Picklesworth | # 81 | 2008-05-05, 18:13 | Report

I went and flashed my tablet with the fancy xrandr-happy kernel (alas, I only noticed your easy script /after/ fiddling about with Nokia's flasher tool). Cool stuff!

I have just one issue with your script, and that is I hate pressing the power button for anything unrelated to power. How can I disable its mapping to the power button, instead having the screen rotate only when I press the Home button?


Edit:
Aha! Found a package called mikie-rotate in the application manager, which is exactly like this but without the power button stuff. I'm happy now
(Although I wish these packages did not consume precious space with kernel images that are only used once, from another device). EDIT: Duh, I must be mixing it up with something else. This is only 10 KB!

Now, if only the LCARS theme could stretch vertically...

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Last edited by Picklesworth; 2008-05-05 at 19:07.

emjayes | # 82 | 2008-05-05, 19:02 | Report

The mapping is not a configurable option _yet_. Once I have studied enough python, I will make a control panel applet to configure the behavior to users specific needs.
Rotate left/right, use Home/Power to initiate, rotate/ignore when slide opened etc.

Any help on creating a control panel applet with python anyone?
I have created a hildon-desktop applet, but I don't seem to be able to make a control panel applet that doesn't crash the entire control panel when clicked.

For now, you will have to live with the hardcoded options or edit the python code yourself.

The mikie-rotate was my first attempt to roate the sceen automatically, and as such will not be updated/supported in the future. If it works for you, fine.

The original reason for me to make the slide-rotate was that for some reason dbus-scripts, that the mikie-rotate depends on required restart after every boot to actually work. YMMV though, that's how it was for me.

The slide-rotate does _not_ consume any space in form of kernel images, that would not be needed anyway to rotate your screen.
The install-xrandr-kernel flashes the kernel in your initfs, where you couldn't store any personal data anyway and then deletes the kernel-image along with the tools used to flash it from your device.

The only unnecessary file in your device after a successful flashing will be the install script itself, which only consumes 1133 bytes.

Once the rotation works for you, you may delete this file freely.

emjayes | # 83 | 2008-05-05, 19:11 | Report

The mikie-rotate, does actually use much less space if you also count the dependencies, since it only requires the dbus-scripts (and the kernel and xserver-xomap naturally), whereas the slide-rotate requires python, which is _way_ bigger install.

But who of you _doesn't_ have Canola installed? You already have the python then anyway.

emjayes | # 84 | 2008-05-06, 13:02 | Report

New version: 0.0.15

extra functionality: When the screen is rotated to portrait mode, the Zoom buttons change to PageUp and PageDown, normal Zoom functionality is returned, when in landscape mode.

This way you can read PDF:s, RSS-feeds, long webpages etc quite easily page by page.

fanoush | # 85 | 2008-05-06, 14:24 | Report

Actually the kernel is in its own separate partition, not in initfs but the result is same, it is not stored in rootfs where all system packages and personal stuff lies. Sorry for nitpicking :-)

There are five partitions in internal flash - bootloader, config, kernel, initfs, rootfs (/dev/mtd0,1,...,4). Only rootfs, the biggest (~250 out of 256MB) one is interesting to most users. Also BTW, only the rootfs can be moved to mmc card.

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Last edited by fanoush; 2008-05-12 at 12:12.

anidel | # 86 | 2008-05-15, 11:55 | Report

I shall adapt Xournal to portrait mode then!

Benson | # 87 | 2008-05-15, 16:12 | Report

How so? Last I simultaneously had xournal and rotation was the old version of xournal (before shape-recognizer), but it worked quite nicely then... didn't see any adaptation needed.

anidel | # 88 | 2008-05-15, 16:14 | Report

Well, never tried Xournal with the rotated screen, but I would suppose the toolbar will have much less space.
So putting the toolbar on the side, should help.
Problem is, this automatic rotate should emit DBUS signals to tell apps that the screen has rotated.

Benson | # 89 | 2008-05-15, 16:21 | Report

I'd rather have the toolbar on the bottom... saves on horizontal scrolling while writing a line of text.

For detecting the size change, maybe you can detect the window size changed?

Dbus is probably the better way of handling it, though.

emjayes | # 90 | 2008-05-15, 17:27 | Report

If needed, I guess I could make sliderotate emit dbus-signal when the screen is rotated.

Of course the xournal would have to have a handelr for the signal before it makes any sense.