Back to the basics: improving user experience

[Matthias Apitz]

El día Friday, October 17, 2008 a las 02:43:06PM +0200, Mark Weinem escribió:

> Am Freitag 17 Oktober 2008 14:13:28 schrieb arne anka:
> > >> Did a quick google but couldnt figure out what it uses as storage.
> > >> Hopefully not a relational database - they have their uses and qtopia
> > >> has conclusively proven this is *NOT* it :)
> > >
> > > Yes, the do indeed use MySQL!
> >
> > well, if it is supposed to be a part of kde, the use case is clearly a
> > desktop computer.
> > i don't think it would fit a small thing like the neo.
>
> would be great if the KDE guys develop their system beyond the obsolete
> "Desktop"- my sister for example uses a mini netbook as her main desktop
> machine. Desktop systems should be equally usable and funcional  on small
> devices as on powerful machines.

I'm using for my daily business as a head of a development department
a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop with FreeBSD 7.0 and KDE 3.5.8 (including
OpenOffice 3.0beta); I cloned this system binary (i.e. made packages of
what I have installed on this laptop) to a Asus netbook eeePC 900 to
have the same suite of tools with me while walking around in my spare
time; this is working just fine; and the FR is the ideal gadget to complete
the eeePC to have it as a GPRS router to Internet, cellphone, etc.
here you have a picture of both:
http://www.unixarea.de/20081003-173025.jpg

I've already returned my old BenQ cellphone to my company and I'm fully
depending on the FR, which I think is stable enough to rely on it;

        matthias
--
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[Minh Ha Duong]

To Rui and all others interested in bootime improvement:
A bootchart is available at:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/User:Alessandro

--
Minh HA DUONG, Chargé de Recherche, CNRS
CIRED, Centre International de Recherches sur l'Environnement et le
Développement
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[Benedikt Schindler]

Minh Ha Duong schrieb:
> To Rui and all others interested in bootime improvement:
> A bootchart is available at:
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/User:Alessandro
>
>  
i disabled my boot splash screen.... that saved me 10 seconds of boot time.

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[Crane, Matthew]

Have you thought about applying any of the fast-boot mods that were slashdotted recently?  One thing that killed the boot time of desktop linux was the usb subsystem.  OM is probally doing the similar things.
 
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/02/1933206&from=rss


-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Minh Ha Duong
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 9:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Back to the basics: improving user experience

To Rui and all others interested in bootime improvement:
A bootchart is available at:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/User:Alessandro

--
Minh HA DUONG, Chargé de Recherche, CNRS
CIRED, Centre International de Recherches sur l'Environnement et le
Développement
http://minh.haduong.com

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[Marco Trevisan (Treviño)]

William Kenworthy wrote:
> Did a quick google but couldnt figure out what it uses as storage.
> Hopefully not a relational database - they have their uses and qtopia
> has conclusively proven this is *NOT* it :)

Well, I don't really know what Akonadi is using, but when I installed it
in my ubuntu build it was depending in mysql-client and mysql-server.
Now, if mysql (with a server always running) is really needed I think
that we can't use in our phone.

--
Treviño's World - Life and Linux
http://www.3v1n0.net/


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[Angus Ainslie]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Dale Maggee <[hidden email]> wrote:

2. This also comes into the 'daily use phone' category: the echo /
volume issues. Since settings which work for some people don't seem to
work for others, I think that one way to sort this out might be to
create a sensibly-labelled volume control (preferrably as a
finger-usable GUI) which has the ability to load and store states. This
has been suggested elsewhere

You could try pymixer. It's a little crude but should work for you.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_Freerunner_audio_subsystem#Volume_Control

--
Angus Ainslie
http://www.handheldshell.com/

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[Dareus]

==Pim device==

I would like to use my FR as a PIM device, managing my communications, events and so on.
So this is my main issue as a user.
Another thing that could improve the user experience would be a PC utility to manage the device:
- ability to know the charge level from PC;
- easy file sharing;
- shared notifications;
- install apps via PC;
- sync contacts infos;
- sync calendars and to-do lists;
- sync communications (SMSs, emails, conversations, ecc.).

