so tonight i was thinking/daydreaming a bit. daydreaming is a very underrated past-time / skill, imho. anyways... i was thinking about laptops and it occurred to me that i'd love a laptop with two screens: one where it usually is, and one where the keyboard is. kind of like a great big nintendo DS.
the "bottom" screen would be a multitouch surface so that i could put a keyboard there. when the keyboard layout switched, the keys could actually change. the touchpad would also be on the "screen", and though could simply be "put away" when i didn't want it (e.g. when i have a mouse plugged in). perhaps it could even autohide when i have a mouse plugged in? hm.
best of all, those "multimedia buttons" could be replaced with real software. i'd be able to put any set of buttons i wanted there. perhaps even the toolbars from apps. imagine how useful that would be in a word processor! no taking the hands off the "keyboard" just to swap fonts or paragraph style: just reach up and press the font or style combo and it would pop down over the keys.
you could have a volume button somewhere that would popup an actual volume slider ... you could put useful widgets, such as perhaps a news, weather or stock ticker above the keys. or put the taskbar there for easy switching between windows.
the possibilities are limitless.
i googled for something like this and found this year+ old story about a vapourware laptop. the logitech G15 seems to come sort of close, but misses by not going all the way and replacing the whole thing with a dispay surface. oh well.
thinking about it some more i suppose it's probably not overly realistic to expect such a laptop to come about until we have something better than today's batteries for portable power (fuel cells?).
but still .. damn. it would be sooo cool. one more place to play with plasma ;)
speaking of which, the new krunner ui is coming along nicely and the dialog-less panel config is downright awesome. i'm trying to schedule time for a screencast this week so i can share it with everyone who isn't tracking svn (or, in the case of the krunner ui, the git repo for it)
Monday, May 12, 2008
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22 comments:
You mean this ?
yes, yet another non-shipping concept piece. gah.
sure, this concept would be awesome, however, I can't imagine typing on a pure virtual 'touchkeyboard'. Wouldn't you miss the feedback of real physical keys? Every little twitch of your finger would result in some key events. sounds rather unproductive..
So, i'd rather go for a combination of both: put some tiny (o)leds onto the phsyical keys -> arbitrary labeling of your keys. So you can still put the toolbar onto an array of additional keys (aka multimedia keys..). Or go one step further even and add a small multitouch screen in the region above the keyboard, i mean just the way you imagined, but smaller in vertical size so you have both, the real keyboard and the multitouch screen at the same time on the lower half of your laptop.
Get rid of these touchpads(mouse input), move the keyboard down a litte, use the additional space for this extra multitouch screen on the top and let plasma rock :)
Might be a reasonable compromise in price and energy consumption.
So how would the virtual keyboard/mouse events work?
I guess you could create an MPX [1] X server for the touch panel, but the mouse for the passive screen would be ridiculous: All mouse events would have to go device - X11 - touch window - kernel driver - X11 - target app.
Surely it would be more fun to just have a single multi-touch tablet to play with plasma on :D
[1] http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/mpx/
@tomg: "Wouldn't you miss the feedback of real physical keys? "
i considered that, but i think the silence would make up for it, especially in shared areas (airplanes, beds).
the thing i'd really miss would be orienting myself on the keyboard by finding the space bar by feel and using that as a reference point. there's likely a solution for that as well (textured guidelines on the surface itself?)
"Every little twitch of your finger would result in some key events"
this can worked around in software given a decent touch screen.
(i saw one app that filtered out keyboard events when small animals (think: cats) walked on the keyboard by detecting key cluster patterns. neat)
"Wouldn't you miss the feedback of real physical keys? "
yes, this would probably be more realistic in the near term =) now to find a manufacturer to make this come true ...
@alsuren: right, multipoint input is the key. the touch screen would be one input, and the "mouse" would be another.
the keyboard and mouse pad on the touch screen would create synthetic x events to drive the "mouse" pointer on the main screen. it shouldn't require stepping out of x11 at all.
