Gnome 3.14 on a touch screen tablet

[Matthias Clasen]

On Sat, 2014-08-30 at 01:00 +1000, Ankur Sinha wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I managed to get my hands on a touch screen tablet. It's an Asus
> something (fpaste --sysinfo here[1]). It came with windows 8
> preinstalled, so I assume it supports multitouch. I installed Gnome 3.14
> from one of the nightly images to see how well it works on it. It's now
> completely up to date with the F21 package set. Here are my findings
> (I'll file bugs when I find time. I'll also update the test page when
> I've filed my bugs):

Thanks for this testing, much appreciated ! Some comments inline.

> 1. The on screen keyboard doesn't automatically come up on the tablet.
> Is there a way to check if the system has a connected keyboard and bring
> it up if one isn't found? I tapped on "Install Fedora" and when I had to
> type in anaconda, the keyboard didn't come up. I had to quit anaconda,
> go to settings, enable accessibility and the keyboard and then redo
> anaconda.

We have (old) patches for this here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702015
I've asked David to update them with an eye to get this merged for 3.14.

> 2. Not all the gestures listed here work for me[2]. The page was listed
> here on the test day page:
> a. tapping works
> b. press and hold worked in the dash, but it didn't bring up the right
> click menu in nautilus. I haven't figured out how to bring it up yet.

We don't have generic long-press->right click translation in GTK+ at the
moment. 

> c. drag for scrolling works
> d. pinch to zoom didn't work in maps/shotwell. Worked in eog.

eog and evince have patches for this, not sure about maps (it is using
clutter, so it might work differently there). Writing equivalent patches
for shotwell or gthumb would be an interesting project for somebody who
wants to try their hand with the GTK+ gesture apis.
 
> e. double tap didn't work in eog either

This may just not be implemented yet.

> f. three finger pinch didn't bring up overview
> g. four finger drag didn't switch workspaces
> h. finger hold and tab didn't bring up the window switcher

These are a little finicky, but they all work for me.

> 3. The on screen keyboard doesn't work too well. At the moment, each key
> I press is typed in twice somehow - even after rebooting. I had to plug
> in a usb keyboard to complete the g-i-s configuration.

I've asked Carlos to have a look at this - may be fallout from the
adding touch support to mutter.

> 4. The on screen keyboard doesn't have arrow keys like any other touch
> keyboard. This makes using the terminal just a little difficult since
> you can't access the previous command that easily. Similarly, it doesn't
> have ctrl alt etc., so restarting the shell if it gets stuck etc. or
> bringing up the "looking glass" is a little difficult without a usb
> keyboard. These aren't usual use cases, but maybe something like a
> "developer mode" could enable these?

I agree.

> 5. The tablet also had a stylus which we managed to lose. It therefore
> recognises it as a wacom tablet. I clicked on "calibrate" and it brought
> up a screen with circles in the centre and a cross hair. I couldn't
> figure out how to get out of it. No gesture worked, not even alt f4 from
> the USB keyboard. A "cancel" button somewhere would be nice. Also some
> instructions on what one is supposed to do would help. I think you're
> supposed to point the stylus at the cross hair, but I'm only guessing
> here.
> 

Good point - thats worth filing as a feature request.