Hello all,
I found a second hand Acer Iconia TAB W500 - for those who don't know the beast, it's an X86 Tablet with an optional usb keyboard and relatively modest specs (an AMD dual core C-50 at 1GHz).
The fun of this project was to see if a Linux Tablet is usable.
It turns out (not surprisingly) that Linux does run very happily on this machine, but that as good as no distribution (that I have found) offers a sensible user interface for a touch screen.
Debian stable + Gnome 3 is unusable (stays stuck all the time). openSuSE with KDE 4 looks nice but I could not find a way to get the UI elements in a size usable with my fingers.
The best I got yet is Ubuntu with Unity. It's a disaster when it comes to administrate the computer, but it's the best UI for usability.
While researching for this project I re-read what KDE 4 devs had said about having to give up KDE 3 because it was not "touchfriendly", so I tried TDE on Ubuntu. Now, TDE is actually very usable on a touchscreen. There is ONE problem - I can't find a way to activate an onscreen keyboard.
Ubuntu/Unity starts a tool called "onboard" that works almost as expected (does not always seem to see if an external keyboard is present). It seems to be linked to lightdm.
I can try to run Trinity with lightdm. Or has anyone a suggestion as to how to get an onscreen keyboard with tdm?
Ah, and there would also be the problem of emulating the right mouse button click. Without this it's very difficule to work in tablet mode.
Happy easter!
Thierry
On Fri, 3 Apr 2015 10:36:12 +0200 Thierry de Coulon tcoulon@decoulon.ch wrote:
While researching for this project I re-read what KDE 4 devs had said about having to give up KDE 3 because it was not "touchfriendly", so I tried TDE on Ubuntu. Now, TDE is actually very usable on a touchscreen. There is ONE problem - I can't find a way to activate an onscreen keyboard.
Ubuntu/Unity starts a tool called "onboard" that works almost as expected (does not always seem to see if an external keyboard is present). It seems to be linked to lightdm.
I can try to run Trinity with lightdm. Or has anyone a suggestion as to how to get an onscreen keyboard with tdm?
Actual deps for Onboard 1.1.1, according to the first ebuild I checked: at-spi2-core, iso-codes, glib, libappindicator, dbus-python, pycairo, dconf (gnome), mousetweaks (gnome), libcanberra, cairo, gdk-pixbuf, gtk+-3, pango, X. In other words, lightdm is not a requirement per se (although that doesn't mean it'll work with tdm).
It looks like another option would be xvkbd ( http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/ ), which only requires basic X libraries. A project called xkbd appears to be similar, but has no surviving homepage (your distro might still package it). Matchbox-keyboard has been subsumed by another project, but again, your distro might still have a package.
Those are all the possibilities I could find in a hurry.
E. Liddell
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.11:12 E. Liddell wrote:
Actual deps for Onboard 1.1.1, according to the first ebuild I checked: at-spi2-core, iso-codes, glib, libappindicator, dbus-python, pycairo, dconf (gnome), mousetweaks (gnome), libcanberra, cairo, gdk-pixbuf, gtk+-3, pango, X. In other words, lightdm is not a requirement per se (although that doesn't mean it'll work with tdm).
I'll take a look. I haven't yet understood "how" the sstem decides to pop up the keyboard. It does it with Unity/lightdm. It does not with tdm. What I also seem to see is that if I install Trinit 13 I can both run TDE with lightdm (but onboard does not pop up) and Unity with kdm. But after upgrading to R14 Unity no more works (even if I go bakc to lightdm)...
It looks like another option would be xvkbd ( http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/ ), which only requires basic X libraries. A project called xkbd appears to be similar, but has no surviving homepage (your distro might still package it). Matchbox-keyboard has been subsumed by another project, but again, your distro might still have a package.
xvkdb runs. I'd have to find a way to launch it without a keyboard - and without reading the manpage I can't fugure out how to make it bigger, the default siuze is a bit tiny. It does offer a nice range of layouts, however.
Those are all the possibilities I could find in a hurry.
E. Liddell
Thank you for your hints, I'll take a look and report about the result.
Thierry
Dne pá 3. dubna 2015 Thierry de Coulon napsal(a):
Hello all,
I found a second hand Acer Iconia TAB W500 - for those who don't know the beast, it's an X86 Tablet with an optional usb keyboard and relatively modest specs (an AMD dual core C-50 at 1GHz).
The fun of this project was to see if a Linux Tablet is usable.
It turns out (not surprisingly) that Linux does run very happily on this machine, but that as good as no distribution (that I have found) offers a sensible user interface for a touch screen.
Debian stable + Gnome 3 is unusable (stays stuck all the time). openSuSE with KDE 4 looks nice but I could not find a way to get the UI elements in a size usable with my fingers.
The best I got yet is Ubuntu with Unity. It's a disaster when it comes to administrate the computer, but it's the best UI for usability.
