@ Songwillie, thanks for actually giving my ideas some thought. That's all I wanted. I'm not the only person like me, either. To say the N900 isn't for me is akin to saying smartphone users like me have no business in the tablet territory, and that's making assumptions based on assumptions.

@ Mandibella, I really appreciate your position and polite response. I think you jump to conclusions on the intended design thing, though. By Maemo being FOSS, it is agile and adaptable for OUR needs, not just the geek developers with high paying jobs and wifi.

The N900 is a PC, pure and simple. I use it as I want, including rotating my screen for browsing. Maemo is designed to become whatever I want, and I'm telling you, I'll find a real developer that loves challenges to get my device to have ASR. I'm willing to bet users will come out in droves wanting a similar feature.

Nokia has different OSes for different features. OK. Does that mean Maemo is only for what it does out of the box? Or can we make it better? What is the difference between Maemo 5 and the WinMo Touch Pro 2? Its open nature and ease of developing apps, but other than that, not much. So why is an advantageous feature on the TP2 a hinderance on Maemo? Why aren't we focused on removing those disadvantages, especially ones not limited by the form factor?

The N900 IS a smartphone and IS a web tablet. It should behave like one as well as possible. ASR is a part of life now. How is ASR so diametrically opposed to the design of the N900, especially since its now a phone? Its no different than the N97, and it gets along just fine. How are they so different? Isn't the N97 just an N900 Lite? Shouldn't the N900 be a total upgrade in all respects? It is so far, and when ASR comes (It will, even if some devs are lazy or incapable) it will come full circle.

I'm telling you, instead of us saying, "Go get an iPhone or something else", we better be saying, "We'll have to wait on a community solution for ASR, but it will be addressed in Maemo 6", or the blogs and media will roast the N900 and use it as ammo. No need for bad press.

I'm ready to roast it myself on this small caveat, but only because of the cold reception some of the developers here give new guys. They don't teach manners at Comp Sci programs, I guess. I have yet to hear anyone say,"Let's get a conformation from Nokia that ASR is or isn't coming, or a plan to implement it ourselves" which is the reputation this group has had, undeservedly so, I now see.

@ crustie, that article you posted should be required reading for the "I don't want to change" Maemo developer crowd pervasive in this board. I'd subscribe to that site, but its above my education level atm. BTW, your landscape T9 solution already exists in the N97, but any good T9 typist will tell you its easier in portrait. And holding a $700 phone with one hand in landscape is not a good idea with small hands. Its much easier to make the entire UI rotate. Fulfill the expectation from jump street. I'd rather the UI be ASR and apps can choose what aspect they wish, but not the other way around.

I think the dashboard button should've been an actual button, but it needn't be. It should be in a lower left corner position in portrait. We don't have to experiment with it either. Nokia has done it for us since 2005 with the N90 until now. We have the research and case studies in previous devices.

@ ragnar, you brought up devices/OSes missing common features and having success. The device you allude to eventually saw the need to add it, all while being outsold by the N95, which had the feature at launch. Who are we imitating, 2nd place? Are we aspiring to be Apple, or are we aspiring to be better? I happen to remember a survey of people that didn't choose the iPhone, and the biggest reasons were
1. No multitasking
2. No Flash in the browser
3. No MMS
4. No BT OBEX Push

So it mattered to millions, and it helped the N95, N82, and 5800 rise to legendary status because of it. The fact of the matter is the best smartphones of the world have been mostly portrait devices, with landscape as an option. Negating that and forcing users to use another hand unecessarily is a bad idea, IMO.

We can't rest on our laurels just because we can. It doesn't take 3 years to implement MMS, and I doubt it would take more than a few months to a year to do ASR. Would ASR hurt the platform, take away from its intended usage, or make it undesireable to anyone? So why hate, guys?

