Jonas Dreßler of the GNOME Project has published a status report on the adoption of the GNOME Shell for smartphones. To carry out the work, a grant was received from the German Ministry of Education as part of the support for socially significant program projects.
It is noted that adaptation for smartphones is facilitated by the fact that recent releases of GNOME have a certain basis for working on small touch screens. For example, there is a customizable application navigation interface that supports arbitrary drag&drop rearrangement and multi-page layout. Screen gestures are already supported, such as the swipe gesture for changing screens, which are close to the control gestures needed on mobile devices. On mobile devices, you can also use many of the GNOME concepts used on desktop systems, such as the quick settings block, the notification system, and the on-screen keyboard.
As part of the GNOME mobile adaptation project, the developers defined a roadmap for the development of functionality and produced working prototypes of the home screen, application launcher, search engine, on-screen keyboard, and other core concepts. However, specific related features such as unlocking the screen with a PIN code, receiving calls while the screen is locked, emergency calls, flashlight, etc. are not yet covered. The Pinephone Pro smartphone is used as a platform for testing developments.
Among the main tasks outlined are:
- New API for XNUMXD gesture navigation (implemented a new gesture tracking mechanism and redesigned input handling in Clutter).
- Detection of launch on a smartphone and adaptation of interface elements for small screens (implemented).
- Creation of a separate panel layout for mobile devices - the top panel with indicators and the bottom panel for navigation (in progress).
- Desktops and organization of work with several running applications. Launching applications on mobile devices in full screen mode (in progress).
- Adaptation of the interface for navigation through the list of installed applications for different screen resolutions, for example, creating a compact version for correct work in portrait mode (in progress).
- Creation of a version of the on-screen keyboard for working in portrait mode (at the stage of a conceptual prototype).
- Creation of an interface for quickly changing settings, convenient for use on mobile devices (conceptual prototype stage).
Source: opennet.ru