shithub: touchuichal

--- a/touchuichal.txt

+++ b/touchuichal.txt

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@

.AB

 The Plan 9 operating system has a specific idea for user interaction and user interfaces.

 In general, many aspects are well thought out and provide a mostly consistent look and feel throughout the whole operating system.

-However, all user interaction components are designed for a standard computer system: A computer screen paired with keyboard and mouse for interaction.

+However, all user interaction components are designed for a standard computer system: a computer screen paired with keyboard and mouse for interaction.

 In this paper we will explore different challenges we encounter when designing a specialized touch user interface for Plan 9 systems.

.AE

]]]

@@ -21,8 +21,8 @@

 # Why do we need a touch user interface?

 The world is changing.

-Especially in the last decades computer systems changed from expensive pieces of hardware to much smaller systems that embed everything into one device.

-While most computing expensive tasks are moved to the cloud, a full computer system is often not bigger than what can comfortable fit in your hand.

+Especially in the last two decades computer systems changed from expensive pieces of hardware to much smaller systems that embed everything into one device.

+While most computing expensive tasks are moved to the cloud, a full computer system is often not bigger than what can comfortably fit in your hand.

 [[[ms

 .\" quote of some dude stating that, if I can find it.

]]]

@@ -49,9 +49,9 @@

 Even big and expensive operating systems like Microsoft Windows tried that, and failed.

 A much more important point is that the best touch user interfaces are designed for touch from the ground up, most notably Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

-Both systems are widespread and their handling of touch interfaces is often seen as the `de facto' standard.

+Both systems are widespread and their handling of touch interfaces is often seen as the ‥de facto‥ standard.

-This `de facto' standard doesn't fit the Plan 9 operating system too well though.

+This ‥de facto‥ standard doesn't fit the Plan 9 operating system too well though.

 Plan 9 has its own, very specific idea of important aspects of user interfaces.

 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.

@@ -92,9 +92,9 @@

 Most of them are very well known today and big development houses like Apple and Google found good solutions to those problems.

 The first big challenge that comes to mind is a large variety of different devices.

-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.

+Big devices like tablets or multimedia screens as well as very small devices like smartphones or even smart watches provide touch hardware interfaces, which requires a solution that covers a variety of screen sizes.

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

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

 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.

@@ -115,11 +115,11 @@

 Even some laptops have some kind of touch screen mode with bigger buttons, like Windows 8.

 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:

+Most notably, capacitive touch screens often allow multiple fingers to be used for interactions at the same time.

+This multitouch feature gives us many new possibilities to overcome some of the mentioned challenges, and others, but also presents a challenge in itself:

 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.

+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.

@@ -135,12 +135,12 @@

 ### Text interface

-The text interface in this context means any type of text-based shell-like user interaction.

+The text interface in this context means any type of text-based, shell-like user interaction.

 In this regards, Plan 9 is very much like UNIX:

 It provides a text-based shell interpreter and lots of interaction with the system is supposed to be done using this shell.

-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.

+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.

@@ -153,16 +153,17 @@

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

]]]

-The survey shows that users consider the text interfaces as a very important part of Plan 9.

+The survey shows that users consider the text interfaces to be a very important part of Plan 9.

 The feature scored more than 4.5 out of 5 points.

 ### Graphics

-As mentioned before, rio is a graphical application that also allows to run other graphical applications inside its windows.

+As mentioned before, rio is a graphical application that allows other graphical applications to run inside its windows.

 It is worth mentioning that Plan 9 ships with both rio and a bigger set of graphical applications.

 Plan 9 also comes with a few different libraries for developing graphical applications, though some of them are more often used than others.

-The survey shows that the GUI is important for Plan 9 systems, however there are users who only use the text-based input methods.

+The survey shows that the GUI is important for Plan 9 systems.

+However there are users who only use the text-based input methods.

 The feature scored 3.3 out of 5 points.

 ### Mouse interaction

@@ -202,7 +203,7 @@

 The plumber is Plan 9's integrated component for inter-process communication.

 It is possible to do various things using the plumber, all configurable using a simple configuration file.

-The general functionality of the plumber can also be found in other operating systems, also mobile systems.

+The general functionality of the plumber can also be found in other operating systems, including mobile systems.

 Android, for example, has the concept of ``intents'', which is very similar in a few aspects [AndroidIntents].

 However, the biggest difference is that the plumber can be configured in much more detail by the user.

@@ -226,7 +227,8 @@

 ### Namespaces

 For many people, namespaces in Plan 9 are the reason to use Plan 9 instead of other systems.

-While it is an original Plan 9 feature, Linux nowadays has a way to at least build a dynamic namespace, however, this is still far away from namespaces in Plan 9.

+While it is an original Plan 9 feature, Linux nowadays has a way to at least build a dynamic namespace.

+However, this is still far away from namespaces in Plan 9.

 Although namespaces are a very important feature of Plan 9, a few users pointed out that it's mostly useful on a server.

 This detail is important to know, because most touch screen devices are also end user devices, not servers.

@@ -267,7 +269,7 @@

 On Plan 9, this is done with many applications and system components.

 From low-level system features and drivers (e. g. /dev) to high-level components (e. g. webfs) and applications (e. g. acme), the general feature allows for much flexibility and simple access to how the software works.

-Everything else about this features is already handled in the section about namespaces.

+Everything else about this feature is already handled in the section about namespaces.

 ### Factotum