Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Since there doesn't seem to be a Telescope-dedicated post and I felt that we were hijacking the other thread I thought I'd start one here.
(Note: I have nothing to do with the app development, just a user) - the developer is Mitrandir .

What is Telescope?
Telescops is an Application switching tool for OS2008.
Simply explained - you press one key (the 'home key'/F5 (the upper hard-ware key on the left side of your tablet)) - and all applications you are running shows as thumbnails on a screen and you can there easily select what app to jump to.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words: Telescope Promo VIdeo: http://www.youtube.com/user/DenielOl.../2/6FhOf4evqtU

Great, where do I find Telescope?
Garage page: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/telescope

Note: Dependencies will NOT be automatically installed when installing the .deb-file from the garage page. However, all dependencies are available in the Extras repository.

Installing from Extras-Devel: http://skriblovsky.net/maemo/telescope.install
Note: This install-file will add the Extras-Devel repository to your device and the nature of Extras-Devel is that it is still in development and you are yourself responsible for accepting that risk and any issues that may come along.


=====
Update 7/9/10
Telescope 0.2.9
D-Bus support. Telescope can now be called by D-Bus method call:
bus: org.telescope
path: /Telescope
method: org.telescope.Telescope.Show (or Hide)
Next version of Diablo5 theme will include statusbar applet for calling task switcher (like in Fremantle)
Workaround for liqbase applications. They will be iconified when telescope appears


Update 7/1/10
Telescope 0.2.8

• Huge source code refactoring. I think around 40-60% of source code was refactored in order to improve internal logic of the application, eliminate potential bugs and make it more easy to bring enhancements in future
• It's now possible to move selection with joystick if you put following into your /etc/telescope.keys:
  
  Code:

  ---

  press(Right):  internal(selectRight)
press(Left):  internal(selectLeft)
press(Up):    internal(selectUp)
press(Down):  internal(selectDown)
press(Return): internal(switchToSelected)

  ---

• Several potential bugs was fixed
• Added a couple of config-options for one guy who tries to adopt Telescope on Ubuntu on N8x0

Update 6/2/2010
Telescope 0.2.7.2
Workaround for OSSO MediaPlayer. Exactly as maacruz suggested -- when user is calling telescope from mediaplayer, mediaplayer will be minimized to hide its video overlay. When video is active, mediaplayer minimizes without animation, so it does it fast.


Update 5/31/2010
Telescope 0.2.7
Support for SDL games and other non-standard windows, for example MPlayer, links2 and others
Changing of window title is now displayed in real time when telescope is active.

Update 5/23/2010
Telescope 0.2.6.2
Several bugfixes:
* Window titles disappearing after screen rotate
* Active window not always highlighted
* Window preview is invalid sometimes


Update 5/12/2010:

Below, Telescope and 6 open apps:

(The screenshot is from an N810 running Diablo and the Diablo5 theme).

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

By the way: Is the ThinkLinux theme (as seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGf_4BUL3J8 ) available yet in a package? I'd love to pair telescope with that theme.

Or is it now rolled into the N810 "Diablo5" Theme (seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7B7kMqCkc and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoeZSmpDees )?

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

heh, i was waiting for stable release for create new thread dedicated to telescope but you did it before :) Thanks

I do love your idea of SpeedDial and wondering why i havn't thought about it before. Although, such "favorites view" would be useful only with small number of items (<12 for example).

I'm not sure right now if it is possible to monitor browser to handle which webpages are most frequently viewed. Of course we can make manual addition of webpages, but in this case i don't know what preview telescope should show for manually entered web address.

It was planned to use F5 button inside telescope for moving selection between previews and use second hardware key to accept the selection and switch to selected window (just like with builtin task switcher). But if we support launcher view, it would be convient to show it on F5 click. How to combine these?... Why so few hardware buttons on N810!?...

BTW, ThinkLinux (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=42319) was just a base for Diablo5 theme by Kroll. AFAIK, there is no package right now, but Kroll is working on it (doesn't you, Kroll? :)) Actually, Telescope was started from Kroll's idea of having something more maemo5-styled for task switching for Diablo 5 theme.

P.S.
Please feel free to post your ideas to Feature Requests page on garage too!
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/telescope

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

The only way I can think of is that Tear for instance has a tab that shows 'most visited web pages'. I'm assuming that data would be stored somewhere in a file. Another option would be maybe, for microb browser, to have the user add bookmarks in the browser into a folder named 'telescope' and then telescope would read from those. I don't really like either option I must admit as they are both browser specific. Maybe manually adding URLs would be the cleaner way of doing it :)

Btw, I still think you should do an official [Annouce] post of Telescope when you feel it's ready for prime time - I just felt like we were hijacking the other thread. Guess this can be used until you're ready to 'announce' :)

Keep up the great work, I am really enjoying your application a lot!
But now back to playing Аллоды Онлайн ;)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

What?! Should I remind u about my idea about «top applications»?! :mad: :D

Actually I still think about other method of using hardware buttons. May be the best way is to make all buttons tunable with GUI options manager.