Every other thing is quite acceptable to me (as long as I stay with qtextended).

But such kind of utlity could help to easily try and switch between different distros

[arne anka]

> ==Pim device==


imho that's exactly the kind of task openmoko did _not_ ask for.
there are a lot of posts lately completely ignoring the point of "basics"  
and "no eyecandy" -- if the list in the wiki develops the same way it's  
plain useless.

pim frinst is at it's best part of a middle tier, but rather of a  
particular distribution -- and it's doable by community!
there are several task which require knowledge of the hardware and access  
to nda'ed docs, which in turn means they are best or exclusively solved by  
openmoko's limited forces.

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[Knight Walker]

On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 14:02 +0200, Mark Weinem wrote:
> Yes, the do indeed use MySQL!

The follow-up question to that is: Does it really _need_ MySQL, or does
it just use the convenience of an SQL back-end?

If it just needs SQL, then it could be altered to use SQLite. If it
requires MySQL, then it may be more work to port to SQLite than to make
something new.

To me, the fact that there are so many PIM projects for Linux means two
things: 1) It's fun to write one, and 2) Everyone has their own
(possibly incompatible) requirements for what a PIM stack should do.

I can see how it would be fun to write one, but with all the existing
ones (EDS, various KDE-based ones, GPE, QTopia, etc.) I don't really
want to. Plus I'm still fighting with building an OpenMoko environment
(Fighting with MokoMakefile on a Fedora 8 box).

But I do agree that there is a strong need for PIM functions on the
phone. I also think it's something we as the community can do while
leaving the Core Developers free to work on their stated projects. I
would like some guidance from the folks at FreeSmartPhone.org (Since FSO
is supposed to define a PIM API) but thus far it doesn't look like
anything has been written about it yet. Ideally what I'd like to see is
a front-end and back-end APIs for the PIM functions, so those who really
like one PIM server or another (See above-mentioned ones) can plug-in
whatever they like (Possibly with a shim that translates it for the FSO
API).

-KW


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[Craig B. Allen]

I used kdepimpi on my Linux Zaurus and found it very full-featured.  I
primarily used the datebook app.

I keep hoping someone with more skill and time than I will port it to
FR.  It was built on top of Qtopia so it shouldn't be that formidable
a task.

-- Craig

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[George Brooke]

VBox OSE is fast than qemu (iirc) and still free. Speed would be
important for a development environment.

solar.george

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:31:06 +0200
Didier Raboud <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Christ van Willegen wrote:
>
> > Perhaps another idea to lighten the core developers' load...
> >
> > Invest a little time (a day or so?) to properly set up a VMWare
> > image that can be downloaded by developers that want to help in any
> > way.
> >
> > Make it easy to update sources, and easy to build both kernel and
> > userland stuff, and also to report patches. This way, developers
> > don't need to invest loads of time into setting up stuff, if it can
> > be done in one fell swoop.
> >
> > I, for one, would love to be able to run a VMWare image and dive
> > into developing and debugging/enhancing.
> >
> > Christ van Willegen
>
> s/VMWare/qemu (or kvm)/g
>
> qemu is "more free" in my opinion... ;)
>
> Regards,
>
> OdyX
>

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[j newkirk]

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:10:12 +0200, "Christ van Willegen"
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Perhaps another idea to lighten the core developers' load...
>
> Invest a little time (a day or so?) to properly set up a VMWare image
> that can be downloaded by developers that want to help in any way.
>
> Make it easy to update sources, and easy to build both kernel and
> userland stuff, and also to report patches. This way, developers don't
> need to invest loads of time into setting up stuff, if it can be done
> in one fell swoop.
>
> I, for one, would love to be able to run a VMWare image and dive into
> developing and debugging/enhancing.
>
> Christ van Willegen

What would you want to be included in such an image, realistically?    I
have one currently with Ubuntu 8.04 jeos+XFCE, toolchain, qemu via
mokomakefile, latest Enlightenemnt e17(as of three weeks ago, at least).  

