Really important about the N900 accelerometer!! [Archive] - maemo.org

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 03:48

First of all, hello everybody!!

I'm Italian, so, sorry about my bad English!:D

I'm really concerned about the function of the accelerometer in the new awesome Nokia N900...

As i have seen so far of this new nokia in internet articles etc,etc,it uses the "portrait mode" only for the phone function, so the rest of the amazing functions of this phone has to be used in "landscape mode" as an internet tablet with both hands. :(

Personally I would feel really disappointed if after having created a machine so powerful, they had eliminated the practicality and comfort of the accelerometer, and the wonderful ability to rotate the screen 180 degrees(or more), according to convenience, and continue to exploit the maximum performance of Maemo 5 in the Nokia N900 in vertical mode.

JayOnThaBeat

2009-09-26, 04:01

Welcome aboard! Your English is good too, much better than my Italian. All I know is

Mama Mia!
Spaghetti!
It'sa me, Mario!
Fuhgettaboudit!

:D

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 04:10

It's about both, the accelerometer because allows the screen to turn. And about the Portrait mode, because i'm really afraid that their only function is "phone mode" :S

Thanks a lot, i'm glad to be part of the team!!

LOL!!
I could teach you to speak Italian in exchange for you teach me to speak a better English!! :P

UCOMM

2009-09-26, 04:12

Welcome aboard! Your English is good too, much better than my Italian. All I know is

Mama Mia!
Spaghetti!
It'sa me, Mario!
Fuhgettaboudit!

:D

you forgot to wave your hands around like a madman

JayOnThaBeat

2009-09-26, 04:15

you forgot to wave your hands around like a madman

No I didn't.

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 04:17

Haha...
Cmon man!! that's only one skill of italian people.. =P ...

If want, you can also contribute with knowledge, about the "incert" ability of auto-screen rotation pre installed (i hope) on N900

zkyevolved

2009-09-26, 04:17

Yeah, at the moment, you can only use it in landscape mode. There have been many discussions on this board about getting either the entire os or specific apps to handle portrait mode. I would honestly vote as a YES for the portrait mode (for one handed use to check calls, status and read messages). But it seems that many of the actual developers actually disagree with NATIVE screen rotation because of the icons and widgets on the phone (they wouldn't render correctly, be it as it may in the same location or the same amount of objects on the screen).

So at the moment people are opting to just make apps that accept screen rotation, rather than full-on screen rotation natively on the phone.

sjgadsby

2009-09-26, 04:34

But it seems that many of the actual developers actually disagree with NATIVE screen rotation because of the icons and widgets on the phone (they wouldn't render correctly, be it as it may in the same location or the same amount of objects on the screen).

This could be interpreted incorrectly, so:

The developers who work on the actual Maemo OS and first-party applications aren't here, so they haven't ever posted anything here expressing disagreement with rotation support.
A designer who works on the actual Maemo OS does frequent this site and he did say that rotating the home screen would be hard due to the design of the home screen and its freely placed widgets. Other people on this site (note: not OS developers or designers though) have agreed this assessment.
A few independent application developers have objected to universal ASR support because they interpreted that to mean that all applications would be forced to support both portrait and landscape.
Nokia has hinted that they're interested in trying to add portrait mode to some bundled applications via updates after Maemo 5 ships, though there's been no strong indication that the home screen would be changed.
Maemo 6, rumored to be released in about a year--maybe, seems to be Nokia's target for including universal ASR support. It appears quite possible that the N900 will be upgradeable to Maemo 6.

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 05:08

This could be interpreted incorrectly, so:

The developers who work on the actual Maemo OS and first-party applications aren't here, so they haven't ever posted anything here expressing disagreement with rotation support.
A designer who works on the actual Maemo OS does frequent this site and he did say that rotating the home screen would be hard due to the design of the home screen and its freely placed widgets. Other people on this site (note: not OS developers or designers though) have agreed this assessment.
A few independent application developers have objected to universal ASR support because they interpreted that to mean that all applications would be forced to support both portrait and landscape.
Nokia has hinted that they're interested in trying to add portrait mode to some bundled applications via updates after Maemo 5 ships, though there's been no strong indication that the home screen would be changed.
Maemo 6, rumored to be released in about a year--maybe, seems to be Nokia's target for including universal ASR support. It appears quite possible that the N900 will be upgradeable to Maemo 6.

