Keymap standardisation for the Sansa Clip

[mattofdoom]

Hello there,

I've registered with the forum especially to raise this particular topic, so you have my apologies if I have inadvertently commit some foolish newbie error.

I'm using Rockbox on a Sansa Clip (v2), and for the most part I really appreciate it. I especially enjoy gapless playback, the small fonts, file/folder browsing and rockblox. It's all rather impressive.

I keep getting driven back to booting with the usual firmware, though, because I find the current key-bindings frustratingly inconsistent and unintuitive. I get the impression that perhaps they have been condensed down from a map that makes sense on a larger player with more buttons, and it's lost a certain je ne sais quoi in the translation

Some examples:

At first, it appears that from the file/db browser or from the main menu, one cannot quickly reach the WPS without navigating to it from the menu. This seemed like a shame, because it's quite a useful function. After a bit of digging it transpires that it can be reached by holding 'Home' and pressing 'Select'. This seemed a bit cumbersome, and one has to be quick not to hold 'home' for too long as the little quick menu appears instead.

Later it transpires that when one is using the 'current playlist' screen, despite this screen having the same look and feel of the file/db browser, now one cannot reach the WPS using 'home' and 'select' anymore. One has to use 'left' now. On the topic of the playlist screen, from the WPS why does one have to *hold* 'down' to bring it up, when a quick press of 'down' does nothing. Why not just a quick press? And if holding 'down' gets one the playlist up, why does pressing 'left' clear it?

At least some things seem constant, like the 'home' button always brings up the main menu. That is, until one listens to the FM radio, when now you need to give the power switch a quick slide to bring up the menu, despite menu's usual 'home' button seeming to do nothing.

This is just a sample of my feelings on the topic, however I'm conscious of the fact that this post is already bordering on the wordy. I'd love to know what other clip users feel of the key-mapping: Did you ever manage to learn to use it in your pocket, like one can with the original firmware? Would you like to see things standardised a bit more?

Regards,
Matt.

[JdGordon]

instead of just examples of what is broken it would be far more useful to get a patch with the needed changes.
grab the source and look in apps/keymaps/ there should be a keymap-clipp.c or keymap-clip.c which defines how the buttons work.

The clip+ just doesnt have enough buttons to make it work well with rockbox' crazy amount of features, you need to decide what is more important, in your first example getting back to the menu is more important than getting to the WPS.

[mattofdoom]

JDG, I didn't intend to reel off a list of what I considered to be broken with the keymap (otherwise the list would have been longer), I was only attempting to illustrate my thoughts a little. You have my apologies if the tone was off.

I'd be quite happy to make and submit a patch for the clip to set the keys up a little more coherently, but I'd like to know that others would find it useful too. To this end I was hoping to stoke up a bit of discussion on the topic, to find out what people think of the current map and where their grips lie.

[nls]

I don't have a clip so i can't comment on your complaints specifically but keep in mind while making a keymap that different users have different usage patterns, what is important to you might not be important to others etc. so if you do make a patch be prepared to defend it since the whole keymap thing boils down to preference.
Also the keymap in the playlist viewer is pretty bad on other targets too.

[H3PO]

hey mattofdoom, i thought exactly the same when i first tried rockbox on my clip+. i'll start to contribute fixes like these once i got used to rockbox and the development conventions.