On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 03:13:32PM +0100, Stefan Sperling wrote:
On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 12:55:03PM +0000, Tati Chevron wrote:
Sorry to be negative, but I just don't see the perceived value in this.
You wouldn't want to use OpenBSD on a trouchscreen computer if you
had one? Where windows can be moved or resized depending on how many
fingers you use to touch them?
No, I certainly wouldn't. I don't even use a mouse, why on earth would
I want a touchscreen? Exactly how is it easier or more efficient to
take your hands away from the keyboard to move or resize a window,
especially using combinations of several fingers. Touch screen interfaces
are generally slow, error-prone, and currently only being forcibly marketed
to make money out of already patented ideas that have little or no real
value.
The touchscreen interfaces I have to use, principally on mobile phones,
are cumbersome and irritate me no end.
I would. I already have a machine
capable of this but even if I wrote a driver for its wacom touchsceen
today I could not pass all possible input events to OpenBSD's input
subsystem.
Do you NEED to pass 'all possible input events'? OK, if you are a fan of
touchscreens, I can understand that some people may want to use it as a
mouse. That can already be done without making massive changes to the
input layers.
But multi-touch, gestures, weird things happening without reason when you
touch corners of the display, pressure feedback, it doesn't all belong in
the same core input layer that deals with a PS/2 or USB mouse that 95% or
more of users are perfectly happy with and don't want bloated.
Looking forward, such devices will probably become the norm in general
purpose computing.
Define, 'general purpose computing', and stop falling for the hype.
Tablets are a fad now, but 90% of real work is always going to require a
propper keyboard. I can sustain 80 wpm typing on a buckling spring keyboard,
but max out at about 15 on a 'tablet' with an on screen keyboard.
Or am I really going to be doing my development work on touch screen tablet,
controlling vi with multi-finger guestures??? If I wanted a toy computer,
I'd buy one from a toyshop.
So I believe this work is important.
I think it's much more important to look at the impact on existing use cases,
before making changes and introducing a lot of new code that the end user
can't easily disable, and potentially affects such basic things as a mouse.
--
Tati Chevron
Perl and FORTRAN specialist.
SWABSIT development and migration department.
http://www.swabsit.com
