arm-netbook March 2017

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

39 participants
27 discussions

Laptop LCD Touch Pad: Display KB Layout Idea
by Alexander Ross 25 Mar '19

25 Mar '19

On the laptops lcd touch pad. Here’s a idea for a feature. When leaning new keyboard layout. Say dovrak for example. The trouble is learning where the new keys are. For me at least, one could do with a constant reminder. What if the lcd touch pad displayed the current pressed keys? Maybe on a image of the keyboard, meaning some way of representing where the key you pressed is relative to other keys. So if its the wrong one you can see where the right one is. This info is only displayed while the keyboard is in use. When the touch pad is in use it switches to a relevant display for touch pad use. As for when the user is using not the touch pad nor the keyboard? What then? display keymap? If playing video display: video controls, time left, is internet speed fast enough for this stream? etc.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 22 Sep '18

22 Sep '18

I would highly recommend avoiding any logos, without proper historical reference. One of the problems with traditional Linux icons, are that they are very un-iconic. It's better to be textually based, in my opinion, than to use disorienting imagery. At this point, most of the clay has already set so referencing/alluding-to other gnu projects [such as blender] wouldn't be detrimental, however ascii has a very richer history of use by "hacktivists". Referencing some historically relevant (to "hacktivism") ascii iconography either overtly or subtly, kindof more or less as a hat tip to communities which support said historical events will cause the logo a greater likelihood of being regarded as iconic. I wish I had specific examples, but possibly using cloister black font would be a subtle hat tip to anonymous for some individuals use of various letters in that font as copy-cat of L from Death Note. Another thing of note, would be that we need to be careful who we tip our hats to, to be careful of who in the future people might assume us to endorse. A font is innocuous enough, that it can be adapted later due to circumstance (should a need arise to disassociate) without damaging the recognize-ability of any logo. The universal and modular style of blender, is a good point to mimic. A solid dot in the center of the "O" would probably be a subtle enough correlation to the blender logo. This is the pattern of thinking we need in developing logos and "slogans". Thinking about what sounds catchy only correlates us with random corporate culture. We don't need to be entirely original as we have a history to fall back on. However originality might also help distinguish us from our predecessors, the last thing we want is to fail to distinguish ourselves from your neighborhood corporation. I would recommend Luke to contact Wenqing Yang a.k.a. "Yummei", using the notability of the project to attract their attention. I would like to point out that despite being a cultural figure (famous artist) in the hacktivist community they previously lauched a multi-million dollar successful indiegogo which caused them much heart ache (per their blog) over legal controversy with so-called partners and their personal admonishment that they failed to do enough. >From: Alexander Ross <maillist_arm-netbook(a)aross.me> >To: Linux on small ARM machines <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> >Cc: >Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:07:15 +0000 >Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos >this all these efforts, got me to have a play around too. :) > > i was started having a go at one idea of letters inserting into each > other kinda like a module. > > I had put E and O in side the M. it then kinda looked like/spelled Meoo > like a cat. > So what about a darn cat logo? maybe a cat playing with a eoma68 card in > its paws? > > sry for the yet another internet cat image type of suggestion, never > thought id be making one heh.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 21 Sep '18

21 Sep '18

> The idea about a dot in the "O" of EOMA made me think of fonts where the > dot is in the 0 (zero) to distinguish it from O (capital letter O) As we > all are somehow computer related I would find such a design confusing. If it was really to be in honor of the modularity and progress of blender, one would want to make the "O" not really in any particular font, but to look exactly the shape blender logo, except without the flay or the color scheme: a perfect solid-color circle within another perfect circle. It wouldn't theoretically be confusing because the mark you are thinking of is a hollow circle in an oval. Letter-o'es and zeroes can only sometimes be confusing because in some fonts they are both written as vertical ovals, not just the zero. I'm not sure on the required dimensions of a certification mark, however, the solid-shape flag-esque convention I've noticed among popular one's, often seems to detract from the continuity of the design on the objects that bear them, making them seem particularly foreign and like they don't belong. The vaporwave-esque color palate which most of them choose only add to this affect, as if they themselves are trying to distance themselves on some subconscious level from their endorsements. As a side effect to this, it makes them harder to trust. Any symbolism of any significant body, displays historical awareness.. It's what tells people whether they can trust it, before reading or attempting to judge it. Therein lies the axiom, there is no such thing as an original thought, so, if by means of arbitrary work dedicated to make more concise and thoroughly plastered an announcement of what historical or cultural event may have inspired such thoughts and such work, people will then engage in the arbitrarily difficult work of judging whether the project is sincere or not. In other words, if we don't display more than necessary effort in our symbol that can be recognized with several magnitudes less effort than it took to generate, then no highly-self-valuing person will have any sane reason to take us seriously, because if they took every slightly promising project, which failed to create a Sybil-certificate reputation in this manner, then they would never find a single valuable project in their lifetime (obviously this is an exaggeration).

