[Question] Complex input?

[mildred]

Fidget seems to take a novel approach to UI design, which is nice as it allows to get away with complex existing codebases. However, I worry about support for complex features around user interaction. Do you know how you plan to implement those things?

• complex input methods, foreign languages
• touch devices and touch events
  • open up the virtual keyboard when necessary
  • touch selection and clipboard management
• common clipboard management (primary/selection, shortcuts, context menu to copy/paste)
• accessibility
• edit: form navigation (tab to select next element, Alt+letter to focus specific field)
• scroll and touch gestures

Is it planned to implement it all in fidget and implement correct behaviour for all platforms, or should a platform dependant lib be used for the specific features?

I ask this because I plan to create a touch-based app soon, and I worry about usability.

[treeform]

These are all tough questions and they all require work:

• complex input methods, foreign languages - I have an experiment were I can pop the IME box open on windows to type in Chinese. It would have to be done for every OS custom.
• I don't support touch methods right now I don't feel they will be that hard. I don't have a windows touch device to check though.
• That already works, see the textpad example.
• There is nothing about accessibility right now, OS APIs would have to be used for every os.
• Tab navigation is not implemented right now.
• Gestures not implement right now.

I would like to get to these features in Fidget 2 (which will be a very different API).

Touch based app, do you mean for mobile? Mobile support in Fidget is very experimental.

[mildred]

Thank you for your answer, so the work will have to be done in fidget itself for all of this. I was thinking that perhaps a toolkit could be used for this, and only this, so it's not required to re-implement it.

For touch apps, I was thinking of mobile (KDE Plasma Mobile for instance) with a standard linux stack. There is the PinePhone test device currently that can run this. It can help with touch enabled laptops too.

[treeform]

If you want to develop for PinePhone and touch enabled you would have to work on Fidget itself to get it that support in. My current priority is not mobile linux.

[bob-u]

Couldn't one use GTK for input (GtkGesture, etc) and open fidget GUI in GtkGLArea widget window, for example?

[treeform]

Its likely you can do that. I am not a linux expert. GTK is very high level though. Its probably better to bind to X11 or Wayland like GLFW does.