Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

In the same spirit as zerojay's widget proposals thread I'd like to try to collect ideas for desktop enhancements for Maemo 5. These are things that you think would improve the overall usage experience on Maemo 5 at the desktop level. In other words, status bar applets, changes to the dashboard, enhancements to Hildon Desktop, and general device customization. Let me give you a few of my ideas as examples:

• xmodmap control panel - The 3-row keyboard on the N900 is, unfortunately, missing many characters that make certain activities much easy. I'd like to see some sort of control panel that allows users to bind characters to certain functions on the keyboard (i.e., Ctrl-Fn-V for a pipe, Ctrl-Enter for tab, etc.). Although accessing xmodmap from XTerm is simple enough, modifying keyboard mappings is a fairly involved process that will be over the heads of most users.
• ACMonitor - I'd like to see ACMonitor ported to Fremantle with a nice control panel front-end. This would allow the user to change the various power-saving options based on their current power source. This would make it easy to work around things like the SSH timeout with WiFI PSM by turning PSM off while you're sitting at your desk with the AC plugged in.

So, what enhancements can you think up?

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

well i hope i understood right.

i watched many videos and saw many pictures, but i didnt see small notification icons, just the banners. i thought it would be usefull to have small icon on the desktop on the side of reception bars, statuslight, Wireless activity GPS activity icons. new mail envelope with@, sms an envelope SMS stating in it, mms envelope with MMS, IM a speech bubble with "IM" in it. and for backround media an arrow with a music note just to inform you "hey there is media activity in the background" since you could be on a desktopview with out the music player widget on, and just forgotten you have the media player on for the whole day

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

I just thought of doing a theming thread but it fits in here as well!
the stuff is not only desktop but well will repost it somewhere else if needed

as the n900 is capable of GL and the fancy blue spirit desktop theme already shows of a some alike 3D movement of the desktop elements, I thought of a desktop with a globe as background (moon, earth, osmarender, you name it) rotating as you move your desktop-view, also capable of centering your current location to the home (first) desktop. (I was thinking of compiz's desktop cube as globe)

to the frontends people may like (or not, I dont care)

powermanagement, events:

• some kind of laptop-mode-tools with easy to use shifters and buttons input
• event handler frontend to manipulate "keyboard-in/out", "powerbtn" registration used to trigger something

WiFi:

• show (and choose for connection) nearby WiFi devices with signalstrength as indicator for distance (cant remember the name but something like this is build in with the latest DD-WRT firmware)
• a kismet-like and alike toolset

file-handling, -system:

• macroscripting (automagicaly records what you do and provides a button to do it at once, again and again)
• fileconverter (ps2pdf jpg2png etc) frontend
• lvm (should be capable of moving files to another device to remove the SD card)
• crypting. remember its eating CPUs so settings with low CPU usage or single-file-encryption should be enough, this tool should also automagicaly lock the vault after time and ask for passwords if needed
• GnuPG may be useful as well
• networkmount. mounting your windows/linux/network storage (maybe in relation to your WiFi network?).

images:

• watermarker, a tool to make a pics background convert to alpha transparent and add it to a folder/filelist of pics at X,Y position and add this text at X,Y xPts huge
• gif-o-mator. take this $list of pics and create a 15sec $gif

I cant give desktopPC examples as I'm not familiar with GUI tools for background issues (I'm more of a vi guy). I am a dedicated debian fan and will have my first smartphone with the n900 (but was already sucking all the good out of my SE-W880i with javaprograms)

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Portrait mode! ;)

}:^)~

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

there is portrait already and if a program is portrait or swaps depends on the coding

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Let's please not let this thread be dominated by portrait stuff! There are other threads for that.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Some ideas:

- I'd like a way to display the wallpaper only (i.e hide the icons, shortcuts & widgets). I just downloaded some pictures of some nice ladies for my wallpapers and realized I have way too many items on screen to actually enjoy them...:/

- some generic way to turn off live widgets but still keep it on screen. For instance RSS and facebook widgets for me are things I'd like to activate only when needed...

- I wouldn't mind if it was possible to have two separate desktops which would be switchable, eg. work and freetime. Each with their own widgets, shortcuts etc. (also multiplying the available screen estate with two...would be a bonus IMHO)

//K

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Every desktop transition includes a number of the desktop. i.e sliding from 1-> 2 will have the number 2 appear in the middle of the screen with eye-candies of course.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

The default desktop on the N900 already spans over 4 screens. you can easily set up 2 of them for work and the other two for home.

or do you mean 2 completely different sets of screens for work&home? then it would be a valid enhancement request :)

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

For me, something like LoadApplet that shows CPU and memory usage is very important.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Yes, exactly what I wanted to say. Two different sets of screens.

I noticed that I'm running out of space while testing stuff if I also like to keep some 'eye candy' for the wallpaper.

