Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>]

I wasn't commenting on the GSoC; just reinforcing Eric's
point that a multitouch interface would be very interesting
in itself and pointing out that such a device in conjunction
with a 3d extension would be even more fun!  But yes, a
multitouch interface design would make a nice GSoC project.
Nothing directly useful may come of it but one never knows.
Look at bumptop.com -- that interface started out as a
student project. Look at the kind of things people do with
openframeworks.cc code.

Plan9 can be a far simpler platform for things like that.
Imagine a multitouch device that dynamically creates a set
of pointer streams /dev/mt/{0,1,...} with each mt/n acting
like /dev/mouse. Or you can have a single multiplexed stream,
where each read returns, for example,

 keychar ptr-index x y msec [blob-size [blob-type]]

When you lift your finger the blob-size becomes 0.  If you
don't press it again within some time period and within a
small distance of its expected position, the ptr disappears.
Or something like that! A program to map camera input to
/dev/mt would give you a cheap multitouch device.

As for GSoC, if students pick projects that get their
creative juices flowing *and* if they can produce something
tangible (but not necessarily useful) in threee months,
that'd be success in my eyes.  FWIW.

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:32:31 -0300 "Federico G. Benavento" <benavento@gmail.com>  wrote:
> my questions were more about the real usage of iphone's dt
> my short sighted vision of the gsoc is this, I didn't use any
> of the stuff that gsoc 2007 got us, though I recognize the
> inferno ds port.
> but for the rest, it might be interesting, but is someone
> using that stuff?
>
> iphone's drawterm sounds like something that very few
> people will use (the ones that have a cpu server and an
> iphone) in not that much often, of course it could be
> interesting to have it, but...
>
> I think that gsoc is a good chance to get going stuff that
> we need and we will really use.
>
> think of the openssh port, I did that, not for a gsoc and
> people use it, some guy even wrote a filesystem which
> suits lot's of people's needs.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wr=
> ote:
> > On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:25:07 CDT Eric Van Hensbergen <ericvh@gmail.com> =
> =C2=A0wrote:
> >> Also, figuring out how multitouch works with plan 9 would be valuable
> >> in itself -- although admitadly could be done without an iPhone.
> >
> > Exactly what I was thinking while reading this thread! =C2=A0An
> > intuitive multitouch interface that goes beyond cut-n-paste
> > would go very well with a 3D graphics protocol. 9gl anyone?!
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --=20
> Federico G. Benavento
>