Whenever I explain my #research at Google into mobile text editing, I'm usually met with blank stares or a slightly hostile "Everyone can edit text on their phones, right? What's the problem?"
Text editing on mobile isn't ok. It's actually much worse than you think, an invisible problem no one appreciates. I wrote this post so you can understand why it's so important.
https://jenson.org/text
#UXDesign #UX
@jeremy_data I'd love for there to be an open source mobile phone OS that we could try this on. I know, Android is technically that but it's impossible to make changes to it at this point
@scottjenson @jeremy_data Hello from my Librem 5 running Debian-based PureOS 👋😋
@dos @jeremy_data Interetsing! Thanks for sharing. A quick search shows that it's based on GTK3. Do you think the team would be interested in fixing some of these text editing issues?
@scottjenson @jeremy_data Fixing some of these stuff will be quite an undertaking and most of them are actually handled by toolkits rather than OSK, but I'm pretty sure that at least @dcz will be eager to discuss 😁
@dos @jeremy_data @dcz That's understandable, why reinvent the wheel? But that's how we got in this mess in the first place. Besides, these toolkits do not work out of the box on mobile, they TOO have to had text handles, long-press, and pop up menus so there MUST be mobile specific code on top of these libraries.
@scottjenson @jeremy_data @dcz Surprisingly, not that much actually - some things had to be fixed as they were poorly tested or bit-rotten, but as far as I'm aware most of the underlying stuff in GTK dates back to GTK3's initial push for touchscreen support around the time when laptops with touchscreens started appearing on the market.
I guess libadwaita may be a place for some of this stuff too.
@scottjenson @jeremy_data @dcz You may also be interested in text-input Wayland protocol that lets the OSK and apps communicate with each other: https://wayland.app/protocols/text-input-unstable-v3
There have been lengthy discussions taking place on what is needed for the next versions of the protocol: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/39
@pak0st @dos @jeremy_data @dcz We did it with the barometer sensor which was great for testing pressure on the glass. The other approach might be to have the touch screen return the size of the finger on the glass and use a variation of the size to detect a stronger press. Both of these approaches are a bit noisy and would need some careful work to detect a drag-press reliably
@scottjenson @pak0st @dos @jeremy_data @dcz
I suspect my Alldocube iPlay 50 mini doesn't have a barometer sensor.
@dos @scottjenson @jeremy_data @dcz targeting the underlying wayland input protocols would be great (and hopefully unify the current v2/v3 friction between environments :D ). Wouldn't the zoom/ lens feature require adjustment in the compositor anyway?
There are a few things from the demo which I don't quite understand. The "hard press" for the menu seems to require some level of hardware support?