My current configuration:
1) media player, TuneWiki and Maps home widget (which I'll probably dump soon as I don't use it that much)
2) Calender + 8 shortcuts to various stuff (contacts, clock, calculator, conversations, email etc)
3) 6+ links to various webpages. Could fit several more, especially if I'd arrange the icons on top of eachother..
4) contacts (whom I deal with daily more or less, family & work)

I'm sure that once I have more experience with the device I could be more picky what I keep on the desktop, for instance I haven't used mauku or rss widgets yet but I could also drop some of the less used ones...

//K

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

I think that is an excellent idea. Maybe take it a little further and have map "profiles" that allow you to setup a list of changes ("Programming" -> binds brackets, pipe, etc, "Texting" -> binds keys to common phrases ex. ctl-l => lol, ctl-c => I'll call back later, etc). I'm not sure if you can bind a single key to a character string.

Anyway, the main idea is that you could have a widget in the status bar that when you clicked it gave a dropdown of pre-configured "profiles" that could quickly easily change the functionality of the keyboard.

Back to the binding of a single key to a string, that I guess is almost like a macro recorder, and might be a separate idea/program, but one that I think could have a lot of power. For instance, thinking of being on the terminal. You could bind ctl-p to "cd /home/[user]/Pictures" or some other directory that you might frequently go and didn't want to have to type out each time.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Great idea

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Wallpaper gradually changing colors from the morning to the evening, like on the PS3?
It's useless but I love it

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

There are 3 types of notifications:

• The Hildon Notes, which pop up big, modal orange banners in the middle of the screen that you have to tap away.
• The Hildon Banner, which is the little banner you see near the top that go away after a timeout or when you tap them.
• The libnotify notifications which are the ones you get for IM/SMS/email. These show a little bubble in the upper left for a short period then disappear into the dashboard. They work mostly the same as Diablo's notifications.

Peter requested a GMail notifier for the desktop. It would be fairly trivial for somebody to put together additional applets for the statusbar.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

This would probably have to be done with a Hildon Desktop patch. Add a menu item to the Hildon Home configuration menu probably.

You could probably patch the widgets to listen for a dbus signal to pause, although Nokia has had something like this on the system level for powersaving for a while.

Easier just to split your virtual desktops in half for now, but should be do-able.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Baring a patch, you could simply number the desktop images, though those wouldn't temporary. ;)

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

That we've got! :D

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

There are facilities for switching profiles with ctrl-space already, that plus a statusbar applet would be nice indeed.

TextExpander on OS X provides similar functionality. What's an open source equivalent we could port?

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Does somebody know if there is already something like TextPlus (http://www.smartcell.com/Web/pc-14-3...r-palm-os.aspx) for Maemo 5?

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Auto mount SD card to the desktop.
ie icon that appears on the desktop as soon as sd card is inserted for easy access.

Mike C

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

How about pervasive ssh support? I have stuff spread all over my various systems, and access to them would be great.

Also, real contacts. Phone, email, address, etc.

Printing support? Printing to a network printer would be nice.

How about the ability to bind any keysyms to buttons on-screen (I'm looking at *you*, xterm!) and on free on-screen keyboard keys.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

there is one widget i would like...know "Notes" in Windows Vista/7 ?
that's what i would need...some clipnotes widget where i could write down a few things, like reminders what to do...

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Snapshotting / 'Time Machine' for Maemo, so one can play and screw the OS while not being without a phone for too long.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Don't know if it's already in but I thought about it in the Maemo 6 UI Framework thread.

A mouse like option in the entire OS, not just in the browser.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

Is there anyway to "overhaul" the keyboard software? Not just to modify it to make it more user friendly, but to be able to extend the functionality quite further than that (the existing solution seems somewhat limited/difficult to modify for a beginning user).

Things that would work excellently for a new keyboard system:
- (as mentioned previously): profiles, which could be saved and activated/switched to with a taskbar app
- drag and drop keyboard rearranging support
(just drag keys to new locations/remove keys you don't want/add keys you do)
- extensive themes, not just for aesthetic purposes, but also for user personalization
(eg. a user is used to the android/ipod/any other phone onscreen keyboard could get a "theme" that just reorders the keys and changes the look to match the keyboard they are used to). This would help the user feel at "home" with the device much quicker than having to readjust to how to type on the n900.

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

and move the root partition to zfs while we're at it ;)

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

A true Time Machine solution would introduce a lot of overhead and add more architectural changes than would be advisable, however having alarmd run an rsync every 24 hours or so should be easy.

All of these are possible, just need to find people willing to work on them. ;)

Re: Desktop enhancement ideas for Maemo 5
 

NILFS, rather.

Hmm, but then its rather difficult to roll back.

Instead of Time Machine with its GUI and backing up of personal data I mean something like incremental images. They can be made every X hours, or before big changes (manual by user, or auto by e.g. APT). ZFS snapshotting or ODS-2/5 versioning filesystem provide one part of the feature. The boot loader would then simply allow one to use the snapshot (or previous version if was primary at $date_of_snapshot).

I don't know how many resources (or how much time) this would cost. On battery, might no be preferred.