So many things in computers get reinvented…new platforms throw away amazing things old platforms did. I guess they have to to make it a new platform.
Android runs on linux…but threw away the X11 graphics stack. X11 is old and has tons of features…plus many drawbacks. Even though X11 could run in 700k, Google wanted their own eco system and chose to write their own graphics stack…
So, I babble as usual…
X11 had this great feature which they called a “virtual desktop”. Your screen back then was only 640x480 resolution but who cares…make a virtual desk with a resolution of 2048x2048 and pan the physical screen around it. Move the mouse to the edge of the screen and it pans across the virtual in that direction. Some of the cool virtual window managers had a little zoomed out view of all of your windows and you could click that to pan to your app. Really useful feature.
So, how does this idea relate to FAW? (no I dont know enough about android to know if this is doable. yes I googled. no I didnt find anything).
We have low resolution screens on our watches. How about holding one button down and then tilting your wrist to pan around a larger screen. Perhaps only for some apps. Let go of the button and if the screen isnt touched in 5 seconds, it recenters. And or pan + zoom. Hold the button down and I zoom in and pan. In this case the desktop wound not be larger but I could finally see stuff. Ordinary Android Accessibliity does this somehow. Perhaps this could be expanded into a larger virtual desktop.
Anyone have any technical info about if this is doable? Can you write a window manager for android? Any opinions about my crazy ideas?