any case, so far i've heard no good argument against rotating the touchscreen to match the screen. it may not be the most convenient way to use or hold the laptop, but it would be better than the current situation where screen rotation makes the touchpad almost completely useless. The question remains whether we make it rotate to match the closed ebook mode or match the rotated opened-like-a-book mode. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Jordan, thanks for the info. I only started to use the XV overlay because I had this little hope that somehow I could get a pointer to a hardware buffer to avoid blitting the data but as I see it now the LX driver simply copies the overlay data to the hardware buffer so I could just use simple X surfaces as well speedwise. Is it true? Could you please answer those question from my earlier message? (copied here): A little question to Jordan Crouse or anybody else who can answer. Here Jodran told me that the Geode can do XV flipping: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-May/005208.html It can be that he either did not reflect to that one part of my message or I am just too stupid to make it work. So what I do not see in the XV documentation is how to allocate two xvideo frames and flip between them? What this code currently does is allocating one frame and doing XvShmPutImage. Because its speed depends on the size of the xvideo frame I think it does blittting (copying) and not flipping (switching). So how to do flipping? ps: Actually I would need 3 frames for triple buffering but I would be happy even with 2 frames. Jordan Crouse wrote: Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: Jordan Crouse wrote: NoiseEHC wrote: 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. Indeed - XV is purposely turned off when the screen is rotated (or at least, not displayed): The LX hardware supports rotated blits, right? So in principle, rotated XV could be added to the driver if someone cared sufficiently...? Absolutely - and as a special bonus, the LX groks how to rotate YUV data natively, so both YUV and RGB video can be rotated. Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
p...@laptop.org wrote: but like david, i think that currently neither olpc nor sugarlabs is going to foster or champion their use: olpc has no resources for s/w development, and as far as i can tell, sugarlabs is targeting other h/w platforms just as strongly as the XO -- and other platforms don't have these screen issues. Witch the recent disbanding of the development team I simply cannot see what will happen to the XO development. I mean that 8.2.1 will be released and 9.1.0 is dropped but what I do not understand is what will happen with all the development for 9.1.0? What I heard is that those will be pushed upstream (whatever that means) but it is not clear if reporting bugs or talking about button layouts on the game pad will result in a new software release or is just a waste of time. What I mean is that should I also subscribe to some Fedora devel list (note that I do not know sh*t about linux development, packaging or anything like that) to keep informed or what? Currently I am writing a nice activity which teaches kids what to do when alien spaceships attacks Earth and it will take some time to finish. What should I do next? Can some insider comment on these issues please? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
Sorry, I wanted to post it toplevel. p...@laptop.org wrote: but like david, i think that currently neither olpc nor sugarlabs is going to foster or champion their use: olpc has no resources for s/w development, and as far as i can tell, sugarlabs is targeting other h/w platforms just as strongly as the XO -- and other platforms don't have these screen issues. Witch the recent disbanding of the development team I simply cannot see what will happen to the XO development. I mean that 8.2.1 will be released and 9.1.0 is dropped but what I do not understand is what will happen with all the development for 9.1.0? What I heard is that those will be pushed upstream (whatever that means) but it is not clear if reporting bugs or talking about button layouts on the game pad will result in a new software release or is just a waste of time. What I mean is that should I also subscribe to some Fedora devel list (note that I do not know sh*t about linux development, packaging or anything like that) to keep informed or what? Currently I am writing a nice activity which teaches kids what to do when alien spaceships attacks Earth and it will take some time to finish. What should I do next? Can some insider comment on these issues please? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
On 02.03.2009, at 11:04, NoiseEHC wrote: Currently I am writing a nice activity which teaches kids what to do when alien spaceships attacks Earth and it will take some time to finish. That's great! But make sure the game prepares them adequately: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/are_violent_video_games - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
