[9front] Survey: Plan 9 and touch user interfaces

[9front] Survey: Plan 9 and touch user interfaces

[sirjofri]

Hello community,

I'm writing a paper about touch user interfaces and Plan 9 and need your help. I prepared a few questions and it would be great if you can answer them and/or forward to other people who might be interested in helping out.

To answer, it's easiest to send me a mail (sirjofri@sirjofri.de). You can just click reply, but make sure to _not_ send the answer to any mailing list! That would be weird... Inline answers are preferred :)

Also, please don't hesitate to participate if you're very new to Plan 9. I have a question about that, too, and if you're unsure you can just skip the question.

I'm pretty sure you can be done within 5-10 minutes if you want, but it's very hard to estimate the time because you can add as much text (and details) as you want.

Thank you (questions below)

sirjofri



Before going into the questions, feel free to add more details to your answers. You're _not_ bound to the predefined answers!

Please rate your level of experience with Plan 9 (0 - just started using it, everything is new to me; 10 - I write kernel code and use the system daily)

Please tell me how important the following features are for your personal user experience. Give them weighted values from 0 (not important) to 5 (very important).
- namespaces
- plumber (including integration of plumber)
- text interface (rio window, shell)
- the GUI in general (are you a pure text guru?)
- mouse interaction (chording, etc.)
- others (tell me/add them to the list)

Do you prefer ultra-text-based systems like acme, sam, shell, or purely widget-based systems like fgui, mothra?

When you think about computer systems with touchscreen interfaces, about which of the following systems do you think immediately? Tell me more about your thoughts of the others.
- very small screen: smart watch
- small screen: smart phone
- standalone big screen: tablet
- mixed big screen: desktop computer with mouse/keyboard in combination with a touch screen
- others: for example, big whiteboard, media table

Re: [9front] Survey: Plan 9 and touch user interfaces

[hiro]

> When you think about computer systems with touchscreen interfaces, about
> which of the following systems do you think immediately? Tell me more about
> your thoughts of the others.

only one smartphone touchscreen interface ever convinced me:
the BB10

and at that, it wasn't perfect, because the integration of the
touchscreen went too deeply, so for example for hanging up a call you
had to touch the screen, even though there would have been enough
physical buttons.

the way that you swiped up and then sideways to change between running
applications was intuitive and even the animation felt natural and
like it added consistency (i.e. not just eye candy).
android did indeed finally barely manage to attempt imitating that.
sadly they failed at it.

the cursor to select text worked well, too, also especially in
combination with the hardware shift button. never experienced working
selection on a touchscreen ever since.
which is ironic because pointing at things on a 2d canvas and swiping
around on things to select them would seem like the natural
application of a touchscreen to me.

everything else so far seems to be a very elaborate joke.

so definitely use some BB10 phone for a while to experience the full
extent of how well touchscreens *could* have been.

i used to think palm pre was nice for similar reasons, but it didn't
surpass current android, never reached the consistency of BB10.

if you haven't tried it, you will be doomed to reinvent all the errors
from basic principles.