Feature Requests and Discussion

[Michael Folkerts]

I apologize in advance for the long message, but hopefully at least
one person will read this and think about these issues and we can have
a fruitful discussion. Maybe even point me in the right direction to
begin coding these changes.

Hi All,
I would love to get involved in development, however I am too busy
with classes and research at the moment. I use quill to take notes in
my graduate physics classes on an Asus Transformer almost every day
and I love it! The fountain pen responds to the "pressure" (actually
area) of my finger/stylus touching the screen quite nicely despite the
fact it was intended for the resistive digitizer.

I use quill in landscape mode 100% of the time due to the inaccuracy
of my nubby stylus forcing me to write big. I use a piece of silk
(actually my screen wiper/cleaner) to rest my palm on to prevent
unwanted touch signals while I write. I figure my case is common for
those without the a digitizer tablet. I'm not sure if users like me
are a priority, but, as I see it right now, quill is the best option
for taking notes based on the fact that it is vector based and one can
export PDFs easily into dropbox or any other app that reads PDF.

Here are a couple simple ideas for some of you to think about and try
implementing (mainly for us multi-touch only tablet users):

1) Regarding the "Move/Drag" tool: Being in landscape mode, every time
I create a new page, I must drag and zoom to make the page fit the
width of the screen, also, once I fill up the landscape area, I need
to drag the page up to create room to start writing again.
-- Add a "Move/Drag tool switches back" option that works like the
"Eraser switches back" option
-- And/Or enable the two finger (gesture) scroll to work on multi-
touch only tablets
-- Add a "fit page to width" option or button

2) Regarding the "Palm shield" and honeycomb system bar: The system
bar renders the palm shield ineffective for me, one solution I have
seen is to invert the whole app (user must lock auto-rotation) so that
the system bar appears upside-down at the top of the screen. Then the
palm shield will work great. I am aware of the "hide system bar
option," but not all of us want to root our system; we enjoy our
automatic Android system updates and the security of having no root
users :-)
-- Add a "flip mode" option to invert the whole app as described
above
-- Add an option to change the percentage of screen the palm
shield takes up (different values for landscape vs portrait please)

(This next one I think all users can agree on)

3) Regarding moving paths after writing/drawing: I often find that I
start writing or drawing something in a place that was not ideal and
want to move it rather than erase and re-draw (especially in class).
-- Add a "lasso tool" to select vector paths and move them after
they have been written. This tool could work as follows:
The fist tap enables the select mode, all paths that intersect the
single "select" path become part of the selection (similar to how the
eraser works), once the users lifts his pen or finger, the section is
highlighted somehow (traditionally by "marching ants") and the next
gesture will move the entire selection.
-- Alternatively you could implement two tools separately: select
and drag (different from page move/drag).
The latter approach opens up the possibility of selecting and editing
path properties like color, thickness, etc... of course you should be
able to undo any moves/changes.

Thanks!

PS: By default I am partial to these requests, but I honestly feel
that more grandiose requests might "clutter" quill. I love the
materialistic approach so far. Other apps already address PDF
annotation and image importing. Focusing on responsive vector graphic
sketching and note taking is the right thing to do!

I personally like to take a modular approach to the Android OS, I
prefer many well-made apps that can work with each other (though
import/export of STANDARD file formats) rather than one big bloated
app that sand-boxes all my stuff.

That being said, if you could evolve quill into something almost
Identical to Upad on iOS, that would be amazing too, just please
duplicate the notebook organization in a real set of file-system
folders.

[Stefan Langerman]

The upside-down option would indeed be great. This system bar is really annoying when I am writing at the bottom of the page.

[Volker Braun]

If you have root you can hide the bottom system bar, this is by far the best solution. Of course it requires root... 

I think that a upside-down mode has many practical problems. Unless you rewrite the whole Android GUI, you'll always have a mix of orientations. What about Toasts? Menu? 

[Michael Folkerts]

I understand that upside-down mode will show all menus upside-down as
well, maybe the main menu can be hidden (or moved) and only keep the
red-dot tools? Anyway, it may not be the right solution for now, so I
digress. Hopefully Honeycomb will get an update to allow hiding of
system bar for non-root or at least relocation of the bar (to the top,
left or right).

What about palm shield re-sizing, and other options mentioned (lasso,
fit to page, and drag mods)?

I was thinking that "drag/move switches back" would be trivial since
it was already implemented with erase tool... (perhaps not?).

Fit view to page width is a fairly basic feature; it could be added
under menu->page->fit width (check box?).
I guess we would have to think about weather or not to allow the page
drag action to take precedence and only force page width fitting on
page load? Or do you think it should be split into two features:
One is a tool that takes the current view and fits the page to width,
and the other being a setting that forces the view to fit to page
width on page load?
This would be a fun first task for me, perhaps I could give it a try
next week. After I clone the quill project, what code files should I
be looking for to modify?

Thanks

[Volker Braun]

It would be trivial to implement "drag/move switches back", I agree. The reason why I haven't done it yet is that it is a slippery slope that ends with all tools having preference settings ;-)

I think the following would be best:

  * erase and move/zoom default to "switch back" mode

  * remove the preferences entry for erase to switch back

  * double-tap (that is, selecting an already selected erase or move/zoom tool) locks it so that it does not switch back automatically

  * ideally, some visual feedback that the tool is locked (perhaps different backdrop color, or superimposed small lock icon).

If you want to get some taste for Android programming then this would be reasonably easy and self-contained. A good starting point would be to understand onToolboxListener() in QuillWriterActivity.java

Best wishes,

Volker