2009/3/2 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Witch the recent disbanding of the development team I simply cannot see what will happen to the XO development. I mean that 8.2.1 will be released and 9.1.0 is dropped but what I do not understand is what will happen with all the development for 9.1.0? What I heard is that those will be pushed upstream (whatever that means) but it is not clear if reporting bugs or talking about button layouts on the game pad will result in a new software release or is just a waste of time. What I mean is that should I also subscribe to some Fedora devel list (note that I do not know sh*t about linux development, packaging or anything like that) to keep informed or what? It is unlikely that you (as a user, rather than a deployment) reporting bugs to OLPC will result in another software release *direct from OLPC* (such as 8.2.2), because development of 8.2.x is mostly discontinued and will really only be driven by deployments. Have you read? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Future_releases It may not answer all your questions but it is the most concrete documentation that I have seen so far. In terms of reporting bugs, the process of upstreaming everything basically means that OLPC is no longer the distributor and that bugs should be reported directly to the people who are more responsible for the them. What would you do if you ran Ubuntu on your main computer but some of the buttons on your keyboard were not working correctly? You would file a bug with Ubuntu, who would hopefully either fix the problem on their own back, or help you to report the issue to the developers of the related package (which would likely be one of the X.org input components, in the case of keyboard troubles). The same applies here -- install a distro on your XO and report bugs to the distributor. I recommend Fedora through Chris's rawhide-xo builds, bugzilla.redhat.com, and the fedora-olpc list. Currently I am writing a nice activity which teaches kids what to do when alien spaceships attacks Earth and it will take some time to finish. What should I do next? Work with the relevant upstream component. In this case, you are working on a sugar activity, so develop it as a platform-neutral activity at sugarlabs.org, and work with sugarlabs' standard processes of getting activities included in distributions. Daniel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
noiseehc wrote: The question remains whether we make it rotate to match the closed ebook mode or match the rotated opened-like-a-book mode. there's no good answer to this, because there's no way to make it do the right thing automatically. the lid switch can't be used, because by definition the laptop isn't really in ebook mode when you're trying to use the touchpad. there's no way for the laptop to tell that the screen is flipped around, which is what's needed. user configuration might be possible, but frankly, i'd just default it to match the opened mode. i've gotten used to (in almost-ebook mode) moving my finger opposite to the direction i want the pointer to move, and i never rotate the screen in that mode precisely because of the rotation issue. so it would be a win just to have the finger-to-pointer relationship be predictable, even if it's not right. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
p...@laptop.org wrote: noiseehc wrote: The question remains whether we make it rotate to match the closed ebook mode or match the rotated opened-like-a-book mode. there's no good answer to this, because there's no way to make it do the right thing automatically. the lid switch can't be used, because by definition the laptop isn't really in ebook mode when you're trying to use the touchpad. there's no way for the laptop to tell that the screen is flipped around, which is what's needed. user configuration might be possible, but frankly, i'd just default it to match the opened mode. i've gotten used to (in almost-ebook mode) moving my finger opposite to the direction i want the pointer to move, and i never rotate the screen in that mode precisely because of the rotation issue. so it would be a win just to have the finger-to-pointer relationship be predictable, even if it's not right. +1 The question remains who will code it though :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, p...@laptop.org wrote: noiseehc wrote: The question remains whether we make it rotate to match the closed ebook mode or match the rotated opened-like-a-book mode. there's no good answer to this, because there's no way to make it do the right thing automatically. the lid switch can't be used, because by definition the laptop isn't really in ebook mode when you're trying to use the touchpad. there's no way for the laptop to tell that the screen is flipped around, which is what's needed. user configuration might be possible, but frankly, i'd just default it to match the opened mode. i've gotten used to (in almost-ebook mode) moving my finger opposite to the direction i want the pointer to move, and i never rotate the screen in that mode precisely because of the rotation issue. so it would be a win just to have the finger-to-pointer relationship be predictable, even if it's not right. pick something (I would suggest rotate the mouse the same way you do the screen, so that it will work sanely if you accidently rotate the screen with it open), and when rotation is requested, rotate the mouse movement to match, then offer a way to flip it to the other option. the finder-to-pointer relationship is always predictable, but when it's at a right angle it's very hard to use. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