You will buy anyway the N900, without automatic screen rotation?

zkyevolved

2009-09-26, 10:10

You will buy anyway the N900, without automatic screen rotation?

I sure will :P I'm sure we'll get portrait mode in the mainly needed apps as the phone matures. I already put in my preorder and I can't wait for it to come :) It's a great device. Always online, good graphics and very nice user interface. it's open source and it's LITERALLY top notch hardware, so it's going to disappear anytime soon. :)

Not to mention even if they DO replace it sometime soon, it has 32 gigs of memory, and a nice display and good codecs. So you can always use it as a media center ^^ haha. But that won't be my case.

lorthirk

2009-09-26, 12:53

Buondì Giorgio, benvenuto tra noi :)

Am I the only one who doesn't really care about ASR and portrait mode? Landscape seems to me the most logical way to use a tablet, or a phone with a large keyboard.

wire-less

2009-09-26, 13:20

Hi,

I like the idea to use portrait mode exclusively for
the phone application. This device should replace my
n800 and my E65. I want to take it without looking
and enable the phone application by holding it like
a phone. So it's E65 in Portrait mode and n800 in
landscape mode. I hope I can make settings so that
phone application quits when I move it back to
portrait mode.

I've a tablet PC. Most time when I'm in tablet mode
I use the screen in normal position (not like a book)
as most applications work better in landscape mode.
E.g. most Websites are designed for widescreen.

Stefan

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 13:51

Salve "lorthirk". Grazie mille, per me é un enorme piacere essere parte integrante di questo forum!.

Is not that i mind, because I plan independently purchase the device, but I am intrigued to know if they will miss out a very practical function and striking as the self-rotation... just that...
N900 seems to be a great machine! ; )

lorthirk

2009-09-26, 13:54

I don't think we will miss that much. Have you ever used your laptop or LCD screen in portrait mode? :)

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 14:01

But i dont put my LCD or my laptop in my pocket!! O.o... Thats the thing... as example. I wish I could get out of my pocket this wonderful mobile and be able to handle it ALSO in portrait mode, and not have to use at that specific moment both hands to handle it...

debian

2009-09-26, 16:28

allnameswereout

2009-09-26, 16:39

Welcome aboard! Your English is good too, much better than my Italian. All I know is

Mama Mia!
Spaghetti!
It'sa me, Mario!
Fuhgettaboudit!

:DCiao
Carabinieri
Ciao

:D

jalladin

2009-09-26, 16:55

Mi piace il fatto che alcune persone stanno parlando in italiano qui, io davvero vorrei poter imparare ... Trovo gli italiani ad essere molto "intrigante" ... appena avuto a che buttare lì, lezioni gratuite Giorgiom92, lol ;)

well I'm so enthralled by the n900 that I'm willing to have faith it will supersede all other expectation I have enough to make me forget about portait mode long enough for them to fix it with a FW update for the must have programs, if not most that I would use.:)

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 16:57

ciao a Giorgiom92 and Iorthirk, wow che si dice in Italia?

I'm going to get the device, after two years with the boring Iphone... ( I've never seen the Iphone portrait or landscape mode an advantage) I cant' wait. Nokia was able to make a great phone, something really new, at last. I had a chance to see it, (only to see unfortunately) and it looks so incredible. There will be space for a lot of improvements.

Di bello non si dice nulla che io sappia, tranne l'ansia di avere tra le mani questo apparecchione!! N900!!:p

Im going to buy it too, im so exited.. everyday i
log on to investigate the news ant features about N900!
:D

christexaport

2009-09-26, 16:58

Is not that i mind, because I plan independently purchase the device, but I am intrigued to know if they will miss out a very practical function and striking as the self-rotation... just that...
N900 seems to be a great machine! ; )
Although not everyone agrees on portrait and automatic screen rotation, I do, and we're not alone. There is some opposition to having this feature added, and I don't understand why, since those that don't need or want it won't be affected by its inclusion.

