On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 02:01:46AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
Mostly touchpads, but there are a lot of differences that matter between touchpads.
[The following long discussion might only interest me.]
The answer depends on the way I'm using the device.
Oh, and what I think I will do (when selecting a device) doesn't always match what I actually do. That's why I've experimented with so many things.
All trackpointers are the same to me (usable but not great). Touchscreens are of no use to me with a normal Linux desktop. Trackpads very wildly in usability.
I have used a few and they are not at all the same. The Dell I have a work is terribly inaccurate, and the touchpad constantly is triggered while typing (so I turn it off entirely). My thinkpad at home the trackpoint is very nice to work with, and the touchpad never has accidental triggering (probably due to both better drivers, and I suspect being places slightly further away from the keyboard. I find the Dell has a terrible keyboard, trackpoint and touchpad.
I like mice best, but the logistics are annoying with laptops. Still, if my session is longer than, say, a minute, it is probably worth deploying.
That makes sense. If I am playing games, I do tend to connect an external mouse.
For web surfing on an Adroid or iOS tablet, I quite like touchscreens. Except while entering text. But I've never found that touchscreens on notebooks useful:
Typing on touch screens just seems awful.
- partly due to the crappy support in Linux desktops
- partly because what I'm doing often involves typing
- partly because horizontally reaching for a touchscreen is very tiring ("gorilla arm")
How about the constant finger prints on the screen?
- perhaps because Linux tasks require precision that is beyond capacitive digitizers.
I rarely remember that I'm even on a touchscreen when I'm using one with Linux. (My main notebook, a Yoga 2 Pro, has a touchscreen. So does our kitchen computer.)
Trackpointers are simple in concept but I've not really gotten used to them because I don't have one on my desktop where I do most of my typing. (Or on the typewriter or keypunch where my muscles learned to type.) My main notebook for five years (x61t) has one and no trackpad, but I carried a mouse. The trackpad should be good for touch-typists (it's in the home row). But on my high-resolutions screens, it takes a long time to move a significant portion of the screen. I've always found it a bit, well, creepy that the cursor often drifts when I let go.
I used to think they were useless, but at least on my W530 it works very well. It takes less than 1/4 second to go across a 1920x1080 display.
Touchpads on notebooks have a variety of designs with a variety of good and bad points.
- I hate it when touchpads decide that I'm talking to them when I don't think I am. The cursor will zing off somewhere while I'm typing or thinking about typing. It may be my fault, but it happens much more frequently on some systems than others. There's a simple fix some systems have: ignore touchpad events while the user is typing. I suspect that isn't enough.
Yeah some like to do that. See above. :) No it is probably NOT your fault. Some of them are crap.
- I am annoyed at the way touchpad use seems to require two hands sometimes: moving a finger on the surface while clicking or holding a button (or two!), perhaps even while holding a modifier key.
- having the left button being the whole pad seems like a step forward but on my samples, it is designed as a lever with the fulcrum at the top so (a) the pressure varies, and (b) is theoretically infinite at the top.
Sounds awful.
- I like the new gestures that have come in. But haven't seen a manual. So I'm not really confident that I know them. The most useful seems to be two-finger sliding for scrolling (but there seem to be two opposite conventions about the direction).
I love that feature.
- the middle mouse button is useful in X and Firefox. It is rare in trackpads (except thinkpads). Simulating by using left+right click isn't as reliable.
I certainly like having all 3 buttons.
- new trackpads seem to have soft buttons. My fingers cannot "feel" where they are. So I have to look down from the screen. On the other hand, if I put some effort in I could configure a middle button, I think.
At least thinkpads will be going back to real buttons next generation again.
I don't seem to use a stylus. My x61t tablet/notebook has a stylus but cannot sense my fingers. I thought that would be worth trying, but it hasn't been useful. If I were drawing things, it would be wonderful: precise (unlike capacitive sensing of fingers) and pressure sensitive. I am envious of Microsoft OneNote users, but in reality handwriting is probably too slow.
If you are drawing diagrams and such at the same time, then it does seem useful, but they seem to have mostly died out again.
I accepted a stylus in the Nokia tablets and the Sharp Zaurus. But the iPad was a real revelation: a fluid interface and not cramped (10" vs 4"). But I perform some tasks better on the earlier tablets (ssh).
(I actually do some things in busybox on my Nexus 4, but only because I haven't bothered figured out how to create a GUI for these tasks. These same tasks are probably better on my Zaurus but it is usually on the shelf, uncharged.)
I find putty on my nokia with a real keyboard ssh'd to a real system is a handy way to do things. -- Len Sorensen