"be more fun to just have a single multi-touch tablet to play with"
tablets are great for read-mostly document centric work i find, but just suck for many other things.
the main problem is that controls overlap with content and interacting with what is on the screen requires obscuring it with your hand (which is one reason why stylus input is popular, and also why research is being done on things like "rear of the device" physical input).
then there's just the issue of sharing space. i'd love to have a photo management app that could show a light table full screen on the main window with various controls on the touchscreen below.
having white balance, colour correction, etc controls on the same screen as the content sacrifices room for the content.
not showing the controls and having everything keyboard driven raises the bar for learning to use the app, particularly if you only use it occasionally.
so .. while tablets are neat, they aren't the be all, end all answer. =)
It's not 100% the same thing but there's an apple patent with a multi-touch keyboard that has some of that in it (although they still haven't shipped a device with it). There's also a Nokia cellphone concept video with a similar idea but more ambitious.
i already saw that, and it has a name: LCARS.
I had a dream too, turned out somebody patended this and sells very few of the devices to the army or someith like that.
granted I was more bored than you and acctually designed feature plans of this awsome ideas:
*some graphics hacks & see through plastic could make it all one big screen and remove the need for a middle (would mean that you could fold it out to a big screen, to watch films on)
*Also when a mate is over some clever tricks you could use, it as 2 tablets.
etc
I think the feedback would be an issue to start with but youd get used to it after a while. Alternatively there are some very clever developments with fluids that can change shape according to electric charges applied to them (use an array of pockets of these fluids to make keys), or you could use blank polarized keys with a projector aimed at them to give images.
Dammit im thinking about the awesomeness of this idea again, now i have to go revise thermodynamics when all i want to do is think about a cool double touch screen laptop
Sorry, the concept just doesn't do it for me. The idea gives me flashbacks to the Atari 400.
*shudder*
The version I always imagined had a thin skin of piezoelectric polymers above the touch screen. These would change their shape in response to electric current, dynamically creating ridges, bumps, and grooves that would provide tactile feedback based on what is present on the screen.
All ideas adding stuff to each other ...
As so, from that concept one you pointed in your post and that tablet idea pointed out here, plus your valid comments about it, i think the way would be ... all of it.
You have a laptop with 2 screens, a regular one on the top and a multi-touch tablet on the bottom.
So, you wanna play with an image editor with your bare hands? Place'it in the bottom screen and go for it! :-) If it's one like gimp, you place only it's toolbars there (I finally see an utility for the toolbars as it - and qt designer - does) ... Also, you could have a keyboard plasmoid with the capabilities you described and "always-on-top" (if wanted) hanging on that bottom screen.
I believe that would do (isn't nokia interested on taht? ;-) ).
The only thing would be the the key feedback for orientation, 'cause you could replace key press physic response with an audio response (one more thing to customize: you could use custom sounds ;-) ).
Well, I really like daydreamming ... :-D
Oh, yeah, you would also need a sort of plasmoid to act like a touchpad (which would be one small representation of both screens and, pointing and moving over it, cursor would be proportionally positioned across the screens).
It would also need an extra key response, a visual one (like the key getting highlighted when pressed, beside playing that custom sound), otherwise it wouldn't be accessible for people with hearing or visual disabilities.
I only couldn't think about getting orientation feedback ...
But, anyway, ... Now, you made me to want that laptop ... And, thanks, I will not be able to take the idea out of my mind ... :-)
It's almost, but not completely different, but there is the Optimus Maximus keyboard. It's made by the same people who gnu/violinist linked to in the first comment, but it's actually shipping (for US$1500).
Of course, it doesn't claim to be able to work on Linux.
cool ideas... i'm also glad that you guys are starting to use git ;-)
You should take a look at Slashdot's Meet the Laptop of 2015, and especially the dual-screen laptop. It's just another concept, but it's pretty much exactly what you described.
