Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

but I'll go back to my thread. sorry for the hijack.

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

Chris, relax.

You're passionate about Maemo and that's awesome. You know what you want and are pushing to get it. All of that is good. I think you're just being a bit thin-skinned and impatient about things. Don't take what a few people are saying so personally.

At this point, I think we'll see full rotation support for most of the built-in apps in a later version of the firmware, maybe a few months after release. And even if that doesn't happen, I'm pretty sure plenty of community developers are already working on making rotation for their apps happen.

Don't let yourself get discouraged so quickly, try to let some of those rude responses roll off your back and keep pushing for the features you want regardless.

(Edit: When I wrote this, I hadn't seen any other posts yet. Yeah, some of that stuff was definitely out of line.)

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

im not glad. even its more work for developers it will push maemo and the n900 further. u need to be challenged to evolve.

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

And watch where you push. Sometimes it sounds like borderline whining..

Let's focus on channeling the energies to something productive..

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

Here's (roughly) how I see what's transpired:

1. Information on the N900 and Maemo 5's UI leaks out. System-wide ASR is conspicuously absent.
2. The existing Maemo community isn't overly shocked or horrified, after all:
   • Nokia hasn't shown great interest in adding rotation support to Maemo in the past. (Please read the comments there. You might call it foreshadowing.)
   • A good portion of the Maemo community has, obviously, been reasonably happy with landscape-only for some time already. Those that aren't, are quite used crafting hacks to work around what Nokia provides.
3. Eager new users, experienced on other platforms, show up excited to express their enthusiasm for Maemo but also their confusion as to how a such a key feature as ASR could be missing.
4. The Maemo community responds with a collective shrug (due to the reasons above), shocking the newcomers (who share none of that history).
5. New users continued to arrive and, having received no real response regarding ASR, become increasingly vocal in their insistence it must be added.
6. Nokia sees the demand for ASR and provides subtle (and not so subtle) hints about why it's not in Fremantle, where it is planned, and what they'd be willing to do in the meantime.
7. From experience, the Maemo community knows better than the newcomers who the Nokia people are and how to read what they're saying, so they see answers where others don't. This widens a nasty gap.
8. The parts of the Maemo community who are particularly keen on screen rotation figure they'll just need to come up with the appropriate hacks for Maemo 5, just as they have for previous releases. They move on to other things (and other threads), putting thoughts about any ASR hacks on the back burner until the final SDK--containing more of the parts they need--arrives.
9. More and more new users arrive and express their need for ASR.
10. Communications continue to degrade. Generalizing, but:
    • One side can't see how anyone could fail to recognize the importance of making ASR happen now.
    • The other side can't understand how anyone could fail to see that ASR can't happen now and that improvements will come over the next weeks and months.
11. Some people from each side fall into shouting at people on the other side for being rude and unhelpful. Each side knows it's obvious, based on experience, what needs to happen.

It's just a shame their experiences are so different...

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

One way to implement portrait mode via automatic screen rotation (ASR).
Have the phone rotate it and if it is too big to fit, then you have to scroll around (kinetic scrolling comes in useful here?). This will at least have the mode until there are "proper" portrait mode UIs. Those who don't want to make a UI can leave it if they want, their choice.

ASR should also be switchable on or off, and perhaps with an option for permanent portrait or permanent landscape (the default).

An example of this could perhaps be (simplistically):

on event change accelerometer_value
if accelerometer_flag= "OFF"
end if
elseif <program>_allows_ASR = "OFF"
end if
else if accelerometer_value = "Portrait"
then call <program>_UI_portrait
else call <program>_UI_landscape
end if

Ok this is very basic and I should get back to SQL statements... it's been years since I programmed in C++, this looks more like VB...!

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

12. Sometime people (like me) need time (like more than a few minutes -- and sometimes even a few days) between posts in order to formulate informed opinions and responses, and then return only to find innumerable responses and new threads (sometimes all by the same person) about the same subject.

Seriously, I (for one) will only concentrate on threads that progress at a personally acceptable rate -- that doesn't happen a whole lot here, and I really enjoy skimming for "Thanks" to important excerpts. When people rain fury down on certain subjects, I'm prone to turn off to them and go elsewhere.

This is why I appreciated when the ASR Brainstorm idea was finally posted -- it is one place where we, as the general public, can go to vote and suss these things out. What good are all of these discussions? Go to the Brainstorm, add solutions, or vote negatively for ideas you don't like, etc. No need to complain or yell at each other here.

Tim

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

Well said.

One of the best introductions to open source development for me was "Working on open source" from a decade ago http://ometer.com/hacking.html

It has lots of wisdom on requesting features, lurking, respect, etc.

In addition, I find it surprising that some kind of "Code of Conduct" was not presented on the header of Maemo Talk, but only a FAQ without proper information for newcomers (like me). I try to keep in mind something like Ubuntu's:
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/leadership-conduct

There may be a lot of enthusiastic newcomers, and life will find its way.

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

Just to post my feedback about ASR. I am a (very proud and satisfied) owner of a Tablet PC from Motion Computing. It is provided vith a Vista version rather customized that (IMHO) works rather well on the machine. The machine itself is very productive and I am very happy to have bought it.
Vista provides a mechanism of ASR, and the machine has its acceleremoters. First two months the option was enabled, WOW, how geek it is :) !!!
I have it from little less than a year now, and needless to say the option of automatic ASR had been turned off long ago. There is a hardware key configured for rotating the screen, and I simply click on it when i need it. The screen rotates when i decide so, otherwise on the long term the experience is totally frustrating, I can grant you so!

Passing on N900, we have to consider two main things:

- different form factor
- different use cases

I almost always use my tablet PC in its portrait mode, only barely in landscape when I need more horizontal room without scrolling.

Probably it means that for 'productive' tasks the N900 will be used in landscape mode almost all of the time, while for other tasks (i.e phone or music hearing) the prevalent use will be portrait. For sure Nokia already studied lots of use cases and best implementations.

My idea is that every application should have a default behaviour, and ASR should not be implemented automagically by the system. The system should provide a coherent way to change rotation (but I think X system already does this). When you pick up your phone from the pocket, well, it's a phone. And a phone is best used portrait. When you take it out to chat, you need the keyboard, and therefore you go landscape. What when you need to chat with only one hand free (bus, train, everywhere)? Well: go portrait with T9 active with soft keyobard. One use case, one orientation. The 'automagically' rotation is therefore choosen on an application basis by itself. And there should be the chance to configure the default rotation and to change it via a hardware key. But HW keys are room constrained and N900 has no dedicated hardware keys for that... Gestures?

And yes, I choose this thread because I am totally against ASR, the screen should not rotate because the system decides so ;)

On the other side, if the system provides coherency, the application could just call the rotation depending on its use case, and the experience of rotation will be a good experience.

Just my 2c

Re: Glad there is no universal portrait support
 

jurop88, we semi agree. I'd take a rotation key, I just want the option. Don't like the forced landscape. And I'm not talking about apps, but the system desktops and Fremantle stuff. Apps are always up to the dev, per the SDK. But I want access to my widgets no matter which orientation. Widgets are a convenience deal, and I think portrait is a convenience orientation. Just to make myself clear.

But off to my thread...