There was a thread here about 18 days ago entitled 'Developer environment
suggestion'.  Two things suggested in that thread that I've not yet done
are bitbake (I've used mokomakefile strictly to build the qemu gta01
emulation so far) and eclipse.  I was hoping to have the setup polished and
posted somewhere by now... :(

j


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[Fredrik Wendt]

fre 2008-10-17 klockan 21:46 -0400 skrev Joel Newkirk:
> What would you want to be included in such an image, realistically?    I
> have one currently with Ubuntu 8.04 jeos+XFCE, toolchain, qemu via
> mokomakefile, latest Enlightenemnt e17(as of three weeks ago, at least).  

This is a great setup - have you added info to the wiki on where one can
download this image?

/ Fredrik


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[brock-2]

On 2008.10.17.11.40, C?dric Berger wrote:
| ex : to put phone in pocket. At the very least I must be able to immediatly
| lock screen, but it should then be able to automatically go to sleep even if
| screen keeps being touched (in pocket...). Wait time before blanking screen
|  / going to suspend should also be decreased when screen is locked.

I noticed that my phone is always upside-down when in my pocket... so I
was thinking that I'd have it suspend when upside-down :)

--Brock


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[j newkirk]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:49:40 +0200, Fredrik Wendt <[hidden email]> wrote:

> fre 2008-10-17 klockan 21:46 -0400 skrev Joel Newkirk:
>> What would you want to be included in such an image, realistically?    I
>> have one currently with Ubuntu 8.04 jeos+XFCE, toolchain, qemu via
>> mokomakefile, latest Enlightenemnt e17(as of three weeks ago, at least).
>  
>
> This is a great setup - have you added info to the wiki on where one can
> download this image?
>
> / Fredrik

Thanks.  No, I haven't - it's really not downloadable yet.  I wanted to get
it cleaned up and incorporate all useful (but lightweight magabyte-wise)
tools first.

j



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[Dale Maggee]

arne anka wrote:
>> ==Pim device==
>>    
>
>
> imho that's exactly the kind of task openmoko did _not_ ask for.
>  
I would respectfully disagree - Openmoko asked about "Improving user
experience", and users are saying they want to experience PIM capabilities.

> there are a lot of posts lately completely ignoring the point of "basics"  
> and "no eyecandy"
I haven't seen anybody ask for pretty-looking PIM applications, people
seem to be asking for *reliable* PIM applications. I'd call reliability
and robustness "basic".
> pim frinst is at it's best part of a middle tier, but rather of a  
> particular distribution --
This kind of comes into the "Should FSO merge be sped up?" debate, as I
believe the framework has PIM stuff built into it.
> and it's doable by community!
>  
Agreed, it could be done by the community, but I don't see anyone doing
it, and I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the time at the moment.

> there are several task which require knowledge of the hardware and access  
> to nda'ed docs, which in turn means they are best or exclusively solved by  
> openmoko's limited forces.
>  

Agreed.

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[Jisakiel]

¿May I suggest the image being a virtualbox one instead of vmware? Virtualbox is quite fast as well, and there are free (as in speech) versions available for all major distros. Only problem is that the open source does not support usb (but the commercial version is freely downloadable and does).

Only free vmware nowadays are the player (no snapshots ability) and the server (too heavyweight, based on tomcat + firefox plugin).



----- Mensaje original ----

> De: Joel Newkirk <[hidden email]>
> Para: List for Openmoko community discussion <[hidden email]>
> Enviado: domingo, 19 de octubre, 2008 10:27:26
> Asunto: Re: Virtualized developer system (was Re: Back to the basics:improving user experience)
>
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:49:40 +0200, Fredrik Wendt wrote:
> > fre 2008-10-17 klockan 21:46 -0400 skrev Joel Newkirk:
> >> What would you want to be included in such an image, realistically?    I
> >> have one currently with Ubuntu 8.04 jeos+XFCE, toolchain, qemu via
> >> mokomakefile, latest Enlightenemnt e17(as of three weeks ago, at least).
> >  
> >
> > This is a great setup - have you added info to the wiki on where one can
> > download this image?
> >
> > / Fredrik
>
> Thanks.  No, I haven't - it's really not downloadable yet.  I wanted to get
> it cleaned up and incorporate all useful (but lightweight magabyte-wise)
> tools first.
>
> j
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

