Perhaps my statement about "the question is answered" was a bit premature yesterday in the evening.
I'm pleased that my initial question attracts wide interest in this list. Julien Guertault wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012, Thomas Adam : >> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012, Michael Grosser : >> >>> Would it make sense to let touch screen support be a project idea >>> for GSoC 2012 or any other year in the future? >> >> No -- because I, nor anyone else really knows what "touch screen" is. And >> even then I don't understand what the problem is. FVWM isn't an application >> which needs changing to work on a touch screen interface; it manages those >> applications instead. > > I suppose a first step would be to support multiple mouse pointers. Good point: Multiple mouse pointers, for example to change the size of windows with two fingers. Is this rather "easy to implement" or rather "utterly impossible to implement". The answer to this question could be crucial about the question if FVWM will still be "cool" in the future or not. > Then the user would probably want to have at least some conditional in > his configuration files to change the behavior when using a mouse > pointer that comes from the touchscreen. Because really, you don't > want to touch your windows with your fingers the same way you click at > them. Option 1: Finger touches are generally other mouse pointers, different from the mouse pointer belonging to the actual mouse. Option 2: Finger touches are defined as button 100, button 101, button 102, ..., instead of button 1, ..., button 3. > You also want to know if the device has changed its mode to > touchscreen, to change the layout accordingly (bigger buttons, maybe > less decoration, etc). I'm thinking of tablet laptops here; they are > getting more and more popular, and when the interface is implemented > correctly, it really comes handy. Should be easy, is it? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Another idea could be this: Desktop computers have two monitors (screens): - First monitor is the normal monitor (LCD screen) at eye level without touch screen functionality. - Second screen is a device that replaces the keyboard. It lies on the table where today keyboards are lying. This is a touch screen, which could emulate a keyboard on demand or constitutes a second screen on demand. A touch screen with different decorations, bigger buttons and so on. The ergonomic disadvantage of this second screen would be the lack of haptic sense when you replace a real keyboard with this solution. Nobody knows what will be really modern in the future. I only want to ensure that FVWM will not be the only window manager that states "this is impossible to implement." I mean, FVWM was one of the first WMs that supported Xinerama as far as I know. It would be cool if FVWM would still be one of the first WMs that support some "touch screen" relevant technologies, in an age where Microsoft is about to design Windows 8 for multi-touch input. - Michael -
