Features/Touch/Development

This page is about the development of the touch feature for the Sugar interface. Each item has a detailed implementation plan. The design decisions are based on these related pages:

Sugar Shell Touch Input

Sugar Shell Touch Input Talk

On Screen Keyboard

Activity Touch Input

Todo (essential)

On screen keybord (OSK)

Internationalisation

• e.g. layout covers our accent needs

Multilingual

• e.g. ability to switching between at least two languages

Landscape/portrait

Currently not working anymore, upstream Maliit bug.

Don't auto reveal in laptop mode, only ebook mode

For devices which have a hardware keyboard and a touchscreen the OSK should not be auto revealed in the "laptop mode". You will be able to manually reveal it with the button in the Frame.

Text selection

• Selection handles
• Cut(?)/Copy/Paste/Speak selection palette

Palette behaviours

• Tapping icons with no primary action should instantly open full palette
  • e.g. right frame edge buddy icons; central home buddy icon; access Point device icon

Frame

• Expose/hide gesture!!!
  • Button for top left (fallback)

Home view

• Disable Activity icon dragging in fixed layouts
  • e.g. allows easier access to long hold of Activity icon to access palette

Neighbourhood view

• Remove primary action from AP icons
• Remove primary action from ad-hoc icons
• Remove primary action from shared activity icons

Journal

• Touch & hold on an entry should invoke full palette
• Dragging an entry needs to work but not prevent the touch and hold palette (if finger moves a little)
  • e.g. to copy it to another volume

Combobox

• Single touch of a combo should lock open it's palette and allow drag scrolling
• Should not show blank space when previous selection was near the bottom of the list
• Up/down menu/combo overflow widgets need to be larger

Visual feedback for button presses

• Generic solution - use a mouse HW cursor with alpha white 'glow' marking all primary touch events?
• Existing GTK button down highlights work well in toolbars
• Shell canvas area views
  • Use grey round rect outline for presses
    • AP icons
    • Activity icons
    • Buddy icons
    • Ad-hoc icons
  • Only really needed where there is no palette and/or primary action is too slow

Visual feedback for touch and hold

• Animated circle timer?
• Blinking grey round rect outline

Todo (Ideal)

• Palette behaviours
  • Single touch should never trigger hover content
  • Touch and hold should raise hover content
  • Touching the icon of an open palette should close the palette
    • e.g. Journal list sort palette
• Toolbar overflow widget should be same size as Sugar toolbar button icons
• Zoom to content behaviour
  • e.g. Browse
• Frame
  • Activity Zoom icon (and physical key) should act like Alt-Tab
• Home view
  • Improve layouts
    • e.g. larger Activity icon usage where possible
    • e.g. Increase separation between icons where possible
• Details view
  • Alert dialogue needed for Erase toolbar button
  • Alert dialogue needed for Duplicate toolbar button
• Accelerometer auto rotate based on rotation when laptop is in ebook mode
• Drag scrolling
  • Smooth!!
• Priorities UI redraw over other processes
  • e.g. don't stall the UI thread

Todo (polish)

• Smooth transitions/animations
• Text selection
  • Feature extensible selection palette
    • e.g. Activity specific formatting
• Home view
  • New grid layout option
• Make sure Activities and shell works well in portrait
  • e.g. toolbar button overflow in some Activities
• Pre-light hover effects (remove for touch screen input)
• hspan/vspan separators, make sure they are large enough for finger interaction
• OSK
  • Subtle key click feedback
  • Custom context
  • Custom key strips/extras based on Activity
  • Predictive text
    • Context sensitive
    • Locale sensitive
• Activity start/resume screen
  • Remove start/resume palette
  • Palette options presented in fullscreen UI, before activity pulse loader