Maemo is OURS, and suitable for most of what we want if we decide to implement it. If it takes a year, cool. But if Maemo 5 will never support ASR, let me know so I can ignore this space until Maemo 6. I'm done trying to convince this forum that some may need it. They don't, and that's all that matters to these devs.

Great post, zerojay.

Tim

Thanks zerojay! You seem to be a take the lead type, and I like that. I thought this thread was all about trying to make that happen. Most of us outsiders come from the school of thought that if you mention any needed feature or app idea, it gets implemented, but as you can see that isn't the case.

So how DO you get things done here? Which developers should I talk to here? I'm a Symbian cat, and this is you guy's world, and we're just trying to be heard. Who are the leaders? I know now an open thread isn't enough, though I don't see why not. Isn't Nokia, Maemo devs, and the world watching? Should I just table it with my small group of Maemo devs in my own community instead? I'm confused on the entire purpose of this forum as a whole after today. Its seeming like mostly discord and time wasting.

well I'm out. I see how things work here. We'll have plenty growing pains with new users, sadly.

Let me explain a few things here that might be able to help sort this out for you hopefully.

The forum is not a complete time-waster. I can understand your frustration (of which, I'm sure I'm a part of) but it's really not that bad.

As you can see, the forum is a good place to get a wide variety of opinions from the community. You get a mix of Nokians, 3rd party developers and end users. It's hard to use for organizational stuff though. Then there's also the issue that different people in the community are in different places. Some of us are present all over. Some are only on the mailing lists... some only on IRC, some only on their own forums, and so on. That's human nature, not much you can do about that.

One thing we do have which has been a lot more successful for organization is the Maemo Wiki. Projects such as Mer and the community council use it very successfully for their goals and I think that it can serve that same purpose for portrait mode users as well.

Let me give you (everyone interested in portrait mode, that is) a few good ideas for how to get yourselves organized using the Wiki.

- Set up a Wiki page and send out an open call to everyone that wants portrait mode to come and contribute.
- Find someone that's passionate about your goal to lead (regardless of technical ability)
- Clearly state the project's full goals on the Wiki page.
- Create a list of people willing to devote some time to the project, separate them by their competences.
- Take a look at the goals and see how they can be split up into several tasks, or smaller doable chunks.
- Assign different tasks to different people keeping in mind task dependencies (It's hard to start on task C when it requires task A to be done first)
- Organize a way to have everyone working on the project to meet at the same time perhaps once a month so that everyone involved can see how the project is evolving as a whole.
- Above all else, don't get discouraged.

I know that the Maemo way of doing things is very different than what users are used to in the Symbian world. Stay invovled, push for what you want and get others to get involved. Once the momentum starts picking up, it'll be impossible to stop.

Rotation support in previous Maemo versions were completely community-based and there's no reason why that can't work again.

Feel free to ask those who are spearheading their own desires for help, advice and anything else - myself and the rest of us old coots included.

Zerojay, you are real, and what more can you ask for? I invite you to come to the Symbian Freak forums in our Maemo section. We have a nice developer community of our own, albeit mostly Python and C++ guys. I think it'll be best to stick to my own group and leave this to you guys. I'm used to meeting challenges, not running from them.

Very good idea: Does Nokia provide a list, of component (package) of Maemo 5, containing:
- The name of the package.
- Package version.
- Package description (what it is)
- Package dependency.
- His license (FOSS or not FOSS).
- Responsible for the package.
- GIT or SVN Link to get the source code.
- A link to its section in bugs.maemo.org (for save time)
- Where to send contributions to the source code?

?

If Nokia doesn't do so, he should, because I doesn't see how the community could contribute effectively to Maemo 5 without it.

I'm not sure if they have done so yet, especially since Maemo 5's final hasn't been released yet, but I don't think this would be too much to ask for from Nokia.

Thanks Zeryjay.

You know someone at Nokia who we could ask?

I'll push it to Quim and Daniel and see what they say. They've always done something similar in the past so it shouldn't be an issue, really. I'm sure they already have something similar in mind.