multi-touch-dev team mailing list archive

[Chase Douglas <chase.douglas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 15:16 +0200, Mathieu Virbel wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I've been talking to Dunkan, and he ask me to write my concerns/wishes
> for future development and user interaction. So here we are.
> 
> I don't known exactly how canonical see the future of Maverick, but if
> we want ubuntu usable for Tablet, lot of things must be done :)
> 
> - Unity: under development ? what are the plan on that ? What feedback
>   did you planned ?
> 
> - Florence: i've read that florence is going to be the default keyboard
>   for ubuntu. Am i wrong ? If yes, florence is really not usable.
>   Really. Once good thing we must learn coming from our beloved Apple..
>   When you open the keyboard, the application window is adjusted to not
>   hide the focused text input. Maybe an integration between unity /
>   florence is required here.
> 
> - Florence: prediction. Boulabiar said that they are lot of patent on
>   that, but still, be productive = introduce algorithm to enhance people
>   writing. In PyMT, we've got spelling keyboard... and it's not
>   sufficient. Library like enchant (mean aspell/ispell) is doing
>   auto-correction and suggestion, but don't care about the context. And
>   that's make thing just unusable.
> 
> - Theming: having a touch-usable GTK theme is required. I don't remember
>   where i got the microsoft document about UI, but they are designing UI
>   like a button require 10mm height, spacing between elements should be
>   7mm.. Whatever is the screen size. Your finger are not smaller if you
>   increase your resolution :)
> 
> - GTK: patch to add some new behavior ? Like list, it would be nice to
>   remove that ugly scrollbar, and permit scroll just by touching.
> 
> - Firefox plugin: ubuntu have already a plugin installed by default for
>   firefox. Is it possible to enhance it ? Like adding scrolling with
>   touch by default, better theming for tabs (specially the cross button
>   to close a tab..)
> 
> - All app: even if GTK is not ready for MT, it should be ok to do
>   alternative UI for touch no ? One thing we've learn with PyMT is that
>   classical UI is really not good for touch (for eg: Rhythmbox can b
>   enhanced to add plugin for custom touch UI)
> 
> It's just some ideas. Feel free to comment !

Mathieu,

I think you've gone through a pretty exhaustive list of what needs to be
done to fully realize a touch interface for Ubuntu. I personally agree
with every point :). What we're starting with today is the foundation to
provide all of the above, and Unity is the first application that will
have multitouch gesture support. Hopefully the Unity support will land
later this week, along with some cool videos showing off some of what
will be available.

We hope that our contributions will be a spark that starts a raging fire
of multitouch and gesture application development. Hopefully we will
have a compelling platform in short order through the power of
distributed, open development!

Thanks,

-- Chase