Daniel Drake wrote: It is unlikely that you (as a user, rather than a deployment) reporting bugs to OLPC will result in another software release *direct from OLPC* (such as 8.2.2), because development of 8.2.x is mostly discontinued and will really only be driven by deployments. Have you read? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Future_releases It may not answer all your questions but it is the most concrete documentation that I have seen so far. I have already read that page and was aware of those issues. Unfortunately it does not answer my questions. In terms of reporting bugs, the process of upstreaming everything basically means that OLPC is no longer the distributor and that bugs should be reported directly to the people who are more responsible for the them. My main problem is that knowing who is more responsible requires knowing linux more that I am comfortable with (I am a Windows developer). Here are just 3 examples to show my point: 1. Today I noticed that my simple program can crash the whole sugar desktop and the X server. Shall I report it to somewhere? I do not even know where to look for log files to attach to a bug report. Also if nobody will fix it (I cannot fix it that is sure...) then why should I care? Does it mean that if no deployment will bark that the desktopX can be crashed then it will not be fixed ever? 2. I can reliably (100%) trigger the cannot connect to WPA and the dialog asks for a password endlessly bug but unfortunately I do not know how to debug that thing. To tell you the truth I do not even know where to look for the code of NetworkManager (somebody told that this can be the problem) and even if I knew it usually I cannot compile downloaded linux code for some arcane reason beyond my understanding. So for example in this situation what should I do? Is this NetworkManager part of some linux distro, or is it an XO thing? If it is part of fedora, who should I report bugs to? 3. Okay, I have forgot the third one... :) Note that I am totally aware that these things are not your responsibility, I would just like to have some answers from somebody. If the solution is installing some distro then I will do it, the big question is that which one will be the official one? What would you do if you ran Ubuntu on your main computer but some of the buttons on your keyboard were not working correctly? You would file a bug with Ubuntu, who would hopefully either fix the problem on their own back, or help you to report the issue to the developers of the related package (which would likely be one of the X.org input components, in the case of keyboard troubles). Frankly, if some of my buttons would not work in Ubuntu I would simply format the machine and install Windows. :) Work with the relevant upstream component. In this case, you are working on a sugar activity, so develop it as a platform-neutral activity at sugarlabs.org, and work with sugarlabs' standard processes of getting activities included in distributions. This is not an activity in the strictest sense, it is more like a library which shows what the XO hardware can do in animation. After that probably I will use the lessons learned to optimize GCompris and PyGame because currently they look like Powerpoint presentations... So the whole point is to work fast on a physical XO hardware. Of course if somebody will tell me that the XO is a dead thing and OLPC will cease then I will reconsider wasting my time. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:39 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu wrote: Daniel Drake wrote: It is unlikely that you (as a user, rather than a deployment) reporting bugs to OLPC will result in another software release *direct from OLPC* (such as 8.2.2), because development of 8.2.x is mostly discontinued and will really only be driven by deployments. Have you read? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Future_releases It may not answer all your questions but it is the most concrete documentation that I have seen so far. I have already read that page and was aware of those issues. Unfortunately it does not answer my questions. In terms of reporting bugs, the process of upstreaming everything basically means that OLPC is no longer the distributor and that bugs should be reported directly to the people who are more responsible for the them. My main problem is that knowing who is more responsible requires knowing linux more that I am comfortable with (I am a Windows developer). Here are just 3 examples to show my point: 1. Today I noticed that my simple program can crash the whole sugar desktop and the X server. Shall I report it to somewhere? I do not even know where to look for log files to attach to a bug report. Also if nobody will fix it (I cannot fix it that is sure...) then why should I care? Does it mean that if no deployment will bark that the desktopX can be crashed then it will not be fixed ever? I don't know what your simple program does, but it sounds like it could be a Sugar bug. You should file a ticket at dev.sugarlabs.org. If it is not related to Sugar, we'll try to pass the report along to the proper place. Log files are viewable with the Log Viewer Activity and also found in ~/.sugar/default/logs 2. I can reliably (100%) trigger the cannot connect to WPA and the dialog asks for a password endlessly bug but unfortunately I do not know how to debug that thing. To tell you the truth I do not even know where to look for the code of NetworkManager (somebody told that this can be the problem) and even if I knew it usually I cannot compile downloaded linux code for some arcane reason beyond my understanding. So for example in this situation what should I do? Is this NetworkManager part of some linux distro, or is it an XO thing? If it is part of fedora, who should I report bugs to? It does sound like NM. Look at ~/.sugar/default/nm There is still an engineer at OLPC looking into WPA on the latest builds. 