Notices

Dragly have you pushed an updated package already? In any case it works for me as I've just installed it.

Nope, haven't pushed them to anything but SVN yet.

Weird, oh well

I've been pushing ToDo items to the Garage list, but I think I'd prefer to use a wiki to get some feedback on ideas (especially as I won't have any time until August to actually do any coding).

Do we already have an mBarcode page? Are such pages (about an individual app) allowed?

http://wiki.maemo.org/MBarcode

Get wikiing people!

(Odd capitalisation I know, but the first letter is always capitalised, and http://wiki.maemo.org/mBarcode should redirect there)

Actually, I posted an updated package based on my packaging changes. Dragly, I'm perfectly happy with your changes; I reverted mine.

Anyway, the package there is working, so we're good to go...

I've just written a complete tutorial on writing plugins now as well, which you'll find here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mbarcode_Plugin_Tutorial
@joshn53: While working on the tutorial, I realized that there were a few more issues with using MaemoBarcodeWindow as the pointer in initInterface. It made it impossible to write a plugin without including QtDbus, which is not needed at all by most plugins. I've followed your advice and changed it to a QWidget* instead. Thanks for pointing out that possibility!

Here are a few mock-ups of the new design/workflow I'm considering. All input is greatly appreciated!

A message telling the user to open the lens if it is not yet open. Alternatively, the user may chose to review recent scans or open a file:

While scanning. The buttons are made to mimic the camera application to make it more convenient to use for new users (this could cause some confusion, however):

The recent scan list has been moved into a dialog and shows some info from the different plugins if available:

The result list is refined with a prettier view and more info from the plugins. One goal is to make plugins look up info (if allowed to by the user) right after the scanning is finished:


I'll start working on the fullscreen scanning with button overlays tomorrow if there are no big protests against going with a fullscreen version. The layout of the buttons may of course be changed if we want something different than the camera app look.

I'm also considering adding one of those "scanner lines" to give the user an impression that something is going on (i.e. the application is scanning, not just viewing the camera).

What do you think?

Wow, those mockups look really good! A couple of comments:
* What happens when you click "Stop Scanning"? It seems like if the camera is the main background, clicking Stop goes ... nowhere?
* The icons don't seem very intuitive to me, but they're certainly better than nothing.
* I'm concerned that displaying the data associated with results (e.g. 7/10, $1.32, etc) will be too slow, since it may need to do network communication, etc. Could that be relegated to the next screen?
* I like the interface for showing the plugin actions. Much better than buttons.

I'll happily cave on this one, but I can't think of a time when a user wouldn't want autofocus. Is there really a need for the user to manually control the focus?

FWIW, I just committed code to pop up a banner if the user tries to start scanning with the lens cover open. Hopefully it can serve as a starting point for detection in the new UI.