I do! But I'm soooo lazy and I have so few free time to proceed my work on my theme (Diablo5). Actually I'm able to make the package which will remove tasknavigator and change the statusbar... But I want to make full theme.


BTW, Mitrandir made a few improvements for tear, so he knows something about tear code... And this «SpeedDial» is not speedy at all! Would you like to have the Telescope so fast as tear? :D

Oh, please! Come back to reality ;)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I'd love to see some of those Tear improvements as Tear is way too buggy and limited for me to use at the moment.

Off to level my lvl 12 scout.....

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

http://skriblovsky.net/maemo/ Here it is :)
or
http://skriblovsky.net/maemo/install.png
As I remember there is some futures:
— new scroll method
— less likely that you "catch" the link when you scroll through a page
— new scroll bar (very tiny)
— RSS support
— better .swf support
— open page in a new window (hold hardware menu button (under the 5-way navigator) and tape the link)
— scroll by «space» button and scroll up by «shift+space» buttons.
— some modifications of address bar

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Thanks I installed it (happened to have the N810 with me) and I do like the space and shift-space scrolling and link opening option. Nice.

Some things that I can't get used to with Tear though are;
- it's tendency of freezing up completely if you switch away from it to another application while Tear is a screen where you are typing/editing something,
- the inability to install a repo when clicking on a deb that belongs to a new repo (I had to switch to microb to do this just now),
- the horrible way it 'selects' text. I can't see what text I am dragging/marking to copy, etc as I go.

If those would be fixed I might even try Tear again ;-)

And Kroll, maybe you can help me with my two questions on: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...285#post623285 :-)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I'm completely zero in programming, so please, "push" Mitrandir to improve the Tear :p

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Potential bug: when running mauku and doing open-twitter-replies mauku launches a second window.
it takes me back to the telescope page and then mauku crashes.
never seen that happen before and might have something to do with the app launching a 'copy' of itself.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Hmmm... Thanks, added to buglist

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I installed tear-mod from that repository and am loving it :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

That actually looks kinda cool. /me goes to check out code.

EDIT:

Man, that's hardcore.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

fixfox, thanks! You can also check tear-improvements package, since it adds more features to Tear, RSS support, for example. May be it worth to create new thread about it.

Stskeeps, yes it uses only Xlib (+ its extensions) and no Gtk or Qt. Thats why it is fast and lightweight :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Gratz for "making it" to the Maemo Weekly News site: http://www.mwkn.net/2010/17/apps.html
:)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Hm. They are still doesn't know about Heroes of Might and Magic for Diablo...

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Tip them? That's what I did to get Telescope there :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Yep. n8x0 users must be notified about new awesome applications for their devices, 'cause new applications for such a cool devices appears very seldom.

By the way, is there some news about 3D on n8x0? We can get a nice effects (with 3D drivers) in Telescope to make it more beautiful :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Stskeeps, thanks :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Telescope 0.2.4
Fixed bug which led sometimes to holes instead of window previews
Thumbnail size reduced when there is only one thumbnail on screen (this makes it more easy to tap on empty space in order to show desktop)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Just wanted to say this is very cool I played with it a little last night charged my n810 just to install this. Now you just need a Fremantle style menu on Diablo

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Funny those were two out of three 'bugs'/issues that I've seen so far (the third being the Mauku crash mentioned earlier) - but, since I'm personally not using Mauku anymore (tweetgo.net) I don't care :)

But on a more serious note it could be a sign of something not working well with Telescope when an app is launching another page.
Were you able to replicate it on your side?

Installing the update tonight. Thanks for you work!

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I still dont get 0.2.4 in the updates. Has it been uploaded?

EDIT: Nvm, I refreshed again and now I got 0.2.5. Neat.
What's in 0.2.5 that wasn't in 0.2.4? :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

hm, I can find only 0.2.4 (but have 0.2.5 already installed)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Re-installed Mauku to see if I could get it to crash again but now the new page (Twitter replies for instance) opens without any problem and everything shows correctly in Telescope.

