[maemo-developers] OSM2Go & finger friendliness (was Re: Reduce fremantle button spacing)

[From: Till Harbaum]

Hi,

i am pretty aware that maemo wants to be more finger friendly. And
this is also good for some tasks osm2go was made for. Thus i have 
started to make e.g. all dialogs fit nicely into the new finger concept
(my question regarding the dialog sizes is related to this as the bigger
buttons often require bigger dialog boxes and sometimes even max sized
dialogs). I also have recently made the object selection more "fuzzy" to
with repect to the fact that it's hard to precisely hit a map object with
the finger. 

But the map editing itself really isn't something that can't be precisely 
enough done with the fingers. The buttons i am talking about are the "ok" 
and "cancel" button in the bottom left corner. They are only used when 
editing and thus i think it's fine if they are small to leave more screen 
space for the actual map.

The tagging you mention does not use these buttons and benefits from 
all the dialog/main gui changes i am doing.

I do understand that everybody wants finger friendly guis and i'd actually
prefer not to have to fiddle around with the stylus when walking or riding
the bike while mapping with osm2go. But the screen is tiny and my fingers
aren't. So everything that involves many objects and requires the user to
have some degree of overview over these objects contradicts finger usage.

> with all the data you gathered while being on the Go... and probably you
> are going to prefer to do that still in front of your laptop.
I usually draw "rough" objects on the go and then bring them in shape 
when i am back at home.

BTW: What you mention here is in fact something which i think the
maemo plattform seriously lacks. PalmOS had a nice mechanism for
"synching". What you mention here really needs a similar mechanism
so you can do the rough work on the road and then seamlessly 
continue on your laptop. Since osm2go runs on the desktop as well
and can take advantage of the big screen, it could really benefit from 
such a mechanism.

Till