[Sugar-devel] testers needed: grab keys and touchpad rotation

[pgf at laptop.org]

sorry about that.  replying to add a subject...

i wrote:
 > 
 > last week i announced a daemon that would activate the grab keys
 > on the XO keyboard.
 > 
 > a day or two later there was a thread about how it would be nice
 > if the action of the touchpad rotated with the screen (in much the
 > same way that the dpad keys do).
 > 
 > since my daemon was already looking at every input event, it seemed
 > a natural place to implement the rotation feature.
 > 
 > and after doing that, the name seemed like it should change.
 > 
 > so, announcing "olpc-kbdshim".
 > 
 > source:
 >     http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/pgf/olpc-kbdshim
 > 
 > rpm:
 >     http://dev.laptop.org/~pgf/rpms/olpc-kbdshim-1-1.i386.rpm
 > 
 > after installing the rpm you need to fully reboot your laptop to
 > get the plumbing set up properly.
 > 
 > the rpm includes a new command "olpc-rotate" which takes care of
 > all the mechanics of screen and touchpad rotation.  since sugar
 > (currently) handles this key binding, the rpm postinstall script
 > patches /usr/share/sugar/shell/view/keyhandler.py so that it
 > invokes os.system("olpc-rotate") _instead_ of its current builtin
 > behavior.  separating it out like this makes olpc-kbdshim and
 > olpc-rotate more useful for non-sugar UIs.  i wrote the sugar
 > patch so that it won't break if you uninstall the olpc-kbdshim
 > rpm -- sugar will take over the rotate function again.  also,
 > though i haven't tried it on today's brand-new sugar 0.84 (good
 > work everyone!), a look at the current keyhandler.py says the patch
 > should still apply correctly.
 > 
 > the topic of ebook-mode touchpad usage came up the other day too.
 > while i didn't create any visible UI support for it, the daemon
 > will put the touchpad in and out of ebook-mode (which means,
 > reflecting it on both x and y axes) using "olpc-rotate -e/-n"
 > 
 > please let me know what you think...
 > 
 > paul
 > 
 > p.s.  btw, the daemon isn't really very olpc-specific.  i've been
 > running it on my thinkpad all week, in order to get the use of
 > the grab key scrolling.  the thinkpad doesn't have Windows keys
 > (which is what the XO grab keys are), but it turns out the blue
 > Fn key in the corner can be used as a modifier, so that plus my
 > trackstick gives 2D scrolling -- it came in very handy for
 > looking at the bootchart images this morning.
 > 

=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org