3. Okay, I have forgot the third one... :) Cannot help you here. Note that I am totally aware that these things are not your responsibility, I would just like to have some answers from somebody. If the solution is installing some distro then I will do it, the big question is that which one will be the official one? Both OLPC and the Sugar team is working closely with the Fedora. Sugar is working with other distros as well, but for the XO hardware in the short term, Fedora is the most stable. What would you do if you ran Ubuntu on your main computer but some of the buttons on your keyboard were not working correctly? You would file a bug with Ubuntu, who would hopefully either fix the problem on their own back, or help you to report the issue to the developers of the related package (which would likely be one of the X.org input components, in the case of keyboard troubles). Frankly, if some of my buttons would not work in Ubuntu I would simply format the machine and install Windows. :) Work with the relevant upstream component. In this case, you are working on a sugar activity, so develop it as a platform-neutral activity at sugarlabs.org, and work with sugarlabs' standard processes of getting activities included in distributions. This is not an activity in the strictest sense, it is more like a library which shows what the XO hardware can do in animation. After that probably I will use the lessons learned to optimize GCompris and PyGame because currently they look like Powerpoint presentations... So the whole point is to work fast on a physical XO hardware. Of course if somebody will tell me that the XO is a dead thing and OLPC will cease then I will reconsider wasting my time. Cannot comment on where OLPC is going re XO hardware. Sugar Labs will not cease. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
I don't know what your simple program does, but it sounds like it could be a Sugar bug. You should file a ticket at dev.sugarlabs.org. If it is not related to Sugar, we'll try to pass the report along to the proper place. http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/465 It does sound like NM. Look at ~/.sugar/default/nm There is still an engineer at OLPC looking into WPA on the latest builds. Reported here, no answer: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-February/023504.html I just would like to know if testing is worthwhile or just wastes my time. Thanks anyway! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What to expect from developers, are there any left? (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
2009/3/2 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: My main problem is that knowing who is more responsible requires knowing linux more that I am comfortable with (I am a Windows developer). Here are just 3 examples to show my point: 1. Today I noticed that my simple program can crash the whole sugar desktop and the X server. Shall I report it to somewhere? I do not even know where to look for log files to attach to a bug report. Also if nobody will fix it (I cannot fix it that is sure...) then why should I care? Does it mean that if no deployment will bark that the desktopX can be crashed then it will not be fixed ever? If in doubt, report it to your distribution. Just like you would on your main desktop. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to debug or diagnose. Your distribution should have channels to help you figure that out. I don't understand why you deduce that nobody will fix whatever problem you are running into. And yes, in terms of the now-halted OLPC OS distribution, it is unlikely that there will be further OLPC OS releases unless deployments specifically ask. It takes a lot of OLPC engineering and QA time, and OLPC now has very few resources on those fronts. If you are looking to be using a software platform that is evolving, then you have to switch away from one where development has stopped :) 2. I can reliably (100%) trigger the cannot connect to WPA and the dialog asks for a password endlessly bug but unfortunately I do not know how to debug that thing. To tell you the truth I do not even know where to look for the code of NetworkManager (somebody told that this can be the problem) and even if I knew it usually I cannot compile downloaded linux code for some arcane reason beyond my understanding. So for example in this situation what should I do? Is this NetworkManager part of some linux distro, or is it an XO thing? If it is part of fedora, who should I report bugs to? Yes, NetworkManager is a package included in different Linux distributions, such as Fedora. You should report this problem to your distribution