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Old 22-02-2014, 11:49   #76
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

curl...

Let me try again...

I do not understand your Android/OpenCPN environment.
Will you please describe again for us?

Thanks
Dave
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Old 22-02-2014, 12:07   #77
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

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curl...

I do not understand your Android/OpenCPN environment.
Will you please describe again for us?
Thanks
Dave
I guess my reply will show up ....
Something about moderator would approve my reply
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Old 23-02-2014, 09:49   #78
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

One more try, don't know what the moderator did with the previous one.

######
Dissected the Navionics app and copied their implementation.
Used Android NDK tool to compile java running bytecode in the Dalvik VM.
Used Android NDK tool to compile SDL libraries to be loaded at runtime.
*h**p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer*
Has NDK and Android SDK running on Linux and uses NDK/SDK to include Opencpn
in the apk package together with java code and libraries.
In the package I have a "helper" program that makes Opencpn find path's and
libraries in the Android filesystem.

Sorry for the late reply,I'm into a traveling period and will travel the next two weeks also
Android implementation is a bit OT from OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen.
Perhaps a moderator could move this answer to a new thread.
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Old 19-03-2014, 08:57   #79
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

Hi guys..

Thanks to some nice donations, I have acquired a Dell 8" tablet running Win 8.1.

After clearing my decks of some leftover bugs (imagine that...), I'm ready to start implementing some of the touch screen optimizations for OCPN. I've re-read this thread a couple of times, learned more about touch tablets in general, played with OCPN on my tablet, and tried to distill and prioritize the great ideas presented so far.

Here is my initial punch list:

1. Larger toolbar icons / right click menu / dialog objects in general.
2. Deferred or configurable auto-follow cancel on chart touch.
3. Single touch on compass button to toggle course-up/north-up/head-up modes.
4. Optimize the Route create workflow. Possble big "Done" button on route create and measure?

And then, on to the possibly more difficult stuff:

5. Implement support for dynamic tablet portrait/landscape orientation, with intelligent dashboard window relocation.
6. Gesture support, especially swiping to scroll chart.
7. Figure out what to do about "hovering", so we get AIS target and vector chart light information like we expect to.

I say the above is more difficult, since it will probably require Windows specific code that is new in Win8.1. Our basic toolkit (wxWidgets) does not know anything about 8.1 touch.


Some of the above will appear in the next Beta, due in a week or so I hope.

This is a beginning, and I expect more ideas will pop up as we move along.
Have I left out anyone's favorite idea?

All comments appreciated.

Dave
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Old 19-03-2014, 11:01   #80
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

My wife has a new IBM tablet with an active stylus, that allows you to hover and easily right click. This makes the following ideas unnecessary for those who spend the big bucks.

1. I realize that screen real-estate is at a premium for 8" tablets; however I would like to suggest a hover button and a right click button, maybe as "special buttons" (like course up) or part the normal button display.

Single touch on the hover button then a single touch on the AIS icon, after which single touch would revert to its original action.

2. I would like to see the same thing for right click.

3. For small screens I still like the idea of being able to assign buttons to functional groups like planning, navigation, emergency, all buttons, and no buttons. You would have a Master button that alternated between groups.

I would put 5. at the end of the list. When I change from portrait to landscape it's quite easy to drag the button bar and dashboard where I want them. I don't think you can predict where they should go.
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Old 19-03-2014, 13:04   #81
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

