[Discussion] More touchscreen support?

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Chamenas
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:04 pm

[Discussion] More touchscreen support?

Post by Chamenas »

I did a search and while there were relevant hits, most of the threads discussing touchscreens and related topics were at least a couple of years old.

I understand that the development cycle for an open source program can be rather erratic, depending on who is developing and what their availability is. That being said, as MU*s in general enter the future, clients need to evolve with them in order to allow users to take advantage of increased computing power.

Mudlet, and a few other clients, have definitely headlined a lot of this development: allowing access and support for up to 256 color, GUI elements like buttons and gauges, and many other useful tools.

Touch screens are the future, and while some elements of Mudlet's native design correspond well with them (such as the aforementioned buttons) others do not. Most notably, scrolling through the buffer. When I use a touch screen and place my finger on the MUD output, I flick it and expect to scroll, but, at best, it ends up highlighting content.

While being able to press and hold a finger in order to select text is certainly an attractive feature, adding scrolling support would go a long way towards helping Mudlet continue to embrace the future.

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As a side note, what's the word on Qt development for Android and iOS? There were some threads about that as well. I know from experience that offerings like Blowtorch simply have too little in terms of active development and a Mudlet-lite for such devices further increases MU* accessibility.

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Vadi
Posts: 5035
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:13 pm

Re: [Discussion] More touchscreen support?

Post by Vadi »

I think it's a good idea, I've seen people use touchscreens to good effect on Word documents and such to scroll them. Mudlet would just need to be able to detect a touch event from a mouse event unlike now and then scroll on it.

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I've looked around it this week and it does not look like porting a desktop Qt application to Android is a good idea yet, despite the recent advancements in that area. However, the technology is there, the documentation says you can do it, so anyone who'd like to is feel free to have a go.

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