and see where things go from there. There is probably a report already. Google will help you find the code for networkmanager. Note that wireless bugs are very hard to fix. Especially in our case, because theres a big black box (the firmware) which is the cause of many of these issues. Don't be demotivated from filing other bug reports if the wireless one does not move quickly... Note that I am totally aware that these things are not your responsibility, I would just like to have some answers from somebody. If the solution is installing some distro then I will do it, the big question is that which one will be the official one? I don't think there will be an official one - that will be up to the users and deployments. Fedora seems to be the one with the most traction at the moment. This is not an activity in the strictest sense, it is more like a library which shows what the XO hardware can do in animation. After that probably I will use the lessons learned to optimize GCompris and PyGame because currently they look like Powerpoint presentations... So the whole point is to work fast on a physical XO hardware. OK, then my suggestion is to develop it as a distro-independent upstream project (e.g. like NetworkManager), and then package it for your favourite distribution and encourage other distributions to follow along. This is exactly the same process for if you were developing software for any hardware platform. Daniel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Jordan, thanks for the info. I only started to use the XV overlay because I had this little hope that somehow I could get a pointer to a hardware buffer to avoid blitting the data but as I see it now the LX driver simply copies the overlay data to the hardware buffer so I could just use simple X surfaces as well speedwise. Is it true? Probably so. There might be a way to get Xv to share a pointer in video memory, but I'm not sure what that might be. Could you please answer those question from my earlier message? (copied here): A little question to Jordan Crouse or anybody else who can answer. Here Jodran told me that the Geode can do XV flipping: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-May/005208.html It can be that he either did not reflect to that one part of my message or I am just too stupid to make it work. So what I do not see in the XV documentation is how to allocate two xvideo frames and flip between them? What this code currently does is allocating one frame and doing XvShmPutImage. Because its speed depends on the size of the xvideo frame I think it does blittting (copying) and not flipping (switching). So how to do flipping? ps: Actually I would need 3 frames for triple buffering but I would be happy even with 2 frames. The hardware doesn't understand double buffering, at least not in the sense that you give the hardware multiple buffers and flip a bit to switch them. The nominal way of handling double buffering in a Xv driver is to allocate twice the buffer space. XvPutImage alternates between the buffers, and gives you the time to update the buffer and queue it for display on the next vsync. This won't result in any speed increase, but if you are experiencing tearing, then it is a reasonable fix. Your only hope for a speed increase for flipping (or otherwise) is to directly access the video hardware. Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
while i can understand the frustration when something that seems simple and obvious doesn't work, starting wout with sucks probably isn't the best way to get people to listen to your issues. how do other people feel about this problem? are there any good reasons to _not_ make the touchpad rotate with the screen? (i actually think this might be an almost, but not quite, trivial addition to the grab key daemon i mentioned to the list last week. matching the touchpad orientation to the orientation of the screen initially would be the tricky part -- if they were out of sync, it'd be a real drag.) noiseehc wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. If somebody will fix it to be usable then it would be a good idea to program the rotate button so that holding pressed for 2 seconds would turn on-off the backlight (color to mono and back). is this simply to make the backlight controllable from ebook mode? because shift-increase and shift-decrease (or is it ctrl?) accomplish this pretty simply now. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
p...@laptop.org wrote: while i can understand the frustration when something that seems simple and obvious doesn't work, starting wout with sucks probably isn't the best way to get people to listen to your issues. From my experience, it is the most straightforward way to get some reply to my mostly arcane questions... :) I am sorry if I offended people. how do other people feel about this problem? are there any good reasons to _not_ make the touchpad rotate with the screen? (i actually think this might be an almost, but not quite, trivial addition to the grab key daemon i mentioned to the list last week. matching the touchpad orientation to the orientation of the screen initially would be the tricky part -- if they were out of sync, it'd be a real drag.) Unfortunately I do not have enough linux programming experience to do this otherwise I would have been already done that. noiseehc wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. If somebody will fix it to be usable then it would be a good idea to program the rotate button so that holding pressed for 2 seconds would turn on-off the backlight (color to mono and back). is this simply to make the backlight controllable from ebook mode? because shift-increase and shift-decrease (or is it ctrl?) accomplish this pretty simply now. Yes, it would be just for the ebook mode. I think it is a more sane proposition than for example overloading the power button with extra functionality. