N900 keyboard friendly
 

*** A lot of information in this thread in now obsolete. Please read this thread instead.

I prefer touching the screen as little as possible, and I also notice that a lot of actions (such as launching a frequently launched application) can be done much quicker using the keyboard. Therefore, I work on making the N900 more keyboard friendly:

To be able to launch applications using hot keys you need to replace hildon-desktop with one that better support keyboard actions: run as root something like this

After a reboot the new hildon-desktop will run which has two changes: an added hot key: <shift><ctrl>H takes you to home screen. Any other <shift><ctrl>letter is advertised on the D-bus.

On option for intercepting the dbus messages and using them to launch applications is with dbus-scripts:

Install dbus-scripts (from extras-devel).
Copy the file http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n900/kf/hdk-scripts to /etc/dbus-scripts.d and the file http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n900/kf/hdk to /usr/local/bin (making sure it is executable).

After this, <shift><ctrl>f launches FBreader, <shift><ctrl>b opens a new browser window, and a few other shortcuts. Currently configuring shortcuts is by editing the python script /usr/local/bin/hdk.

I intend to continue working on hildon-desktop, making it possible to switch desktops and windows by keyboard.

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Very cool.

Can you please post the source code?

I was kludging up something similar using xbindkeys.

Thanks,

-Jeff
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

The three files that I changed in hildon-desktop source package are there:

http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n900/kf/

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Ah, ok i get it thanks!

-Jeff

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Current code is at http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/n900/kf/ (binary: hildon-desktop2, diff: hd2.diff, shortcuts file: hdk2). This now allows:
ctrl-shift-h go to desktop, ctrl-shift-l go to application launcher, and left/right arrows working in desktop (to switch desktops).

I hope other people would like to join this project.
Assistance I'd like to have:

1. If anyone can look at my code and tell me why hildon_desktop_activate() does not work as expected, please do.

2. If anyone has ideas on how to make hildon-desktop (home screen, window switcher, application launcher) more keyboard friendly, please share them.

3. Start identifying applications which can be improved (either at source level or at configuration level).

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Have you released the patches / changes to the official Hildon GIT? Maybe it will be integrated in one of the next updates...

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Is there a secret art for keying in Ctrl+Shift combinations simply and quickly ? I also prefer using the keyboard, and I don't have big fingers, but in the time it takes me to successfully type, say, ctrl-shift-x, I can tap the screen all it takes to get to the xterm icon, several times :-)

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

I exchanged the Fn and shift keys. Again, I am open to better ideas.

About including the changes in upstream - where is the upstream maintained?

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

http://maemo.gitorious.org/
http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop
http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle...hildon-desktop

Tons there--I think that last one is what you want, but didn't confirm it.

-Jeff

P.S. Thx for fixes @ my wiki page.
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba

Re: N900 keyboard friendly
 

Ah, I'd missed that, sorry. Certainly makes the idea a whole lot more attractive ! :-)