I should point out that the developers in opposition aren't the direct coders of the OS UI, but the voice of the community is what gets support for features, so many see it as an attempt to block the addition of portriat mode and ASR. Ignore them and focus on what you wish. There is a brainstorm (idea incubator) on how best to get automatic screen rotation in the UI, mainly the desktops and menus here:
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._in_fremantle/
You have to register separately to participate in these brainstorms, but access is open, and I invite you to comment on the proposed solutions and even posting some of your own.

You can post a new solution by pressing the orange "new solution" button at the top of the screen. You can comment on them all at the bottom of the page. Feel free to ask any questions about any of the solutions in the comment portion at the bottom of the page, and vote on them all by pressing the thumbs up (to support an idea) or thumbs down (to not support an idea) to the left of each solution.

I look forward to seeing your input in the brainstorm, and welcome to the talk.maemo.org forums. Glad to have you. :D

Giorgiom92

2009-09-26, 17:03

Although not everyone agrees on portrait and automatic screen rotation, I do, and we're not alone. There is some opposition to having this feature added, and I don't understand why, since those that don't need or want it won't be affected by its inclusion.

I should point out that the developers in opposition aren't the direct coders of the OS UI, but the voice of the community is what gets support for features, so many see it as an attempt to block the addition of portriat mode and ASR. Ignore them and focus on what you wish. There is a brainstorm (idea incubator) on how best to get automatic screen rotation in the UI, mainly the desktops and menus here:
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._in_fremantle/
You have to register separately to participate in these brainstorms, but access is open, and I invite you to comment on the proposed solutions and even posting some of your own.

You can post a new solution by pressing the orange "new solution" button at the top of the screen. You can comment on them all at the bottom of the page. Feel free to ask any questions about any of the solutions in the comment portion at the bottom of the page, and vote on them all by pressing the thumbs up (to support an idea) or thumbs down (to not support an idea) to the left of each solution.

I look forward to seeing your input in the brainstorm, and welcome to the talk.maemo.org forums. Glad to have you. :D

Thank's a lot christexaport!:)

I've been watching some of your reviews and the truth is that I agree with you at all!! And I support almost all of your ideas! we must fight together contributing with ideas to achieve our mission!:D

christexaport

2009-09-27, 16:26

Thank you for the support. I lose sight of the users I advocate for and get emotionally out of sorts, and only because this is personal for me. I fight your fight alongside you, only by civil means.

les_garten

2009-09-27, 17:23

Hi,
No issue to me. I owned all of the Communicator series. The outside was portrait and no Landscape possible. When you wanted to interact with the Desktop, you turned landscape and opened the clamshell.

To me, the experience of the phone is not the same in portrait. That's why I'm not looking to buy a Portrait phone. To me at least it's a non-issue

Les

lorthirk

2009-09-28, 08:48

We, or at least me, are not "opposing"; instead, I'm just saying that I wouldn't mind that much about the abscence of the portrait mode, that's it.

However, about the Italian lessons... how about an Italian (and other languages, of course) forum here? So we can give those lessons and talk italian for free :)

christexaport

2009-09-28, 09:25

Only if you make manicotti and chicken tettrazini for us all. (And teach me to spell tettrazini as well as I eat it.

Firebird8

2009-09-28, 09:54

A designer who works on the actual Maemo OS does frequent this site and he did say that rotating the home screen would be hard due to the design of the home screen and its freely placed widgets. Other people on this site (note: not OS developers or designers though) have agreed this assessment.

Couldn't this be solved by just rotating each widget about its center instead of moving the widgets at all? (Is the homescreen opensource ?).

ragnar

2009-09-28, 09:56

Couldn't this be solved by just rotating each widget about its center instead of moving the widgets at all? (Is the homescreen opensource ?).

I guess you need to visualize the fact that most widgets have text.

Let's say you have a 400x80 box in landscape, containing a couple rows of text.

You cannot just rotate it to be 80x400 in portrait, since you don't want to start reading text down to up.

Firebird8

2009-09-28, 09:57

Er, I was saying the whole thing would rotate, not resize, rotate.