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily. - Eben 2009/3/1 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. actually, it's pretty easy to lift the screen a bit and hit the touchpad if you have the screen oriented in portrit rather than landscape (in many ways it's easier than hitting the game keys) david Lang A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily. - Eben 2009/3/1 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. This argument rests on the wrong assumption that the user can only rotate the screen in handheld mode. Of course the user can open the laptop as a book and read it rotated while using the touchpad with one of his thumbs. A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily I have read this page but it does not talk about screen rotation at all. Unfortunately (last time I checked) most of the activities are handling keyboard focus badly and they usually need some help with the touchpad to focus to their scrollable area. In handheld mode it means opening the screen a little bit as david Lang has just said. A footnote is that this latter touchpad usage conflicts with the one I have talked about halfway on this page, just imagine it :) ps: I would like to hear a similarly interesting conversation about the xvideo surface and X11 driver, please! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. actually, it's pretty easy to lift the screen a bit and hit the touchpad if you have the screen oriented in portrit rather than landscape (in many ways it's easier than hitting the game keys) But /why/? Can you honestly say that's a desired mode of interaction? I think proper support of the keys would negate the need for such clumsiness. - Eben david Lang A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily. - Eben 2009/3/1 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. actually, it's pretty easy to lift the screen a bit and hit the touchpad if you have the screen oriented in portrit rather than landscape (in many ways it's easier than hitting the game keys) But /why/? Can you honestly say that's a desired mode of interaction? I think proper support of the keys would negate the need for such clumsiness. two reasons first: if you hold the XO in e-book mode with the handle on the top or bottom the keys are readily accessable. however if you hold it with the handle on the left or right they are not very accessable. second, you may want to use the keys for something else and not dedicate them to moving the mouse around. not all activities in this mode are going to be the same, so the best that you can do is to steal 6 of the 8 keys to simulate the mouse (four for direction, two for the two mouse buttone), that works, but it's not optimal. one thing that would be very handy would be if the XO could disable the mouse buttons when it detects that it is in e-book mode, as-is it's possible to press a mouse button accidently when holding the machine by that side in e-book mode. David Lang - Eben david Lang A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily. - Eben 2009/3/1 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:43 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. actually, it's pretty easy to lift the screen a bit and hit the touchpad if you have the screen oriented in portrit rather than landscape (in many ways it's easier than hitting the game keys) But /why/? Can you honestly say that's a desired mode of interaction? I think proper support of the keys would negate the need for such clumsiness. two reasons first: if you hold the XO in e-book mode with the handle on the top or bottom the keys are readily accessable. however if you hold it with the handle on the left or right they are not very accessable. This is a rather unfortunate truth... second, you may want to use the keys for something else and not dedicate them to moving the mouse around. However, you misunderstand me, there. I'm distinctly arguing AGAINST any such thing. I think the cursor should disappear, toolbars go away, and that any mouse-like interaction should be left to laptop mode only. The keys should definitely be used for something else; something more useful. In a browser, scrolling/link navigation and forward back buttons come to mind. Their use would, of course, be activity dependent. not all activities in this mode are going to be the same, so the best that you can do is to steal 6 of the 8 keys to simulate the mouse (four for direction, two for the two mouse buttone), that works, but it's not optimal. Well, I don't think that all activities will be able to, or care to take advantage of handheld mode. I'd much prefer that they did, and that they mapped the keys to useful functionality, but if they don't, then they simply don't and we shouldn't expect them to work. On