Standard Proposal - Exit Application

[Loon]

Proposal : To exit a Pandora Application press the Pandora button then press the Q key whilst the Pandora button is depressed (abbreviated from here on to PAN+Q).

Summary : The Pandora should have a standard way of exiting an application, this method should be easy to use when desired but difficult to trigger by accident. As per the ALT+F4 command in windows.

What happens next :

1) Hopefully we have a well reasoned debate relating to various methods of exiting applications.
2) Forum Poll using methods proposed in this thread to decide on the best standard way of exiting applications.
3) Write up the Standard in the Wiki.
4) Cross fingers and hope the devs follow the standard.

Disclaimer :

I've not got my Pandora yet, so fully appreciate that I'm probably not in the best position to propose standards. Also I've no personal favourite method of exiting an application, I don't care if it's PAN+Q or ABXY+RL or ALT+F4 but what would really benefit Pandora users would be an agreed standard of some kind.

The proposal is not that the only way to exit an application should be PAN+Q, just that the PAN+Q option should be available. Just as in Windows many applications will exit with ESC as well as ALT+F4.

Notes :

Please see the pandora standards thread for a general discussion relating to standards.

Please don't use this thread for general discussion relating to standards or for proposing any other standards, please stick to suggestions and thoughts relating to the best standard way to exit a Pandora application.

 

[Caine]

In this thread Exophase argues for making the Pandora button the standard menu button amongst applications. Methinks it is time to discuss what standard set of functionality should be provided by what Exophase refers to as the shell menu.

 

[Loon]

In this thread Exophase argues for making the Pandora button the standard menu button amongst applications. Methinks it is time to discuss what standard set of functionality should be provided by what Exophase refers to as the shell menu.

OK, but what should be the standard way to exit an application?

Think back to the fun and frolics of the GP2X days where you had umpteen ways to do it, let's get a standard method in place to avoid that particular mess.

 

[parag0n]

I'd say hitting the Pandora button once should bring up the ingame menu.

Pressing and holding it for 4 seconds should kill the currently active program.

 

[Loon]

I'd say hitting the Pandora button once should bring up the ingame menu.

Pressing and holding it for 4 seconds should kill the currently active program.

4 seconds seems a bit slow to me to be the default way of quitting a program.

 

[jasay]

I'd say hitting the Pandora button once should bring up the ingame menu.

Pressing and holding it for 4 seconds should kill the currently active program.

4 seconds seems a bit slow to me to be the default way of quitting a program.

I think the 4 second button press is more of a kill button than a quit button; useful for when a program freezes up. Something like Menu, Up, Action button (assuming exit is the last button on the menu screen) would probably be a more normal way to exit. Or Alt+F4 if using standard keyboard shortcuts.

No real opinion on the matter myself, just trying to clarify.

 

[chaosfx]

standart should be the ingame menu
PAN : Ingame Menu
PAN + Q : Ingame Menu with exit highlighted so PAN + Q followed by Primary Button (there was a discussion somewhere ) would be normal exit
PAN holding 4 seconds : kill the active application

 

[rabidpoobear]

this isn't really a dev thing, alt-f4 just sends a kill signal to the active app, you could easily set up your pandy to do the same thing regardless of what the developers do.

but i dunno how that would work if the app froze.

 

[PhillipJ]

A set of recommended coding standards on the wiki or wherever would be pretty nice. Providing a fairly consistent user experience is always going to be difficult for a community project but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
As for the long-press on the Pandora button being too long, I don't think Exophase means that should be your primary way of exiting the program bur rather that it should *kill* the program. He thinks a short press should bring up the In-game menu so that menu would have an exit option on it, yeah?

 

[el_pango]

With regard to killing the foreground app, it may be helpful to start by sending it signal #15 first to give it a chance to clean up after itself, then signal #9 about a second after that, since it seems like if a process were killed unconditionally in the middle of, say, writing to a savegame, it seems like it could lead to problems or filesystem corruption.

 

[sixtyfifthbit]

I always imagined the Pandora button to be similar to the home button on the Wii, or the PS button on the PS3. So, pressing and releasing the box key opens a standard app menu (probably implemented in a shared library), and in that menu would be a choice to exit. However, that does not preclude someone holding down the box key and hitting Q while it's down to exit. You could have it both ways.