Just to drop in the Vaio Zoom Concept I've seen.
If you're dreaming you can dream with style :-)
I want /exactly/ the same thing. ..and tactile feedback becomes less relevant as your fingers move less.
I type in colemak, I think I could do without it entirely.
I plan on getting an Ubuntu inspiron and a cintiq 1280x800 tablet screen and using it with a virtual keyboard, but I haven't figured out how to use the colemak layout with the keyboard app I like..
I mean, I'll be getting the cintiq anyway, but.. yeah.
Hello,
Let me first tell that I really enjoy all your updates on the work with KDE 4. And great thanks for all the work itself. The result will be awsome. I am looking forward to finally swich but I am one of those people who want it to just work...
Not that windows does, not at all, but at least I am familiar with the quirks. I used Mandrak for a year in 1998 and was happy till I got some things that didn't want to connect. Most of that is solved though I still couldn't figure out how to get my bluetoth headset to work. I use internet phone all the time. Naturally I could just go back to a wired headset...
Ok, that beside... I saw last year a demonstration of induced tactual feedback. I am wrekking my brain to remember as this would be the solution for flat keyboards. It can give you any feedback you want, you can exactly tweak the kind of feedback, light, heavy or what ever. I can't remember how it worked but there were no moving parts but the skin would get the signals that gives the impression of movment.
It was done by measuring the excact vibration of the click you wanted to emulate and then... mmm, yes, what then, I think it must be a tiny electrical impulse from the touched surface or maybe from something on the finger itself.
Actually if I remember correctly they just projected some buttons and things on a surface. Means you don't even need the LCD just a tiny projector for keyboard and... display. Well that could make laptops pocket size...
The testing subjects were invariably astonished by the result, they could not feel the difference between the real mechanical button and the flat surface. And keept trying as their brain gave the impression of the real thing but they eyes saw only the flat unyielding surface.
Maybe someone reading this remembers.
Dada
Greeting'z,
Several years ago, I had a dream of a similar design:
it had one surface seamlessly divided into 4 inch tall bars that connected
together with hidden hinges, when you unlocked a segment, it was spring
loaded to seperate revealing the hinges, so that you could unlock them at
any segment and fold one or more sections over (back to back), or you could
disconnect a single henge and turn one section horizontally (side by side).
Each bar was a separate functional unit, and when the units were connected
together they would automatically pool there resources, and you could add
or remove as many as you wanted. If you touched two opposing corners of a
bar, it would open its config options.
The whole panel surface was "squishy" and you could set the sensitivity of
how deep an object depressed the surface, it could also detect the size,
and shape of the object, if you dropped a quarter on it, it would recognize
it as a circular object (in the dream it recognized it as a quarter),
it could also recogize multiple independant movements (you could type,
and draw on it at the same time).
There was no "Border" to the edge visable, it could display, or recieve input
to the very edge, and with the bars locked together the "line" of the edge
was so fine as to be invisable.
Every area of the surface could act as both input, or output simultaneously,
thus you could watch a movie and then access some special feature in the video,
by touching part of the display (as in the dream, I was showing it to someone,
touched a gun in a movie, and a transparent overlay appeared with the specs).
Finaly, in the dream, the whole body was made of a cystal like material,
and I could change its color, or transparency.
then a friend stepped up, and asked to use it, so I just unlocked half,
and detached it, instantly the display split into to two screens with the
same content, then I handed over, and when he grabed it, the display switched
to the login dialog (and looked alot like KDM).
Zarantu
P.S. Thank You, for all your Dedication, Hard Work, Imagination, and Excellent
Coding Skills, You Rock !!
And Apologies for the Anti-"Trash Can as Device Ejector" rant.
(Bad Day, of a Bad Week, in a Bad Month, in a particularly Crappy Year).
... However, I still think that concept is badly broken.
OLPC version 2 - dual screen
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