the other hand, moving the mouse cursor about, as awful as that interaction seems, could be a fallback for those that choose not to have any custom behavior, if we desire to ensure that all activities do /something/ in that mode. I'd prefer a way for activities to indicate to Sugar that they choose to support it, so that those that wish to aren't crippled by a catch-all solution like a d-pad-driven mouse. one thing that would be very handy would be if the XO could disable the mouse buttons when it detects that it is in e-book mode, as-is it's possible to press a mouse button accidently when holding the machine by that side in e-book mode. Good idea. - Eben David Lang - Eben david Lang A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily. - Eben 2009/3/1 NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu: Aaron Konstam wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote: Hello! Just today I have noticed some things about the rotate button (which is below the directional buttons on the display part): 1. When the screen is rotated the mouse does not so if I turn the XO to be able to read letters, I cannot navigate with the mouse. You can navigate but in a sense sideways. Movng the arrow up makes it go up. But relative to the text it is wrong. Yeah, just if I turn the laptop to read the text then it is a little bit impossible to hit anything with the cursor... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
By opening the XO in its traditional laptop configuration and then holding it by the handle as if it were an opened book (twist 90 degrees), results in a portrait mode configuration that is more ergonomic for a standing user and perhaps more comfortable for casual use while sitting on a couch or in a reading chair. Applications for such a use might easily be imagined. The track pad and keys would be available and could be exploited by application designers. On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. actually, it's pretty easy to lift the screen a bit and hit the touchpad if you have the screen oriented in portrit rather than landscape (in many ways it's easier than hitting the game keys) But /why/? Can you honestly say that's a desired mode of interaction? I think proper support of the keys would negate the need for such clumsiness. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:58 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:53 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu wrote: Eben Eliason wrote: This whole argument, I feel, is fruitless. That's just my opinion, of course. The touchpad isn't readily accessible in handheld mode, and was never made to be. I'll continue to suggest that the cursor simply be automatically hidden in handheld mode, and that a simple means for taking full advantage of the handheld buttons which are present be made available to activities in a standardized way. This argument rests on the wrong assumption that the user can only rotate the screen in handheld mode. Of course the user can open the laptop as a book and read it rotated while using the touchpad with one of his thumbs. I suppose that's true, though I'm not sure I see a benefit to that. My impression of handheld mode is as a means of consuming content (not creating content). why should you make that assumption? Because I think there is an inherently limited set of controls available, and the keyboard and mouse are not readily accessible in this mode. I think that defining a set of interactions that can be meaningful in such a context are better than forcing every activity and/or feature into a mode that's not suited to them. I don't mean that content creation shouldn't be allowed in principle—audio/video recording would still work great, for instance—but I don't think the mode was designed in hardware to make use of keyboard and mouse, nor do I think software should try to facilitate it. I think that the cursor AND the toolbars should hide completely, leaving a fullscreen interface for the pleasurable viewing of the pdf, webpage, image, movie, etc., with nothing else in the way, and basic controls mapped to the buttons. how do you decide which controls are 'basic' and need to be mapped to the buttons? what do you do if there are more 'basic controls' than you have buttons? Start with the most basic, and build up. There's a limited set of buttons there; that's something to be dealt with. Video game consoles have done a pretty good job with similar limitations. At least in the 90s they did. These days they've caved in to many more buttons. Also, see the Browse activity description I linked to. It describes a system which makes double-use of the buttons, and can provide logical secondary behaviors for controls like zooming, for instance. It's a question of need, really. When you're not using the laptop as a laptop, what benefit do you gain from use of the cursor (and/or toolbars)? Let's draw a clear distinction between the modes and make them independently useful, rather than trying to make every button/control/feature work in both. even when only 'consuming content' you may need to zoom in on the page or things like that. See above. A suggestion for how this standardized system might work is laid out rather clearly at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Handheld_Mode. I'd very much like to see an API for the press