Dave - Thanks for taking this on!
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Originally Posted by bdbcat View Post
6. Gesture support, especially swiping to scroll chart.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I think this already exists in O's current UI. Tap and drag already pans the chart. Unless you are suggesting panning with "inertia," where swiping real fast causes the chart to keep moving and gradually slows down. I think that might be a little too fancy, especially if quilting takes you onto different charts.
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2. Deferred or configurable auto-follow cancel on chart touch.
7. Figure out what to do about "hovering", so we get AIS target and vector chart light information like we expect to.
I've had in mind a way to accomplish both of these, but haven't had time to post it. I think the best way would be to implement a user-selectable option to modify the touch emulation in this way:
  • Single tap moves mouse cursor to the point of the tap without a click event. Once this is done, I believe the OS would automatically show hover information (This would also allow a single tap without the chart auto-following.)
  • Double tap emulates single mouse click.
  • Triple tap emulates double mouse click.
Ideally this should be implemented in a Windows control panel in the OS, not within OpenCPN. Such a control panel should include an on/off switch that a user could use to enable/disable this feature. A control panel would allow this to be used in the many other programs that make use of hover, including web pages and even Windows desktop. It would also relieve you of having to clutter up your source with windows-specific code. Maybe you know somebody who is an expert at low-level Windows interface modification via control panel.

It sounds like this feature might have been tried on iPads, but wasn't very popular (see link below). Personally, I would use it if properly implemented.

Here are a couple of short articles that discuss the issue. The first one is an excellent summary of the UI design issues with hover on touchpads, including a description of Apples's attempted workaround:

Hover is dead, long live hover | Web design | Creative Bloq

The second describes a CSS workaround implemented for Internet Explorer 10. It has no relevance to O, aside from a model of how to go about it (or how not to, depending on how you feel about Internet Explorer ).

How to simulate hover on touch-enabled devices (Windows)

...and another that describes hover issues in website design, with emphasis on the issues cause by hover information covering other clickable elements:

How to deal with :hover on touch screen devices
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Old 19-03-2014, 14:00   #82
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

More on rollover-

It seems to me that objects, that have rollover text, could have a "text handle" so that if you single clicked the handle you would see the rollover text. A text handle would be a small addition (like a Red circle with an I in the center) to an existing object and consistent across OpenCPN. Single clicking the body of the object would behave as before. I'm guessing that this would have to be two objects.

Mouse users wouldn't have to learn any thing new and screen users would.

Whatever we do,
1. I would like for the interface for current users to stay the same.
2. We should stay as close as possible to screen navigation principals used by other popular programs. As an example I don't think I use the double click in any other program I use. (I'm not saying get rid of it, because too many people are using it now; but we should try to use common conventions. This of course argues against the "Red Circle I" I proposed above.
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Old 19-03-2014, 14:17   #83
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

David,

how do you think the "red-circle approach" might work with a route for example? Where should it be placed? In the "mouse-world" at any point of a leg of the route the text will appear.

I was thinking about "draw a circle around the object you want to know about" - no standard neither and not an implemented method for sure...

Hubert
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Old 19-03-2014, 15:12   #84
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

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David,

how do you think the "red-circle approach" might work with a route for example? Where should it be placed? In the "mouse-world" at any point of a leg of the route the text will appear.

I was thinking about "draw a circle around the object you want to know about" - no standard neither and not an implemented method for sure...

Hubert
I agree that the existence of large, eccentrically shaped objects like routes and light sectors call into question the red-circle approach because of the uncertainty over where to place the red circle.

Also, there can be dozens of hover-able objects on screen at a time, including button icons and especially on vector charts where every ATN is hover-able. Red circles would clutter the screen.

I think the best way to approach it is to emulate a hover event by developing a way to tap without emulating a mouse click. My suggest way above is one way to do it, though I'm open to more elegant ways if someone can come up with one.
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Old 19-03-2014, 15:12   #85
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

It works remarkably well Dave, as is. We're running the current beta as our primary nav on a 27" touchscreen AIO. The only thing that occasionally forces me to bring out the mouse is hover specific commands but there are very few times that is an issue. Its really unbelievable how well it works. We'll be crossing Georgia Strait in a couple of days - I'll pay particular attention to any touch-specific issues and report back on the weekend.
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Old 19-03-2014, 16:35   #86
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

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David,

how do you think the "red-circle approach" might work with a route for example? Where should it be placed? In the "mouse-world" at any point of a leg of the route the text will appear.

I was thinking about "draw a circle around the object you want to know about" - no standard neither and not an implemented method for sure...