While researching for this project I re-read what KDE 4 devs had said about having to give up KDE 3 because it was not "touchfriendly", so I tried TDE on Ubuntu. Now, TDE is actually very usable on a touchscreen. There is ONE problem - I can't find a way to activate an onscreen keyboard.
Ubuntu/Unity starts a tool called "onboard" that works almost as expected (does not always seem to see if an external keyboard is present). It seems to be linked to lightdm.
I can try to run Trinity with lightdm. Or has anyone a suggestion as to how to get an onscreen keyboard with tdm?
Ah, and there would also be the problem of emulating the right mouse button click. Without this it's very difficule to work in tablet mode.
Happy easter!
Thierry
You can install application kvkbd.
Dne pá 3. dubna 2015 Thierry de Coulon napsal(a):
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.20:31 Slávek Banko wrote:
You can install application kvkbd.
-- Slávek
Seems no more to be available for 14.04. I might try with 12.04
Thierry
http://mirror.xcer.cz/trinity-sb/pool/main-r14/k/kvkbd-trinity/
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.58:20 Slávek Banko wrote:
Dne pá 3. dubna 2015 Thierry de Coulon napsal(a):
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.20:31 Slávek Banko wrote:
You can install application kvkbd.
-- Slávek
Seems no more to be available for 14.04. I might try with 12.04
Thierry
http://mirror.xcer.cz/trinity-sb/pool/main-r14/k/kvkbd-trinity/
-- Slávek
Thanks a lot Slávek. kvkbd-trinity does the trick (while xvkdb could not be resized without crashing). Perfect onscreen keyboard.
So I've got Trinity running on my Tablet. It works fairly well, and with kvkbd I've got an keyboard when using the tablet without the physical keyboard.
Now the only thing I still need to find is how to get someting like "long press = right click" and this Tablet-PC could really be usable.
Thierry
On Sunday 05 April 2015 22:30:55 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.20:31 Slávek Banko wrote:
You can install application kvkbd.
Thanks a lot Slávek. kvkbd-trinity does the trick (while xvkdb could not be resized without crashing). Perfect onscreen keyboard.
So I've got Trinity running on my Tablet. It works fairly well, and with kvkbd I've got an keyboard when using the tablet without the physical keyboard.
Now the only thing I still need to find is how to get someting like "long press = right click" and this Tablet-PC could really be usable.
You are lucky :-)
I installed "kvkbd-trinity", but no onscreen-keyboard, on my touchscreen computer with Jessie.
I did not receive any answer to my mail (04/04 5pm) with the subject : "Tactile virtual keyboard does'nt appear"
Maybe it's better to change it by : "No onscreen keyboard on my touchscreen computer"
And the content also : On TDE Desktop, Debian Jessie, with a touchscreen computer, i don't get the onscreen-keyboard.
I can open applications and close applications with fingers, but no onscreen-keyboard.
Also, impossible to zoom with the 3 fingers.
It does't come from the computer, because everything works well with Windows-8.
Thanks.
André
From: andre_debian@numericable.fr To: trinity-users@lists.pearsoncomputing.net Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2015 22:52:45 +0200 Subject: Re: [trinity-users] How to get an onscreen keyboard?
On Sunday 05 April 2015 22:30:55 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
On Friday 03 April 2015 13.20:31 Slávek Banko wrote:
You can install application kvkbd.
Thanks a lot Slávek. kvkbd-trinity does the trick (while xvkdb could not be resized without crashing). Perfect onscreen keyboard.
So I've got Trinity running on my Tablet. It works fairly well, and with kvkbd I've got an keyboard when using the tablet without the physical keyboard.
Now the only thing I still need to find is how to get someting like "long press = right click" and this Tablet-PC could really be usable.
You are lucky :-)
I installed "kvkbd-trinity", but no onscreen-keyboard, on my touchscreen computer with Jessie.
I did not receive any answer to my mail (04/04 5pm) with the subject : "Tactile virtual keyboard does'nt appear"
Maybe it's better to change it by : "No onscreen keyboard on my touchscreen computer"
And the content also : On TDE Desktop, Debian Jessie, with a touchscreen computer, i don't get the onscreen-keyboard.
I can open applications and close applications with fingers, but no onscreen-keyboard.
Also, impossible to zoom with the 3 fingers.
It does't come from the computer, because everything works well with Windows-8.
Thanks.
André
Hi Andre,
First, start kvkbd-trinity, then it will stay in the notification area. You just have to click on it hen you need it. I am currently doing a similar setup on my newly received Sagem Spiga mini laptop. It has a keyboard, but the layout is hard to understand and very strange, so I will rely on the touch screen kb.
I am almost sure that TDE doesn't support multi-touch features at this moment, but it might be provided by Xorg, so I might be wrong on this one.
-Alexandre
-
Alexandre -
andre_debian＠numericable.fr -
E. Liddell -
Slávek Banko -
Thierry de Coulon