Emacs for Android

Posted Jul 1, 2023 12:08 UTC (Sat) by mzamazal (subscriber, #126307)
In reply to: Emacs for Android by repetitivestrain
Parent article: Emacs for Android

Thank you for the tip about touch-screen-display-keyboard. The keyboard is needed even for read-only buffers in order to be able to invoke various commands (quitting, switching buffers, mode specific commands, ...). Part of this could be indeed achieved by using menus or the toolbar but not everything (and menus + toolbar are unusable for me in the default configuration because they are too small on my phone, and all the text is quite small for me). Having some special keys, which are not present on typical onscreen keyboards, easily accessible is obviously useful with Emacs while using alternative keyboards containing them may not be practical for various reasons; but perhaps it's not that important once the graphical environment is fully OK. I'll give it another try.

I think it would help if there was a tutorial on the web for the Android Emacs port. The included Info documentation is hard to access initially because of the usage issues discussed.

Text input suggestions etc. can be used in Termux in the text input bar displayed after swiping the key bar to left.

Emacs for Android

Posted Jul 2, 2023 0:41 UTC (Sun) by repetitivestrain (guest, #165872) [Link] (2 responses)

> Thank you for the tip about touch-screen-display-keyboard. The keyboard is needed even for read-only buffers in order to be able to invoke various commands (quitting, switching buffers, mode specific commands, ...). Part of this could be indeed achieved by using menus or the toolbar but not everything (and menus + toolbar are unusable for me in the default configuration because they are too small on my phone, and all the text is quite small for me). Having some special keys, which are not present on typical onscreen keyboards, easily accessible is obviously useful with Emacs while using alternative keyboards containing them may not be practical for various reasons; but perhaps it's not that important once the graphical environment is fully OK. I'll give it another try.

I don't think it's Emacs's place to provide additional virtual input devices (such as modifier keys.) Such functionality belongs in the program providing the virtual keyboard.

As for the tool bar and menu bar, I think they're sufficiently large by default. However, you could adjust tool-bar-button-margin and the height of the menu-bar face you find their size insufficient.

> I think it would help if there was a tutorial on the web for the Android Emacs port. The included Info documentation is hard to access initially because of the usage issues discussed.

You could simply tap the ``read the Emacs manual'' link on the splash screen. I don't have the resources to write, translate, and update another tutorial or to run a website to publish it. Additionally, the Android documentation will be uploaded to gnu.org as part of the Emacs manual if the port is released.

> Text input suggestions etc. can be used in Termux in the text input bar displayed after swiping the key bar to left.

That's modal editing, not Emacs, and quite inconvenient to use :-)

Emacs for Android

Posted Jul 2, 2023 10:47 UTC (Sun) by mzamazal (subscriber, #126307) [Link] (1 responses)

The default font size in the Android Emacs is less than 2 millimeters on my phone (significantly smaller than the Android top bar with time, battery info, etc.; much smaller than keyboard keys, which are >5 millimeters), which means I cannot tap it even approximately reliably with my fingers and it's not easy for me to even read; similar applies to the tool bar.

Emacs for Android

Posted Jul 2, 2023 11:33 UTC (Sun) by repetitivestrain (guest, #165872) [Link]

That's likely a bug. Would you please report this problem to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, taking care to include all the diagnostic information printed by `report-emacs-bug'?

If that isn't convenient for you, it would still be helpful if you could provide the output of the shell command `getprop' on your phone; it can be run from inside Emacs, a terminal emulator, or from your computer using `adb' if you enable USB debugging.

Thanks in advance.