Hubert
OOPS. I was thinking of AIS targets, that's the only thing I use rollover for underway. I don't see any good way to make it work for large objects that might be larger than the screen. If each of the WP in the route had a red circle you could say something about route length and each of the legs attached to the WP. Sounds ugly to me. But on the other hand it would work for AIS targets, and I always wanted wanted rollover to display the way point comment field. Wait a minuit! If the WP was part of an active route you could present a menu to give WP info or give some meaning full route info.

Right now if you single click a waypoint nothing happens, if you single click a route (with the rollover showing) you center the chart. I kinda wanta suggest that single click on an object shows info about that object (ie rollover) or a drop down menu if there could be more than one set of info about the object. If you drag the cursor off of the object the rollover info disappears. Right click would still do what it does now, a dropdown menu. I admit I haven't thought this out thoroughly.

I just looked at GE on the Ipad and Windows. Windows/mouse has rollover, the Ipad doesn't. Bad Ipad, I like rollover.

Oh, and I lied a while ago, GE uses double click to zoom in.
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Old 19-03-2014, 19:15   #87
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

In Windows 8 and Ipad, when viewing text, a double touch will launch a text selector with a beginning and an end marker that can be dragged to include the desired text. I don'know if this is available to applications like OpenCPN; but it would be nice to select waypoints to send to the gps etc.

Currently, with my ancient Tablet I can use the soft keyboard control key and the stylus to select from a list. A bit awkward, but I don't do it very often.
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Old 19-03-2014, 19:56   #88
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

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...I always wanted wanted rollover to display the way point comment field. Wait a minuit! If the WP was part of an active route you could present a menu to give WP info or give some meaning full route info.

Right now if you single click a waypoint nothing happens, if you single click a route (with the rollover showing) you center the chart. I kinda wanta suggest that single click on an object shows info about that object (ie rollover) or a drop down menu if there could be more than one set of info about the object...
Right clicking on a waypoint or other object brings up a drop down menu like you mentioned. For waypoints, selecting "Properties" brings up the comment field.

On a Win8 tablet, you just touch-hold-release to emulate right click.
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Old 19-03-2014, 20:12   #89
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

Dave,

I have one other suggestion for you to add to your list. Most 8" Windows tablets are getting skewered in the press for having "only" 189 ppi pixel density. It's fine for me - after all, it's much denser than your typical 90-110 ppi computer monitor. But everybody thinks they should meet or exceed the 264 ppi "benchmark" density of the iPad Retina display.

This means that buttons and other features are going to continue to get smaller in the future as manufacturers come out with Win tablets with higher pixel density. You may need a more comprehensive approach than just putting in larger buttons and menu text. For instance, depth soundings on ENC charts may get impossibly small to read. So you may need some more comprehensive scaling of all features, including buttons, menu text, ENC chart text (which is already adjustable), sounding numbers (which are not currently adjustable), etc. You might try to automate this by detecting the pixel density (if the OS makes that info available to the application). But it may be best just to offer a scaling factor that can be selected by the user through display settings. Maybe one number could adjust all the features in proportion to one another.

For raster charts, I think people will start zooming in a lot more to overcome the effect of the higher pixel counts, causing the "OverZoom" warning to display prematurely. You may need to tie the OverZoom trigger to the screen scaling factor to suppress false alarms.

Also, for raster charts, you may find that text and, contour lines, land borders, etc. start to look "lumpy" at the high zoom levels. You might need anti-aliasing routines to smooth this out when zoomed in by these larger factors. But it's possible that at the high pixel density the lumpiness is too small to see anyway. But it might be worth trying out to see if it makes a difference - hard to do until the higher pixel densities start to appear in Windows tablets.
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Old 20-03-2014, 06:21   #90
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Re: OpenCPN Optimized for Touch Screen

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Right clicking on a waypoint or other object brings up a drop down menu like you mentioned. For waypoints, selecting "Properties" brings up the comment field.

On a Win8 tablet, you just touch-hold-release to emulate right click.
Correct, but I was describing a possible way of getting rollover info for tablets that can't hover. Rollover info seems to be a brief message, not the whole "Right click" enchilada.
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