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[Stroller-2]

On 19 Oct 2008, at 13:46, Dale Maggee wrote:

> arne anka wrote:
>>> ==Pim device==
>>>
>>
>>
>> imho that's exactly the kind of task openmoko did _not_ ask for.
>>
> I would respectfully disagree - Openmoko asked about "Improving user
> experience", and users are saying they want to experience PIM  
> capabilities.
> ...
>> and it's doable by community!
>>
> Agreed, it could be done by the community, but I don't see anyone  
> doing
> it, and I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the time at the moment.

It does not matter whether YOU could do it or not. it's a matter of  
where Openmoko's resources are best spent.

If you can't write a PIM app, then you CERTAINLY can't write kernel  
drivers - THAT is where Openmoko's resources should be mist focussed,  
IMO. As others have stated, there is some hardware-level stuff that  
only Openmoko has NDA for. And without working hardware drivers to  
ensure that phonecalls work flawlessly (and wifi, and bluetooth), a  
PIM is irrelevant.

>> there are a lot of posts lately completely ignoring the point of  
>> "basics"
>> and "no eyecandy"
> I haven't seen anybody ask for pretty-looking PIM applications, people
> seem to be asking for *reliable* PIM applications. I'd call  
> reliability
> and robustness "basic".

Basic reliability and robustness resides in a program with which you  
can enter a number and make a call. Once that prototype exists it is  
much easier for the community to extend it to PIM functionality.  
Openmoko can then move on to wifi drivers, Glamo hardware acceleration  
and pairing of bluetooth headsets.

>> pim frinst is at it's best part of a middle tier, but rather of a
>> particular distribution --
> This kind of comes into the "Should FSO merge be sped up?" debate,  
> as I
> believe the framework has PIM stuff built into it.

AIUI (and I would be delighted to be corrected if I'm wrong), the FSO  
stuff is intended to provide functions which will allow you to make  
simple DBUS calls  such as "get number $var from PIM manager" and  
"make call to number $var". Once these are complete, writing your own  
applications becomes easy. True the first of these example calls  
requests you integrate the functionality in your own app, but the  
latter makes problems with dealing with the dialler & the GSM chips &  
whatever go away. It is FAR more important to provide the community  
with these tools than it is to provide any kind of application that  
utilises them (beyond a command-line version which gets numbers from a  
text-file and operates as a test example). Once these calls are  
available there will be dozens of PIM managers posted to this list and  
being written by enthusiastic Python programmers.

Stroller.
 

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[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 02:21:17PM +0100, Stroller wrote:

> >>> ==Pim device==
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> imho that's exactly the kind of task openmoko did _not_ ask for.
> >>
> > I would respectfully disagree - Openmoko asked about "Improving user
> > experience", and users are saying they want to experience PIM  
> > capabilities.
> > ...
> >> and it's doable by community!
> >>
> > Agreed, it could be done by the community, but I don't see anyone  
> > doing
> > it, and I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the time at the moment.
>
>
> It does not matter whether YOU could do it or not. it's a matter of  
> where Openmoko's resources are best spent.
>
> If you can't write a PIM app, then you CERTAINLY can't write kernel  
> drivers - THAT is where Openmoko's resources should be mist focussed,  
> IMO. As others have stated, there is some hardware-level stuff that  
> only Openmoko has NDA for. And without working hardware drivers to  
> ensure that phonecalls work flawlessly (and wifi, and bluetooth), a  
> PIM is irrelevant.

All hail that. And I'd add that that work should've been done ages ago.

Dear OpenMoko, please work on fixing those things only YOU[1] can
adequately fix.

