shithub: touchuichal

--- a/touchuichal.txt

+++ b/touchuichal.txt

@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@

 For example, it has its own mechanism for inter-process communication, it's own view of resources and has a unique user interface, which leads to a very distinct user experience.

 Let's assume that we try to achieve this same user experience using the commonly known standard of touch user interfaces.

-Many interactions just don't `feel' right.

+Many interactions probably wouldn't `feel' right.

 Sending some data to another program?

 Sure, on Plan 9 we'd probably use the plumber.

 On modern mobile operating systems we often find a system that's quite similar.

@@ -71,7 +71,7 @@

 # Challenges

-Since the scope of a paper is way too small, and the scope of designing and implementing user interfaces are way too big, this paper will focus on the design challenges only.

+Since the scope of a paper is way too small, and the scope of designing and implementing user interfaces are way too big, this paper will focus on design challenges only.

 To do that properly we'll have to take a look at what Plan 9 users experience when interacting with the operating system.

 To gather more insight, a survey was done to ask users about their habits and how important various features of Plan 9 are². [Meyer]

 [[[ms

@@ -95,12 +95,12 @@

 Big devices like tablets or multimedia screens as well as very small devices like smartphones or even smart watches provide touch hardware interfaces, which demands for a solution for varying screen sizes.

 If we compare the size of a smart watch screen with the size of a smartphone, we immediately see the big difference.

-While we can fit a page of text on the smartphone and still have enough space to add a few buttons, it is impossible to do that on a smart watch.

+While we can fit a few paragraphs of text on the smartphone and still have enough space to add a few buttons, it is impossible to do that on a smart watch.

 If we move over to a tablet device, we can often fit a whole DIN A4 page on it, plus a few buttons for interaction.

 Speaking of buttons, this reminds us of the next common challenge: The button size.

 With a standard mouse and keyboard computer setup we can often live with very small buttons for interaction.

-Touch screens have no mouse for interaction, but the hand of the user.

+Most common touch screens have no mouse for interaction, but the hand of the user.

 Therefore we must consider the size of their fingers, since that's what they use to interact, so we basically have two options:

 (1) We provide a stylus for smaller buttons.

@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@

 This method is well established, but often has other implications.

 For example, the user usually only has one stylus, which can also be lost easily.

 Many people use a stylus or any other form of pen to interact with their computer devices, but usually just on (at least) tablet sized devices.

-Smaller devices like touch screens or even smart watches usually aren't used with a stylus.

+Smaller devices like smartphones or smart watches usually aren't used with a stylus.

 (2) We make the buttons bigger.

 This is the most common method for handheld devices such as smartphones and smart watches.

@@ -117,13 +117,13 @@

 In addition to those challenges we also get more options when thinking about touch screen devices.

 Most notable, capacitive touch screens often allow multiple fingers to interact at the same time.

 This multitouch feature gives us many new possibilities to overcome the mentioned and also other challenges, but are also a challenge in itself:

-What would the user interface react to multitouch input?

+How would the user interface react to multitouch input?

 Most modern touch systems tried to master this challenge and they also established some `de facto' standard; most users learned to interact with that.

 It is almost common knowledge that you can zoom in and out of images using two fingers, for example.

 This paper should not discuss these and many more challenges and possible solutions.

-I believe many people already did that with varying focus on specific topics.

+I believe that many people already did that with varying focus on specific topics.

 ## Three pillars of user interfaces on Plan 9

@@ -141,6 +141,13 @@

 However, Plan 9 not only provides the shell itself, but also another graphical shell called `rio'.

 This `rectangle multiplexor' gives the user the option to open multiple shells inside windows, which provides some type of multi tasking for the user.

+In addition to that, rio provides extensions to this text-based shell experience.

+For example, the user is able to interact with the text inside the shell windows.

+Changing the output or previous commands is possible, as well as sending it to the prompt for execution.

+Furthermore, it is possible to access the text inside rio shell windows.

+This way, applications can extend the text shell even further.

 [[[ms

 .\" Using rio windows to handle graphical applications will be discussed in the next pillar.