Survex on a PDA?

[Wookey]

+++ Olly Betts [04-10-13 15:25 +0100]:
> On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 03:09:58PM +0100, Wookey wrote:
> > +++ Josep Guarro [04-10-08 15:53 +0200]:
> > > I was just thinking if it is possible to run Survex (Cavern & Aven) on
> > > the PDA Sharp Zaurus wich is operated with Linux OS.
> > > 
> > > Is it possible?
> > 
> > It should be - I ran survex on an ipaq a year or so ago. I used xcaverot
> > rather than aven at that time (much smaller footprint) and it now has a
> > 'pda' mode which is automatically used when the screen is smaller than VGA.
> > This has smaller controls and adds a 'left/right click' mode button to deal
> > with the single-type-of-click touchscreen control.
> 
> Would aven be usable on this sort of device with minor adjustments
> (smaller controls, maybe making the side panel and main view tabs,
> etc)?  Or are more major changes required?

easiest would just be to have a 'fullscreen' mode. Otherwise there is a lot
of space wasted on menubar, toolbar, status bar, tabs and controls - which
would leave approximately none for a useful view of the cave.

really need to scrap either toolbar or menus, depth bar to get a sensible
'normal view'

> > Last week I got aven and therion and survex installed on a 'minilaptop/big
> > PDA' which is arm based (with a keybaord and 800x600 screen)
> 
> That's more like a laptop from a few years ago - perhaps a little
> slower, but 800x600 is a totally usable screensize.

Indeed. any it has a real keyboard so the onlything you have to fix is
making interface single-click compatible. (and it still requires care -
plenty of modern apps with 4 toolbars use up a lot of your 800x600 without
seing much document).

> Another question I have is how does opengl perform on these devices?  I
> fired up 1.1.1 on a very old win98 box which used to belong to my
> brother's father-in-law.  The wrong graphics card driver is installed so
> it only works in 16 colours, but I was suprised to find that even with
> dithered colours and no hardware 3D acceleration it ran acceptably.

Not got that working yet, but easy enough to try.

> > It is pretty nifty. Again - some changes are needed for touscreen control
> > (no right-click).
> 
> Do we need an on screen "action" selector (rotate/tilt/drag)?  Or are
> there buttons on the device we can use as modifiers?

There is a real keyboard with plenty of modifiers on this one, but that's
not always true of touchscreen devices (for the more general case).

Wookey
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