On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:36 AM, J.R. Mauro <jrm8...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Eric Van Hensbergen <eri...@gmail.com> wrote: >> The fact that rio and/or acme have a limited usage model with such a device >> and/or multitouch in general is a shame -- wouldn't it be nice to fix that. > > This is a very good point. As much as I like rio, I can't help but be > aggravated by it sometimes, and it would be nice to have someone take > a fresh look at interacting with it and possibly solve some of the > shortcomings. >
I think the key here is devices like the iPhone beg a different model -- rio and ACME were developed for graphical, mouse/keyboard setups (with relatively large screens I might add) -- smaller devices or devices with different models (like set top boxes or game consoles) really require a different set of tools/apps. I think this is one of the things that was interesting about the Plan B approach -- different front-ends for similar back ends. I doubt anyone wants to use the iphone as a developer workstation, but it might be nice to make it an additional screen for faces, or as the student points out and additional user-interface to someone's work environment. As far as fixing rio and ACME, I would urge anyone looking at that to come up with a complementary solution as opposed to messing with the existing model. I don't see any reason why alternative interfaces can't co-exist which support keyboard-only interaction (ron's smackme comes to mind as well as wmii's model) as well as multitouch on laptops (actually the iphone's new cut/paste model might work for multitouch trackpads -- and while not as natural as the existing chording method might make ACME useable when one finds oneself without a three button mouse handy). Another avenue to pursue is looking at using gestures to replace chords -- it seems like pinch and expand might be natural replacements for cut and paste. I don't think the community or the system benefits form limiting our options (but lets keep them options -- I still prefer chording when possible ;) -eric