Require software cursor for Android to make operations smooth

[Jim Huang]

Because evaluation boards lack of usable touchscreen or input devices, we would like to implement software cursor for Android to make UI operation usable and smooth.

[Jim Huang (jserv)]

Incomplete but usable software cursor implementation for Android Gingerbread

[Patrik Ryd (patrik-ryd)]

Have verified the patch on Panda. It is usable.

Some problems found.
* Mouse does not move smoothly when dialog active on screen
* If the mouse has not been used for a while a keypress (on keyboard) is needed to wake mouse up again.

The patch was pushed to the linaro_android_2.3.3 branch to have some mouse support for the release.
http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=android/platform/frameworks/base.git;a=commit;h=3537671d57c0412427df095bf15828dfafe83a80

[Patrik Ryd (patrik-ryd)]

<jserv--> patrikryd, In fact, I am going to submit new patch for software cursor
<jserv--> patrikryd, I'm afraid the incomplete patch confuses people already.

[Jim Huang (jserv)]

Mouse does not move smoothly when dialog active on screen => Known to be an issue inside Android framework. 0xlab's Julian Chu is looking at this part already.

[Jim Huang (jserv)]

If the mouse has not been used for a while a keypress (on keyboard) is needed to wake mouse up again. => under investigation

Thanks for pointing out this.

[Jim Huang (jserv)]

NOTE: the implementation is reworked and inspired by discussion in android-x86. Android-x86 has its own final version though:
    http://git.android-x86.org/?p=platform/frameworks/base.git;a=commit;h=0b43638f3d3287e74bccdc6240556464b846ec28

[Julian Chu (walkingice)]

I have found that asac merged a patch which enable mouse cursor. Although it is usable, the cursor is still not smoothly once dialog show up.

If we compute dirty region aggressively to make composite region as less as possible, it might improve efficiency. The attachment should work.

[Jim Huang (jserv)]

Thanks for Julian's efforts. MERGED.

[Fathi Boudra (fboudra)]

http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=android/platform/frameworks/base.git;a=commit;h=f77395704eef9ac071168e46aa3319ac7ecb3204