user input type detection
 

how does hildon detect if a tap is from the finger or stylus? eg: the left app menu is
large if tapped with whole thumb vs fingernail.

Is there some way to detect amount of surface area being pressed?

Re: user input type detection
 

Something I've wondered too - whether you could poll various areas of the touchscreen at will.

In that case it'd be simple to check multiple touch, or surface area touch.

Anyone out there know more about this?

Re: user input type detection
 

download maemopad+ and use your finger on the screen, then use a stylus.

You'll see the difference.

Re: user input type detection
 

Can't instakl it, download keeps failing om app man and maemo.org, server must be down :/

Re: user input type detection
 

i believe it has to do with the pressure area. the stylus is a small confined contact/pressure zone. with your finger, the pressure/contact zone is much greater.

by determining the area of contact, you can set the logic around which menu to show.

Re: user input type detection
 

The question is - can you poll specific areas of the touchscreen at will?

i.e. I sense touch at X1, Y1 - I can query X2, Y2 and X3, Y3 locations and henceforth determine the larger area for myself.

If you can do this then multitouch would be a non-issue. Just divvy up the screen into quadrants and hone into the locations of said contacts.

Without knowing anything - my guess is the touchscreen hardware itself does this and reports back to the OS whether a larger or small area was touched. You won't programmatically have the ability to poll multiple areas of the screen to determine area/multiple touch.