and press-and-hold states of these buttons so that activities could take advantage of it easily I have read this page but it does not talk about screen rotation at all. Unfortunately (last time I checked) most of the activities are handling keyboard focus badly and they usually need some help with the touchpad to focus to their scrollable area. In handheld mode it means opening the screen a little bit as david Lang has just said. This is why we need a consistent and easy to follow API (And guidelines) for implementing this mode. ;) If we could make it easy to get right, there wouldn't be a need to build crutches to fall back on. and how are you going to get all software in the world to comply with your API? I'm not. I'm arguing that activities that *want* to take advantage of handheld mode should be given an API to make it easier to use to full advantage. If we want to support fallback modes that work in a more general sense, that's fine, but I'd really like to see something take off to make handheld mode something more than just a folded up laptop. - Eben especially with the recent changes in direction, XO's are not the driving force, and you can't even count on Sugar being a driving force. they re just one choice among many. David Lang - Eben A footnote is that this latter touchpad usage conflicts with the one I have talked about halfway on this page, just imagine it :) ps: I would like to hear a similarly interesting conversation about the xvideo surface and X11 driver, please! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
eBook controls (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:43 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote: second, you may want to use the keys for something else and not dedicate them to moving the mouse around. For example, next page, previous page, front matter (cover or ToC), back matter (index, notes, references). This does not give us a convenient way to get back to a page we just left, which would normally be done with on-screen controls. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.net/ (Ed Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
NoiseEHC wrote: 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. Indeed - XV is purposely turned off when the screen is rotated (or at least, not displayed): http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-geode/tree/src/lx_video.c#n465 Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Jordan Crouse wrote: NoiseEHC wrote: 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. Indeed - XV is purposely turned off when the screen is rotated (or at least, not displayed): The LX hardware supports rotated blits, right? So in principle, rotated XV could be added to the driver if someone cared sufficiently...? Tangentially related: Anyone who uses gstreamer for video is likely using xvimagesink to display video, but IMHO this is almost always a bad idea. If another application is already using XV, your gstreamer pipeline will simply fail. Instead, use autovideosink, which attempts to use xvimagesink, and silently falls back to ximagesink if XV is not available. --Ben --Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: Jordan Crouse wrote: NoiseEHC wrote: 2. An Xvideo RGB overlay displays the big nothing (black) while the screen is rotated. Indeed - XV is purposely turned off when the screen is rotated (or at least, not displayed): The LX hardware supports rotated blits, right? So in principle, rotated XV could be added to the driver if someone cared sufficiently...? Absolutely - and as a special bonus, the LX groks how to rotate YUV data natively, so both YUV and RGB video can be rotated. Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: rotate button sucks on the XO
eben wrote: Start with the most basic, and build up. There's a limited set of buttons there; that's something to be dealt with. Video game consoles have done a pretty good job with similar limitations. At least in the 90s they did. These days they've caved in to many more buttons. game consoles also had/have reliable buttons. i find that fine-grained control of direction, or even of number of actual presses, is nearly impossible with the d-pad -- that's why i came up with the toothpick mod. that helps a lot, but it's still not perfect. (in contrast, the individual check/circle/etc buttons work fine.) i have no problem with the idea of creating good APIs for doing navigation with the bezel controls. but like david, i think that currently neither olpc nor sugarlabs is going to foster or champion their use: olpc has no resources for s/w development, and as far as i can tell, sugarlabs is targeting other h/w platforms just as strongly as the XO -- and other platforms don't have these screen issues. in any case, so far i've heard no good argument against rotating the touchscreen to match the screen. it may not be the most convenient way to use or hold the laptop, but it would be better than the current situation where screen rotation makes the touchpad almost completely useless. (btw, i would _love_ it if Browse sprouted a prev-link/next-link/ follow-link/back-to-previous interface, for arrow key control, just like lynx or elinks has. it would be faster to use than the touchpad in most cases even in regular laptop orientation.) paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
