#sailfishos-meeting: Sailfish OS, open source, collaboration -- 15th October 2020

Meeting started by sledges at 07:00:00 UTC (full logs).

Meeting summary

    1. Meeting information and agenda can be found here: (sledges, 07:00:11)
    2. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/community-meeting-on-irc-15th-oct-2020/2425 (sledges, 07:00:14)

  2. Brief introduction (5 min). Please prefix your name/handle with #info (sledges, 07:00:41)
    1. Simonas Leleiva - privateer for Jolla (sledges, 07:00:47)
    2. Otto Mäkelä - community (ExTechOp, 07:01:09)
    3. Jussi Maaniitty - Sailor at Jolla (maajussi, 07:01:29)
    4. Anton Thomasson - purveyor of shitty apps, killer of trees (just watching from afar) (attah_work, 07:01:32)
    5. Andrew Branson - sailor @ Jolla (abranson, 07:01:36)
    6. Ville Nummela - Sailor @ Jolla (ViGe, 07:02:05)
    7. Chris Adams - developer @ Jolla (chriadam, 07:02:33)
    8. Nikita Ukhrenkov - sailor at Jolla (TheKit, 07:04:38)
    9. ApB - community (ApBBB, 07:05:58)

  3. harbour library policy (20 min -- asked by KeeperoftheKeys) (sledges, 07:06:14)
    1. <KeeperoftheKeys> some details about the topic: In light of Jolla just breaking any app using python3 sqlite bindings by seperating the bindings from python3 into a separate package the whole "claim to carefully curated guaranteed to be stable" allowed dependencies in harbour is a fallacy, (sledges, 07:06:19)
    2. <KeeperoftheKeys> at this time we can’t even fix our apps by adding a dependency for python3-sqlite since that is blocked by harbour, (sledges, 07:06:26)
    3. <KeeperoftheKeys> it took me several hours of back and forth on the forum to even get an internal bug on the subject opened. (sledges, 07:06:33)
    4. <KeeperoftheKeys> a. This is a pretty bad slip up, I only figured it out by digging in the changelogs, that should have been pointed out ahead of time. (sledges, 07:06:39)
    5. <KeeperoftheKeys> b. If "accepted" libs get broken you might as well allow the "unaccepted" libs too. (sledges, 07:06:46)
    6. <Jolla> python3-sqlite was broken on the Early Access release. The early access releases should be considered as beta. Their purpose is to find exactly this kind of bugs. (sledges, 07:07:02)
    7. about additional libs: allowing mpris is on Jolla's list, but abranson mentioned there might be couple of flakey problems to sort out in mpris first (sledges, 07:23:45)
    8. for the record, please be patient when raising issues on forum, Jolla is responding in forums as a company via its sailors, and the reaction time can't be within the same day, as internal discussions or other activities take place (sledges, 07:26:04)
    9. in future early breakages should hopefully get improved via the cbeta testers (pre-EA) as long as the apps are concerned (sledges, 07:27:34)

  4. Consistency of SFOS UX/UI across apps (15 min -- asked by ApBBB) (sledges, 07:28:02)
    1. <ApBBB> Lately -and as SFOS progresses- more and more examples of apps (jolla ones like email, camera) that are included in the OS “break” the SFOS UX by choosing traditional taps/buttons instead of swipes and gestures. (sledges, 07:28:12)
    2. <ApBBB> So is jolla trying to move away from the gesture paradigm, is it just that the devs (aurora os people???) have no idea what they are doing and don’t care about consisteny, and what jolla will do to fix this and make the OS consistent everywhere. (sledges, 07:28:17)
    3. <Jolla> The short answer is that we try to maintain and nurture the gesture paradigm. This is not simple though, as you've seen. Being different of mainstream requires balancing and sometimes we need to do compromises to accommodate problems we've identified in our user studies. (sledges, 07:28:32)
    4. a forum post from Jolla's UX chief Joona is in the works, explaining incoming calls redesign rationale (sledges, 07:38:01)

  5. UI (15 min -- asked by Sefriol) (sledges, 07:43:22)
    1. <Sefriol> Old SFOS Case Study: (sledges, 07:43:26)
    2. https://together.jolla.com/question/195283/sailfish-os-ux-case-study/ (sledges, 07:43:29)
    3. <Sefriol> Broader topic, but in general SFOS has from the start been about one handed ease of use and intuitive gesture control. Latest “major” update was the inclusion of tabs. (sledges, 07:43:32)
    4. <Sefriol> However this is also something that highlights one of the “problems” with current gesture controls: horizontal swipe. It needs to be really precise when there is vertical content. (sledges, 07:43:38)
    5. <Sefriol> Example of using natural “arc swipe”: (sledges, 07:43:44)
    6. https://t.me/SFOSFanclub/40662 (sledges, 07:43:47)
    7. Also with the inclusion of top menu, official supported devices start to get taller and taller, making it harder to reach. Maybe allow to customize UI so that you could get it from the bottom instead? (sledges, 07:43:59)
    8. <Jolla> Tweaking of touch parameters is definitely area that should get more focus, there are already known touch issues with e.g. Keyboard, Camera and Gallery (also reported by community in the forum). We are also aware of regression in one-handed usage due to the growth of average phone display dimensions. (sledges, 07:44:26)

