Team Work : Canola2 portrait test
We are asking our friends in the Mamona project for Xrandr (enable us to rotate the screen, and it was not available on the maemo) and they not only heard our wishes but also did the patches to run it on the chinook distribution (os2008).
With this we were able to see how canola reacts in a rotated screen, and we are quite happy with the results. It’s not fully usable (playback, covers and photo details are not good at all) but the basic (menus, lists, settings, album cover grid) work just great.
We would not be able to have a separated person just to do a vertical version /and/or maintain it with our current staff (as we do other projects as well) but this can be the case of just very small changes to enable a vertical mode for those who really want. Of course we like eye candy, so by little changes we also mean : transition when rotating, rotating video to play on landscape and modifying the player screen theme to work like this.
If people still interested (in the forums mainly) we will try to do this :) If not, it will stay as a “playground” for ideas.
Thanks Mamona guys :)
Update on canola portrait :
if you are interested to look at it (but please bare in mind that some screens are unusable - the main landscape ones) you can take the files and instructions from : http://sse2.net/rotate/ I was trying to get the site owners name, but for sure he’s a maemo friend :) he compiled the patch by vivi and kindly posted the instructions for those wanting to flash their device + applet to rotate easier than command line.
Bare in mind also : you do need to flash your kernel, so if you don’t know what that means, don’t try please :) We are already fighting against too many problems, so we will not be able to help on this :)
About the regular Maemo Desktop / Applications The desktop resizes it self, and it’s usable. even the 2 layers menu shows at least the icon so you can still recognize, but you cannot scroll with finger (in n810 will be quite awkward to do that but you can install some launcher to make it easier) the internal applications, well some of them will suffer because most of them were done like our landscape screens : to take maximum advantage of the landscape orientation :/ thus lots of elements can be out of screen :/ so…
THIS IS VERY VERY Experimental do not expect to have a full device working perfect :/
That’s incredibly cool, I’d certainly like to see xrandr rotation on the nokia ‘net tablets, for more than just Canola itself. So far it looked like the (hildon?) interface handled the altered resolution without too many quirks.
Awesome stuff, although I’m still waiting for my N810 to arrive :D.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am[...] Via | marceloeduardo [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 3:29 amThis is sooo great!
Where did you get xrandr from? Are there other things to consider? i compiled xrandr for myself some time ago, but there were some curious errors where using it.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:33 amHi Lok : I updated with a link for experimental builds for n800/n810, I just don’t have the owner names to thank him but… the link is there :)
March 12th, 2008 at 10:56 amHuge. Vertical mode i s excellent for lots of casual uses and interfaces. I hope xrand gets into OS2008.1 and all program interfaces that can take potential from it use it.
For example. It would be great if a long click of the maximize button changed from portrait to vertical.
Can canola2 run if you change to vertical mode after starting it?
March 13th, 2008 at 4:18 amWe really need to be able to rotate the screen in this and other apps.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:35 am@eduard : yes, I do that on the video, but it was cut. I am in canola in landscape mode, go to xterm, rotate go back everything is already in place. The edje based ui is dynamic in that sense.
@eduard and jim : I really don’t know the answer but I highly doubt that any UI from the current OS will be adapted, so I would suggest to not create expectations about changes in hildon desktop and applications to support rotation… It was just not planned by them (I think) and just rotating is not the answer for them, they would need to rewrite (and even more : design) all the uis to work in both orientation, and they work with grids / hbox / vboxes that would be quite painful to get it right :/ (not saying that is not possible) just a little bit more of work than the regular work.
Brr
March 13th, 2008 at 5:54 am[...] has recently posted a Canola portrait test video on his [...]
March 13th, 2008 at 10:42 pm