Re: Interested in GNOME on touchscreens?

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Michael:

> On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 16:12 +0000, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > Feel free to add problems that you might find, or start discussing
> > potential fixes for the various problems on this list.
>
> For the on-screen keyboard
> (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/ScreenKeyboard),
> one could consider adapting the MeeGo keyboard (see
> http://wiki.meego.com/Meego_Input_Methods)
>
> It was designed with handhelds and slate devices in mind, so it would be
> "only" a matter of writing a clutter input context.
>
> It should be easy to adapt it to the GNOME Shell look, too.

It would be nice if an on-screen keyboard were integrated directly into
the shell.  I think it would be good to discuss this opportunity on the
gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org mailing list.

I wonder if this code might be useful to the Caribou
project.  An on-screen keyboard GUI probably would not need to be coded
in Clutter to look well integrated with GNOME Shell, unless there is
some advantage to coding the GUI in JavaScript, I'd think.

I know the GOK program had a nice feature that allowed you to navigate
application menus via the GOK interface.  This provided for a faster and
more configurable way to navigate application menus for a11y users.
Some of these sorts of techniques might also be useful to the general
user, making it easier to navigate the desktop for users who cannot use
keyboards or who are using touch screen devices.

There are probably opportunities to integrate these sorts of features
more deeply in the shell.  For example, defining mouse gestures to do
common things, providing features to quickly navigate application menus
directly in the underlying code, or to make it possible for users to
define mouse gestures like you can keybindings.

Surely, good on-screen and touch-screen keyboard support is important
for GNOME Shell to work well on certain devices.  I would think the same
program could support both features.

Brian