  6. QML component separtion (5 min -- asked by Sefriol) (sledges, 07:58:43)
    1. <Sefriol> Separating QML components from closed source and publishing them to git: (sledges, 07:58:47)
    2. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/separating-qml-components-from-closed-source-and-publishing-them-to-git/1894 (sledges, 07:58:50)
    3. <Sefriol> Maajussi promised to take a look. Any updates on this front? (sledges, 07:58:53)
    4. <maajussi> No news available at the moment to share. Need to come back to this later. (sledges, 07:59:01)

  7. Overlay apps in 3.4 and later (15 min -- asked by coderus) (sledges, 07:59:33)
    1. <coderus> 3.4 update has broke overlay apps utilizing window category properties. Launching such apps produce black screen. Problem was reported internally long before 3.4 update came out, but no action/suggestion was taken. (sledges, 07:59:39)
    2. <coderus> 3.4 update obsoleted some useful applications and “bricked” devices of some users. Jolla position was: “we never officially supported this kind of hack for overlay apps, so it’s your own fault”, in my opinion it looks very frustrating, my apps was allowed and published to Jolla Store with no problems. (sledges, 07:59:52)
    3. <coderus> Just tell if proper/replacement API is/will be available for making overlay apps? I need to decide the future of my applications. (sledges, 08:00:05)
    4. <Jolla> Looks like the system considers your window to be full-screen (fully opaque) if the background drawing gets disabled. Commented to the forum topic some ideas how your app could be fixed, let's continue the discussion there: (sledges, 08:00:26)
    5. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/3-4-bug-lack-of-opacity-for-overlayed-window/1449/10 (sledges, 08:00:30)
    6. list of overlay apps: (sledges, 08:03:55)
    7. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/community-meeting-on-irc-15th-oct-2020/2425/10 (sledges, 08:03:57)
    8. Battery Overlay, ScreenTapShot2, Edge mode in Aliendalvik Control, okboard, taskswitcher, phonehook, Tint Overlay (sledges, 08:05:00)
    9. in the light of many actual apps use an overlay hack, a need for stable API is augmented (sledges, 08:08:52)
    10. regarding the stable API work prioritising, Jolla cannot say before discussing internally other than we will look into it (sledges, 08:15:13)

  8. Improving the calendar design (10min -- asked by Raymaen) (sledges, 08:15:31)
    1. <Raymaen> It would be great to get an official Response from Jolla designers to this topic and if there are plans to make the calendar app more useful for business purposes and get a better overview over the appointments. even if it is somehow similar to my draft: (sledges, 08:15:37)
    2. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/improved-calendar-design/1579 (sledges, 08:15:43)
    3. <Jolla> We are constantly working on calendar app, recently more on the bugs than design. The minimal main calendar flows could (should) definitely be improved. (sledges, 08:16:12)
    4. a shout-out to dcaliste for his great work on the calendar (community member contributing internally, yes it's possible, apply herein;) (sledges, 08:18:21)

  9. General Discussion (5mins) (sledges, 08:20:23)
    1. https://blog.jolla.com (sledges, 08:21:56)
    2. One participant just said "the less android the better", and this tweet just backs it up (I hope Fernschreiber receives a lot of contribs as it's FOSS!) (sledges, 08:27:23)
    3. https://twitter.com/Ygriega/status/1307765659619725312 (sledges, 08:27:26)

  10. Next meeting time and date (5 min) (sledges, 08:29:34)
    1. Next meeting will be held on Thursday 29th October 2020 at 8:00am UTC: 2020-10-29T08Z (sledges, 08:32:23)


Meeting ended at 08:33:16 UTC (full logs).

EDIT: fixed the next meeting date and time

Action items

  1. (none)


People present (lines said)

  1. sledges (112)
  2. ApBBB (44)
  3. KeeperoftheKeys (28)
  4. jpetrell_ (26)
  5. flypig (14)
  6. ViGe (11)
  7. coderus (10)
  8. abranson (9)
  9. attah_work (8)
  10. ExTechOp (7)
  11. chriadam (5)
  12. sailbot (4)
  13. NotKit (2)
  14. maajussi (1)
  15. TheKit (1)


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