Edit:
Here's the idea in a really really quick mockup
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/525/500xmaemo50.jpg

So, what you would actually be doing is rotating the screen like in the N8x0 randr rotations, then repositioning the widgets so the center would match the original centers.

lorthirk

2009-09-28, 10:00

Manicotti and chicken tettrazini?? What the heck is that??? :D

christexaport

2009-09-28, 10:13

Firebird8, imagine if you had 10 more widgets. Its not as easy as it sounds.

And lorthirk, you'd better find out if you want an Italian subforum... LOL

lorthirk

2009-09-28, 10:17

Codenames for Maemo 7 and Maemo 8.

:D

I've been laughing for, let's say, 5 minutes?

YOU'RE THE BEST MAN!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D

lcuk

2009-09-28, 10:36

ragnar (hi!), firebird8

there is a great example of exactly the type of rotating widgets here
the orientation changes between portrait and landscape and whilst absolutely right about the dimensions changing is pretty much what I also had in mind and am pleased there is video showing it in action because it looks like it could work
(at 0:11)

http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/nokia-photo-browser

i just wonder if this could be combined with the physics view of original liqbase..

for those that don't know, original liqbase has a screen to display a large group of user drawn sketches each with different sizes that could be moved around the screen and have size adjusted randomly
but each widget ensured it did not overlap another by changing its size or moving out of the way.

christexaport

2009-09-28, 11:12

lcuk

2009-09-28, 11:20

hey chris,

theres flexible layouts available and not everything needs to be doubled up - some widgets are perfect in a square/landscape implementation.

perhaps you need to look at what *I* think about widget design, this is a presentation i gave recently on my n900 and which works nicely on n810 too :)
http://mynokiablog.com/2009/09/15/video-nokia-n900-presentation-with-gary-birkett-and-liqbase/

as for everything needing redesigning twice, sure, some layouts are trickier than others, but thats design over implementation

imagine for a minute a widget with 2 components that simply decided which orientation to use:

[upper]
[upper]
[lower]
[lower]

[upper][lower]
[upper][lower]

ps, as for s60 tickling my fancy - thats in qt and not s60 specific. i see using the best tool for the job as more important than a specific OS ;)

christexaport

2009-09-28, 11:35

Amen. I'm ready for Qt to take over computers and mobiles once Nokia puts it out there full force. I want to see who doesn't want Qt frameworks on their devices. I think blocking it can be a death sentence if you arent careful.

range

2009-09-28, 11:58

lcuk

2009-09-28, 12:00

dont widgets get told a resize event is occuring (most regular apps do at least)
and powervr is perfectly capable of performing scale to fit calculations (the mini app thumbnails on the dashboard spring to mind..)

christexaport

2009-09-28, 17:12

@lcuk,
Hmmm. interesting... resize, huh? Tell me more.

lcuk

2009-12-24, 16:27

range, christexaport
i got round to implementing some rotation stuff in liqbase
and it works as well as i thought it would

should give ideas for doing other things, perhaps using pvr :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z51-vCa0_Q

go1dfish

2009-12-24, 17:00

lcuk, I like it too, but unless you can convince widget designers to restrict size to 480x480, it won't work, and not many like the restriction so far...

btw, glad to see something from S60 tickling your fancy. S60 will always be near and dear to me. Nothing matches its utility. Maemo has the potential, though.

At the developer event in San Jose, it was recommended that desktop widgets should not exceed 50% the size of a desktop as a general guideline.

Not sure if this guideline is written down anywhere, I have not been particularly interested in developing desktop widgets myself.

lcuk

2009-12-24, 17:41

goldfish, who said anything about restricting anyone?

this is just the first bit, a proof of concept so to speak, I needed it for a few things discussed in Barcelona and before.

theres currently a whole dashboard full of fixed size complete applications along with a cool looking menu system that I think both would look cool doing this sort of rotation.

think beyond the initial case :)

as for the size limites, yeah if you widget is too large on the ui it becomes overpowering and people treat it like the principle app.
not something I have a problem with, cos my stuff just zooms out of the desktop, but on hildon obviously for now thats a consideration.