This is the third thread dedicated to my project for making the N900 usable without touching the screen.

The cornerstone of this project is still a modified version of hildon-desktop package providing a few enhancements. Description of the enhancements is here: http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/repo/Mo...n_Desktop.html

It can be installed by installing modified-hildon-desktop package from my repository.

Other enhanced versions of system packages:

http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n90...+0m5_armel.deb : adds a d-bus signal for opening and closing the status menu. This allows opening this menu from the keyboard.

http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n90...+0m5_armel.deb : This allows using up to 9 desktop views. Not strictly related to keyboard, but it is a popular feature of modified-hildon-desktop.

http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n90...+0m5_armel.deb : This is the new and most experimental enhancement. This adds: Ability to close application menu with escape or backspace. Ability to select button in application menu by pressing corresponding number (no need to press FN). Ability to scroll hildon pannable areas with arrows/pageup/pagedown/home/end. This does not always work, due to focus issues that still need to be worked out, but very nice when it does work.

Older packages that work unchanged:

keyboard-shortcuts: using dbus-scripts and modified-hildon-desktop to provide global shortcut keys.

longpress: allows for selecting profiles (or offline mode) by long press of lock key.


I am still looking for help in mainly to forms:

1. Ideas how to make the keyboard more usable.
2. Implementing of such ideas.

The main cause I find for touching the screen right now is for selecting links in web pages. If someone can get LoL extension ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8781/ ) or equivalent ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/879/ ) to work in microb or fennec, it will be really great.

When I try to edit a widget it is ok. I can change settings in any widget but when I try to end the changes and hit the button in the rigjt upper corner and get back to the desktop everything crashes. The solution for that is to hit the camera button (I have camkeyd installed) and everything is ok after that. When I just want to move a widget on the desktop it is ok, but applying changes in it's configuration is causing this problem.

Edit: I can also solve this by hiting ctr and backspace buttons fro the keyboard.

It does not happen to me. Tested with data plan monitor. What widgets did you try? Does the problem disappear if you do not use modified hildon desktop?

I've uninstalled modified hildon desktop, boot menu and global keyboard and now it works but I have an other problem. After locking the screen with the switch on the right side of the phone and unlocking it I can't see the status bar and the network name. Whe I do it with on/off button it appears to me. I can see it again when I enter the apps and go back. I had installed modified hildon in its previous version and then updated. Maybe there are some leftowers which cause thes problems?

Edit:

The menu from the status bar looks like if modified hildon would be installed so maybe there are some leftowers?

You should not uninstall modified-hildon-desktop, but rather reinstall original hildon-desktop with

apt-get install --reinstall hildon-desktop

There are leftovers from modified-hildon-desktop - the gconf settings, but they are ignored by hildon-desktop, so should not have any effect. You might have other issues, not related to modified-hildon-desktop.

Which keyboard are you doing this with?

Are you doing this via bluetooth or USB?

Well done BTW

I have a problem with hildon-home. After PR1.2 upgrade, 9 desktops are activated, but applied wallpapers don't show up on the respected screens, so they remain black. When using gconftool applying wallpapers to desktops 1 to 4 works fine.

Did you install my hildon-home package? what is the output from

ls -l /usr/bin/hildon-home.launch

ls -l /home/user/.backgrounds/

cat /home/user/.backgrounds/cache.info
(including empty lines)

Did you install my hildon-home package? what is the output from

ls -l /usr/bin/hildon-home.launch

ls -l /home/user/.backgrounds/

cat /home/user/.backgrounds/cache.info
(including empty lines)

Zoom IN and Zoom OUT are so important functions in a mobile device with a physically small screen, that they deserve keyboard shortcuts in a A-Z part of the qwerty-keyboard.

I've proposed this to Fennec people before, but no comment.

Ctrl+I for zoom-in and Ctrl+O for zoom-out (or without CTRL also if we are not in the input mode).
Also CTRL+H for left translation, CTRL+U for up, CTRL+J for down and CTRL+K for right translation/panning/cursor_movement.

One could call these, HUJKIO-extension.

For example in scandinavian version of N900 qwerty of N900, up/down arrows are behind Alt-key, so for the current Fennec zoom-in/out shortcuts one should press three keys at the same time. Not a good choice for a keyboard shortcuts there.
Most used shortcuts deserve the reservation in A-Z part of the key-sequences.

For zooming and panning, I can't think better shortcuts than HUJKIO, if one just examines any small device physical keyboard. For easy and quick panning and zooming, having HUJKIO-keys for those is egonomic, with or without CTRL-key.

btw, for example Xournal program uses 'I' for zoom-in and 'O' for zoom-out, good.