[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Maemo Terminal - 0.1

[From: sampo.nurmentaus at movial.fi]

Hi,

>>> So, what you are saying is, menus can be used to display the status of
>>> executing commands (or last executed command). If anyone wants to
>>> switch between the appviews, menus should be used?
>
> Yes. That was the main idea. Although I'm not sure how usable it would be.
> Note that I can't imagine opening multiple sessions in 770, although I do
> that all the time on regular sized desktops. So it might be enough to use the
> TN-functionality. The problem with the TN approach could be (haven't tested)
> when you have more than a small amount of sessions. How does TN handle let's
> say, 20 "appviews"/applications open at the same time? (again, just guessing
> this time since I haven't tried this myself on maemo).

TN will show last four views used as icons in the bar and in its menu
it shows all the items. This is a standard GTK menu so it will scroll if 
needed.

> If terminal emu use will be restricted to the VKB and the pointer, one could
> do more with usability by integrating some prediction on shell commands and
> file names directly in the VKB (some kind of small file/path selector) and
> some vkb-local command history mainly so that often used commands can be
> selected quickly, even between the sessions). This is probably impossible to
> do without taking VKB apart and it would require specialized code, so I'd
> think it's a no-no. Probably not worth it iff BT keyboards will work.

I have been thinking the same. The VKB can predict words little bit
like T9 input on a mobile phone, but it is not context sensitive.
VKB is pretty modular, so it should not be too difficult to add
a prediction engine of your own.

I would like to use bash with programmable prediction and then modify
libreadline to store the set of strings to complete to to gconf or
something like that. Then Gconf would include set of strings for
completion for each window or something. This same gconf infra could
then be used for email addresses etc. If libreadline is used
also gdb and many other command line tools could take
advance of it.

The problem only is that how to do meaningfull mapping of
the sets of strings for completion and x windows that VKB sees.
Some 3l1t3 h4X0r x properties, that map to some Gconf keys.. :-)

If I had the time, I might have tested this already...

IMHO one might use a gnome or matchbox vkb as a base for this since
meamo vkb is not optimized for shell usage. It lacks for example
ctrl -key. For example, it is impossible to stop ping with the
current VKB. :-(

The device has a hardware key for escape so there is kind of "hardware 
support for vi" which is pretty cool :-) The emacs users would be in 
trouble, but with all that bloat and limited amount of memory, they would 
be in trouble anyway :-)

Br,
Sampo