Not sure if this was a bug-fix that is now fixed - or if it was just temporary/random issue that is now gone. Regardless that 'bug' can be crossed out now :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

0.2.5 actually not differs from 0.2.4. I just changed Section field of the package in order to remove warning from autobuilder saying that telescope package uses invalid section (actually, it was using valid section for diablo, but for fremantle it is not valid. This is problem of autobuilder).

silvermountain, yeah i forgot to add mauku bug into bugtracker :( But if it is working now - great :) I will check it, i have mauku installed. Btw, bug with "holes" instead of previews was in bugtracker, and it was most disturbing bug for me :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Contributors, especially N8x0 focused ones, are very much welcome.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Jaffa, great, i will writes updates on mwkn

silvermountain, i have reproduced bug with Mauku with following scenario:
1. Start Mauku
2. Click on bottom logo panel to hide it
3. Double click first tweet (this opens new window)
4. Close this new window
5. Click "New tweet" button on toolbar
6. Mauku crashing

It seems that it crashing only when telescope is running. Currently i have no ideas about why it happens

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Only noticed that Telescope was for the N8x0 by accident whilst browsing a different thread this morning, and have now installed it on my N810, and I am very very impressed.

Thank you very much.

Edit - Now had this app on my NIT all day, and am even more impressed that the thumbnails are dynamic - I was running Mauku, Wayfinder, downloading a couple of podcasts, and listening to a third on Mediaplayer, and when telescope was invoked to display the thumbnails, they updated. OK, maybe not real-time, but it was impressive non the less.

Only goes to show that there is plenty of untapped potential in the N8x0s

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I'm extremely impressed! Awesome application! I'm really happy that there are still talented developers coding for our N8x0 tablets :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Thanks, guys :)

It was surprise for me too that XOrg on N8x0 supports XComposite and XRender extensions, which make possible fast capturing of thumbnails and updating them in realtime. Btw, it should be realtime, but it depends on XServer, which sends messages to Telescope every time contents of windows is changed. I think it is useful feature of Telescope - i can press Home key just to glance on other windows' contents to see if there any updates.

Btw, more functions for hardware buttons are coming soon!

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Potential Bug:

1) Launch the game "Vulture's Eye" (available in Extras)
2) Once you are past the opening screens press the key to switch to Telescope
3) The game doesn't show in Telescope
4) Switch to the desktop and it doesn't show there either
5) And this is where it gets weird...I was closing down some other application and suddenly, hours later, there was the game.running at the same place I left it - still not visible on the desktop or in Telescope.
I had to manually kill the process.

Even though it's just one game it might be the sign of something 'bigger' that should be addressed.

Love telescope (see my screenshot in the 'Show off your screenshots (Diablo 2-4 thread) :-)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Does Telescope support screens that use Xkbd, widgets and Xmms?

I should have some time to check this out over the weekend.

It looks too cool to pass up on! :D

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Yes, telescope doesn't work with any SDL applications for now. Same behavior is with fheroes2. This is already in buglist. Actually, native diablo taskswitcher doesn't work with them too :) You will not see Vulture's Eye or fheroes in native taskswitcher. Same story with unusual windows, like Xmms or Xkbd. I have not checked, but i think telescope wont work with them too. I need to learn how to work with such windows
Silvermountain, Very neat screenshots :)

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Tried out Telescope. I've got mixed feelings however...

The app itself is awesome, with the realtime updates and such, but my feeling (after a few days usage) is that it drains my battery fast. Is it just me?

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Any chance on getting Telescope to match the current theme your using, or anyway to theme telescope? I'm working on porting my maemo-org theme from Maemo5 and would like the close buttons and all on telescope to match it.

Also any way on doing a menu simular to Maemo5?

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I'm using it since yesterday, so I can't comment that much on this, yet. I had three microB windows and FBReader running at night and the battery hadn't drained much the next day.
Did you have Tear running in the background? I suspect that Tear drains the battery as I had a problem the other day with a drained battery after having Tear running at night. I switched back to microB, did some tweaks and found out that microB ist faster anyway, except at Javascript, which I have disabled and only enable it selectively through the config script on sites that really need it.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I've been running Telescope for two days, and been off power for close to an 8 hour stretch each day, connected to my phone via BT, and with Mauku, and email checking every 5-10 minutes, and my battery has held up fine, and actually better than I would have expected. Today I have had Canola playing mp3s for most of the day, and managed at least 6 hours on a charge.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

I just checked, you can even watch youtube vids fullspeed in thumbnail view :D
Btw, I applied Brontide's multitasking kernel tweaks, maybe it helps to let it perform so good.

Re: Telescope: Application Manager Tool
 

Nope, have seen no negative impact on power usage.