Re: just-the-text Emacs frame

[Mohsen BANAN]

>>>>> On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:06:22 -0500, Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> said:

  Ted> On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:19:49 -0700 Mohsen BANAN <address@hidden> wrote: 
  MB> Panel of Tiles Example:
  MB> -----------------------

  MB> Consider that we were trying to mimic what 
  MB> Windows 7 Mobile is doing in:
  
  MB> 
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/02-15-10winphone2.jpg

  Ted> I'll reply to the rest later, but please let's not try to mimic
  Ted> anything.  If we create something, let it be the right fit for our
  Ted> needs, not a rehash of other people's ideas.  These tiles are just large
  Ted> buttons with HTML and other dynamic content, aren't they?  Emacs can do
  Ted> it 100x better, and we don't need kinetic scolling or visual candy to
  Ted> make it useful.

  Ted> I bring this up here because emacs-panel.el is intended to fix some of
  Ted> the things I dislike about Gnome and other desktop environments,
  Ted> especially how they mimic the Windows and Mac OS X desktop environments
  Ted> and how expensive their resource usage is.  So I hope you will agree.

My goal has been to add considerations for emacs
on handsets (small screen + touch) into the mix.

In that context I am convinced that tiles, larger
buttons, keypads and full screen menus have a
place towards adapting emacs to handsets.

This does not mean that we should abandon the
emacs paradigm and mimic the iPhone/Android/WinMob/...
paradigms. 

So, I am proposing experimentation with the following
hierarchy:

  - Bare-Frames (no mini-buf, no menu, ...)
     - Related Windows
        - Panels (Collection of Tiles)
           - Tiles (Optionally Live and Active)

If such facilities were in place, I think we could
move towards making emacs more usable on a
handset.

The purpose of my citing the Windows 7 Mobile
screen was to point applicability of the above to
a common full screen menu model.

Let's now throw Microsoft Windows 7 Mobile
completely out of the picture.

Consider use of emacs's calc on a handset.

In that case, the prefered UI is likely :
(calc-keypad)

The basic structure of (calc-keypad) is:

  - 2 related windows in the current frame.
  - A custom made text grid functioning as a keypad

In this case, I am saying let's add to emacs
necessary abstraction and facilities so that:

  - The two related windows can fit properly in a
    Bare-Frame without any waste of screen space
    on the handset.

  - Instead of a custom made grid functioning as a
    keypad let's provide tiles such that keypads 
    are done nicer and better.

If these ideas fit in the direction that you are
headed, please consider my requests.

Thanks.

...Mohsen