Re: [iPAQ] UWM -- the unnamed window manager

On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 11:36:59AM +0100, Tom wrote:
> as I said earlier - I see a problem with screen space here. the ipaq is
> only 240 pixels across. you need maybe 100 pixels min for an acceptable
> pie menu, which means that you have an area of 140x220 pixels in the
> centre of the screen where the pie menu does, in fact, center on the
> cursor without parts of it being off-screen. and that's an optimistic
> size guess, the mock-ups and screenshots of real pie menus I've seen
> are considerably larger.

actually, it's worse.

a) we should do away with the notion of a "cursor" or "cursor position"
because it doesn't make any sense on a touchscreen device.

b) with 100+ pixels across, the pie menu will always obscure a
considerable part of the screen. it then becomes, in fact, a modal
dialog instead of a menu. but if you're doing modal dialogs anyway, you
can do much better than using menus.

I might have to get back to the HCI stuff and check what the current
research status on PDA devices is. I'm sure there's tons of stuff that
we can use, and one of the advantages of Linux over microsoft is that
M$ insists on inventing every wheel anew the M$ way while most of the
Linux community is capable of learning from others mistakes. in short:
I'm confident that with a little effort, a Linux-based PDA will quickly
be vastly superior in useability than wince. once it is, the
applications will come in on their own.

-- 
http://web.lemuria.org/pubkey.html
pub  1024D/D88D35A6 2001-11-14 Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
     Key fingerprint = 276B B7BB E4D8 FCCE DB8F  F965 310B 811A D88D 35A6