[1] yes, we can also fix that, but without docs it's extremely harder

Many hugs and thanks for the courage to be the only Free Software phone
brand in the market.

You deserve all my respect, but if you don't fix these reliability
issues, I wouldn't bet on your longevity as an enterprise, and we'll all
be that much more poorer :|

Respect doesn't pay salaries, selling good phones does.

I love my OpenMoko, but if I didn't love Free Software, I think I
wouldn't be patient enough for all the problems :)

Rui

--
Or not.
Today is Boomtime, the 73rd day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

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[Feydreva]

I am not a developer, but i test the images and try to use the openmoko...
My main issue with Openmoko are :

1) Battery life : only 4hrs, and when you charge it, it discharge itself after a while. I cannot use it as a daily phone.... :/
2) Basic telephony : the phone should wake up faster than it does now.... the time the phone wakes up, rings, and you pick the call, there has been 6 rings for the other party, and may already be on the voicemail
3)Basic text message should work flawlessly.
4) A way to set up the sound and rings ... There is actually no gui for that
5) I haven;t find yet where to activate the PIN or not... I put 1 sim card that asked for a pin, it work.. I put a another sim card, where no pin is needed.. it was still asking for a pin... (I had to reflash to solve this one) but there is no Menu where I could choose, Pin on/off, if pin on, set up the pin....


I do not care at all about any other application. I want a daily phone... where i can receive, make call, receive and send text message, and have the phone a day with me, wihotut having to cahrge it every 2 hrs... (8-10 hrs battery life would be better, with wifi on, gps off)

Until we reach this point, I will continue tu use my dumb phone eeyday, and the FR will catch some dust on a shelve...

Peace
Philippe

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 9:21 AM, Stroller <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 19 Oct 2008, at 13:46, Dale Maggee wrote:

> arne anka wrote:
>>> ==Pim device==
>>>
>>
>>
>> imho that's exactly the kind of task openmoko did _not_ ask for.
>>
> I would respectfully disagree - Openmoko asked about "Improving user
> experience", and users are saying they want to experience PIM
> capabilities.

> ...

>> and it's doable by community!
>>
> Agreed, it could be done by the community, but I don't see anyone
> doing
> it, and I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the time at the moment.

It does not matter whether YOU could do it or not. it's a matter of
where Openmoko's resources are best spent.

If you can't write a PIM app, then you CERTAINLY can't write kernel
drivers - THAT is where Openmoko's resources should be mist focussed,
IMO. As others have stated, there is some hardware-level stuff that
only Openmoko has NDA for. And without working hardware drivers to
ensure that phonecalls work flawlessly (and wifi, and bluetooth), a
PIM is irrelevant.

>> there are a lot of posts lately completely ignoring the point of
>> "basics"
>> and "no eyecandy"
> I haven't seen anybody ask for pretty-looking PIM applications, people
> seem to be asking for *reliable* PIM applications. I'd call
> reliability
> and robustness "basic".

Basic reliability and robustness resides in a program with which you
can enter a number and make a call. Once that prototype exists it is
much easier for the community to extend it to PIM functionality.
Openmoko can then move on to wifi drivers, Glamo hardware acceleration
and pairing of bluetooth headsets.

>> pim frinst is at it's best part of a middle tier, but rather of a
>> particular distribution --
> This kind of comes into the "Should FSO merge be sped up?" debate,
> as I
> believe the framework has PIM stuff built into it.

AIUI (and I would be delighted to be corrected if I'm wrong), the FSO
stuff is intended to provide functions which will allow you to make
simple DBUS calls  such as "get number $var from PIM manager" and
"make call to number $var". Once these are complete, writing your own
applications becomes easy. True the first of these example calls
requests you integrate the functionality in your own app, but the
latter makes problems with dealing with the dialler & the GSM chips &
whatever go away. It is FAR more important to provide the community
with these tools than it is to provide any kind of application that
utilises them (beyond a command-line version which gets numbers from a
text-file and operates as a test example). Once these calls are
available there will be dozens of PIM managers posted to this list and
being written by enthusiastic Python programmers.

Stroller.

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