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please use libre services for public discussion and development of EOMA68 libre hardware and software
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 03 Apr '17

03 Apr '17

>> https://github.com/normandc/EOMA68/tree/master/Microdesktop/Images > > normand, can you please not use non-free proprietary git services for > this project, it sends completely the wrong message. please delete > that github repository immediately, it brings the EOMA68 project's > reputation into disrepute and that's completely unacceptable. correction: if you wish to you use proprietary services for private (paid, subscribed, totally isolated from public view) use that's absolutely fine and is entirely your prerogative and decision, but if it's public and *especially* if it's for interaction with people on this list, thus giving the impression that the use of proprietary non-free services for the development of libre hardware and software is perfectly acceptable at this very early phase of the EOMA68 project, that's not an acceptable impression to make. sorry for not mentioning it earlier. l.

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microdesktop casework as DXF files for laser-cutting
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 03 Apr '17

03 Apr '17

hi i'd like to introduce mark, one of the fosdem staffers, who runs a company http://lusis.eu and he has offered to do the micro-desktop casework. however first thing that's needed is: GPLv3-licensed DXF files! now, these need to be done as 3mm stacks, so that will be something like 7 separate DXF files. i _could_ do it but i'd like to give people the opportunity to be part of this project, first. we're gonna have to do the DXF files from PDFs (datasheets, PCB layout) and from looking at the photos of the prototype that was arranged by crowdsupply 2 years ago. http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop - look for the 1.7 pcb pdf if you'd like to help. also apologies, being in china, the internet speed here is so f*****d i simply can't keep up with messages. i've seen the logo discussion, i'll be able to review it when i'm back in taiwan some time around the 1st april. if you are going to reply and would like to help with the DXF drawings PLEASE BE BRIEF and STAY ON-TOPIC under this subject-line. i know we generally don't do that here on arm-netbooks but in this case it's really important.... at least for the next 10 days. thanks everyone. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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back to taiwan, internet access not available for a while
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 29 Mar '17

29 Mar '17

am moving to a new apartment, internet access has to be applied for. don't know how long that will take. will need to arrange borrowing internet access. l.

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passthrough card stm32f072 firmware
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 21 Mar '17

21 Mar '17

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 9:33 PM, Albert ARIBAUD <albert.aribaud(a)free.fr> wrote: > Hi Luke, > > Le Mon, 13 Mar 2017 16:13:26 +0000 > Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl(a)lkcl.net> a écrit: > >> ah! albert! did you get my email, am looking to invite you to help >> with I2C EEPROM reading for the passthrough card (which has another >> STM32F072...) > > Yes -- sorry I did not answer this week-end. Of course I'd be happy to > help! aawesome okaaayy here's the schematic: http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/passthrough/ EOMA68_PASSTHROUGH_3.pdf i just realised i made a couple of mistakes, the reset "current-sinking-protecting-against-overvoltage" diode is the wrong way round, and the BOOT0 TP should be a 3.3v not ground oh well that explains a lot about why i can't see the damn thing on the USB bus after trying to reset it... :) ok the primary task that's needed is: to read the VESA I2C EEPROM from the microdesktop board and to feed the resultant data out, on request, to the TFP401a. so it's two main parts: * read (in bit-banging mode!) an I2C EEPROM * emulate an I2C EEPROM (probably best done via DMA and interrupts) let's track it through - microdesktop pinouts: http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop/ v1.7 schematic microdesktop SCL 17 microdesktop SDA 22 and that goes through to.... GPIO_2 on passthrough schematic MCU_PWM0 on passthrough schematic which are PC6 (needing to be SCL) PA8 (needing to be SDA) respectively. the *secondary* task is that a userspace-programming firmware bootloader/uploader is needed... *on the USB* interface - the STM32F072 doesn't actually have one. i could have left BOOT0 pulled HIGH so that the STM32F072 always goes into bootloader mode but it may be needed for early power-on initialisation and to have some sort of "default" EDID response as well as bring up the TFP401a in cases where people simply don't upload firmware to it at all. the first part is critical to the functionality i believe - a first prototype phase would be to just set up a static EDID buffer (static string) and return that as an emulated I2C EEPROM "read" operation. btw if you haven't _got_ an I2C EEPROM of some kind (AT24C64) kicking around then perhaps simply wiring up two I2C interfaces back-to-back in DMA mode would do the trick :) *really* appreciated your help here albert. l.

