Notices

Thanks for the port.

I've finally managed to get this working but does anyone know if there is a calendar plugin available for the N900?

I wouldn't mind using it to keep a few logs?

Just activate the calendar plugin.

The N900 and maemo5 designers had the bright idea of removing the fullscreen and menu hardware buttons and did not provide a standard UI replacement, leaving each one to find his own solution, grrr

Ok, I have implemented a fullscreen button, but no way it can work like the one you have shown me. So I have to find the right placement and I have doubts where to put it.
If I place it in the lower rightmost corner, as it seems to be the UI convention for what you have shown me, then the status bar will have to be mandatory in fullscreen, taking away screen real state.
I could place it in the toolbar, either in the top left or the top right corner, and then the toolbar would be mandatory (right now it is just enabled by default, it just happens that you can't disable it because you are unable to open the menu).

What do you think? What other non nokia hildon applications in the N900 do?

@N900 users
Just another question, when the window is not fullscreen, how do you set it fullscreen? is there already a fullscreen button? or should I show the fullscreen button too?

Is there any way you could make the full screen button to be one of the volume buttons? That's the way it's done in VNCviewer application.

No, that would interfere with N810 and they are reserved for other uses in the future, like font size selection.
But if you prefer it that way you can modify yourself the source code:
Download the file
http://vcs.maemo.org/svn/zim/trunk/zim/gui/__init__.py
search the text "event.keyval == gtk.keysyms.F6" and change the keysym for the one you want.
Then put the file in /usr/lib/zim/zim/gui/ and you are done.

Hello!

I spent some time looking at some apps & how they implement full screen.
The important thing i think is that most hildon applications do not implement a scroll bar in the main display area. This leaves the right side of the window free for other uses. Also due to this, a full screen button in the lower right corner looks quite neat.
Scrolling is implemented mostly by swipe, with some exceptions like fbreader, where you touch the upper part of the window to scroll up, and the lower part to scroll down.

This raises the issue of how to select text.
In maemo browser as well as xterm, it is done by entering a 'text select' mode, in which swiping the screen will select text instead of scrolling. You enter this mode by clicking on an arrow shaped icon, like the windows pointer.

Conboy does not have a text select mode. Here you have to select text by using the keyboard. So, swipes for scroll and keyboard for select... though i personally don't like this solution and would rather have a text select icon on the status bar.

So i think for zim, first issue to decide is whether to keep the scrollbar...?
If yes, then i think a simple solution would be to reduce the height of the scrollbar, and vacate some space below, which can be taken up by a full-screen icon. In full-screen mode, only the scroll bar and full screen icon would be visible. When you click the full-screen icon, the status bar would pop up alonside the full-screen icon. The status bar would have the same height as the full-screen icon, so that the full-screen icon now appears part of the status bar. ( pl see screenshots of fbreader)

Re how other apps enter full-screen, it is either by an icon in lower right corner, or an icon on a permanently displayed toolbar, or through a menu which appears by clicking the title bar. (there could be other ways, but for hildonised apps i think these 3 are the standard ones)

I'm attaching some screenshots of Conboy, fbreader & opera mobile on n900. If you want any other screenshots, i will be happy to post... :-)

image attachments in continuation to previous post...
the sketch is done on n900 in Sketch app :-)

Edit: Forgot to add, in Opera you enter full-screen just by tapping on the web page. swiping scrolls.

Keeping in mind that Zim is a GTK+ app and is thus not as freeform when it comes to GUI elements as QT apps and such, I think the best way is to implement these are:

1) Configurable keybinding ala Comix (another GTK+ app), or at least the option of turn on/off fullscreen toggle/new page via F6/F7 (for instance).

2) Click hold to access menu + fullscreen via toolbar button (also ala comix), though a fullscreen option would have to be added to the first layer of the menus to ease transition (don't put it in a sub menu if possible).

Toolbar in fullscreen will negate the advantages of fulscreen real estate to begin with, and I would be better off with my current layout (top bar + nothing else).

Also, a thinner scrollbar + kinetic scrolling would be preferrable, though the current scrollbar implementation already works well enough.

Also, the utilization of the hildon-specific menu system (ala leafpad) would also be nice, if at all possible.

IMHO anyway.

But cobble's way is nice too, and is largely consistant with the general hildon UI.

Well, actually not being a programmer, I'm not fully aware of the limitations of GTK+...
But I feel deciding to keep the scroll bar puts limitations on what we can do.
Ideally, if you allow me to digress into a dream world, then ideally what I'd like to see is:

1. No scroll bar. Use swipes for scrolling. Can have a thin scroll indicator on right side, to give orientation as to where we are in document, but no scroll bar.
2. In full-screen there are two buttons only:
- full-screen toggle on lower right
- select-mode toggle on lower left
3. If screen is not touched for two seconds, these two buttons disappear as well, leaving virgin full screen. Touching screen makes the two buttons come back.
4. Tapping full-screen button causes the top and bottom bars to appear.
5. Now, the two buttons form part of the lower bar.

That would be an ideal solution for me...
Further, I think the 'long press for menu' is a good idea. But I think having to navigate a menu to come out of full-screen makes it slightly cumbersome...(the Image Viewer in Easy Debian has it) - I would much rather have a toggle button when I need it.

But again I am writing only as an end user who is blissfully unaware of the coding side of it :-)

So you guys are in a better position to weigh it all up...