Differences between revisions 4 and 5
⇤ ← Revision 4 as of 2012-04-05 14:10:36 →
Size: 2279
Editor: DanielPocock
Comment:
← Revision 5 as of 2012-04-05 16:26:02 → ⇥
Size: 2534
Editor: DanielPocock
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 13: Line 13:
 * Multi-touch input
  * e.g. user can zoom or rotate an image by touch the screen with two fingers, and moving the fingers in different directions across the screen, as many smartphones can do.
Line 29: Line 31:
 * xserver-xorg-input-multitouch - for multi-touch input

Background

  • Slimline tablet computers have become more popular recently
    • These devices typically have a touchscreen and no keyboard. However, they support bluetooth keyboards for those who really need it.
  • Convertible tablets have been around for a while.
    • They are a laptop with a keyboard, but the screen can be rotated to cover the keyboard, creating a tablet device
    • They are becoming more popular due to the convenience of tablet computing (e.g. convenience of taking out the device while on the bus, where it is convenient to read from a tablet but not comfortable to open a laptop and use a keyboard)

Requirements/user expectations

  • Using the finger to scroll (e.g. in a PDF)
    • This is actually very different to using a scrollbar, and many apps don't support it
  • Multi-touch input
    • e.g. user can zoom or rotate an image by touch the screen with two fingers, and moving the fingers in different directions across the screen, as many smartphones can do.
  • Automatic or convenient screen rotation
  • Virtual keyboard on-screen
  • Handwriting recognition

Current status

  • Many of these things don't happen `out of the box' with Debian
  • Some things can be achieved with small changes (e.g. removing evince and installing okular, a screen reader that supports touch)
  • Some things require moderate amount of effort, e.g. using the Thinkpad X220 Tablet is not possible with the Xorg version in Squeeze. The user must update their kernel (from backports) and take the Xorg packages from sid.
  • Some things require effort (writing a script to handle rotation events and invoking xrandr in a meaningful way for the particular device)

Useful packages

  • okular - screen reader for PDF, ebooks, with touch scrolling support
  • xournal - support for stylus with draw and eraser functions
  • xserver-xorg-input-wacom - Wacom tablet support for Xorg
  • xserver-xorg-input-multitouch - for multi-touch input
  • gok - Gnome On-screen Keyboard
  • florence - another on-screen keyboard
  • caribou - an alternative to gok

Thinkpad-specific