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Logos
by Mike Leimon 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

> The first one has something that looks suspiciously like a penis on the > bottom-right. > > I'm sure it doesn't look like that if you're an electrical engineer, or > whatever, but people -- especially kids and teenagers -- *will* see > that, and that's probably not the kind of attention EOMA needs. :) My apologies for the unintended phallic imagery... That wasn't what I was aiming for. I was actually just trying to use some different EE symbols to reconstruct the `M` and the `A` of EOMA. I was using the list of symbols from the following reference. http://rapidtables.com/electric/electrical_symbols.htm I think the offending symbol you are referring to is the `OR` symbol. Just to better explain what I was aiming at, I took some colors to the original symbols to highlight the individual letter representations. http://i.imgur.com/jjUbFx5.png In the color coded (first) version the E is in red, O is in blue, M is in green and A is in pink. > By the way, I think these are the best logos I've seen on this list. The > only gripe I have (well, other than the unintentional phallus in the > first one) is that they don't really seem to represent modularity; the > first one, in particular, rather looks like a circuit board, and one of > the major points of EOMA is that users *don't* have to look at circuit > boards to perform upgrades; they just have to pop out a card and replace > it with another card. It seems like there must be some possible way to > use this basic logo concept to represent that somehow. In both of the logos that sent out the `E` was actually supposed to represent an EOMA CPU/passthrough card. That is why it looks like a squatty elongated E. I represented the O in the way that I did as I wanted it to represent the PCMCIA slot or housing that it fits into. So together the E and the O represent a modular CPU card being inserted into a device/housing. For the first logo I was intending to show that the specification provides an incredibly low level connection between the CPU card and the housing. For the second logo... I was thinking that I liked some of the ideas and imagery of the first but that it was way too busy. Plus and end user might get a bit bewildered by it. Oh and I have one more general comment about logo creation of this sort... I think that it is very important to make sure it will look good rendered in only black and white because, that is essentially what it is going to look like when the logo/certification mark gets silk-screened onto a product. -Mike

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Logos
by Mike Leimon 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

Okay, I feel like I should take a swing or two at this as well. In the following two cases, there isn't any special font being used. I'm just using inkscape to trace out the characters that I want show... http://imgur.com/GrnfRHe Of these two logos that I sent, my preference is for the second. My personal opinion is that you shouldn't try and get too hung up about the acronym that you are trying to capture and represent... (I say this even though I did my best to incorporate the letters... blah). I think sometimes that capturing the concept is more important than capturing the acronym. Case in point, take a look at the USB logo: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cId-qdXRcqg/UXE0Nya6FAI/AAAAAAAAAPU/8KGiICpEQa0/s… The logo is incredibly simple and doesn't try and spell out USB.. however, it does capture the essence of the interface and what it seeks to accomplish and I think that is what makes it memorable. That is really all I wanted to drop by and say. -Mike

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Logos
by John Luke Gibson 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

I was wondering what people think of the Cloister Black letter E for the EOMA logo. I can imagine that some people might find it hard to read or understand. Legible enough any one would suppose? http://www.deathnotenews.com/uploads/1/7/3/9/17393465/5192168_orig.png In case anyone is worried about copyright claim, apparently the original authors found the font on gimp, which is absurd because it's not an in-built font so it must have been a system font that they just casually assumed was free since they found it in gimp >.> Regardless, I found the font as a free [as in beer] font on a font sale website with the name matching and each letter meticulously matching. Through there I found the author's website which is in German and has many other font downloads of various styles. Through google-translate I discovered that german text on the page said free for "private" use, whatever that means (maybe if someone knows German?) and they reiterated "you may use" multiple times in the comments. Unfortunately, they seem to have a lot of fonts on the website which they've been updating occasionally "Cloister Black" included. In fact the name no longer shows "Cloister Black" on their website and instead shows "Old English", but through the wayback machine I found an archived version that shows "Cloister Black". I'll post the link here when I get a chance, I saved it on my other computer.

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arm-netbook March 2017