3DConnexion Donates SpaceNavigators to KOffice

A couple of weeks ago Hans Bakker, who had never touched KOffice code before, started hacking on a Krita plugin for the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator. Within a week or two he had a working plugin for Krita and it quickly became clear how cool these little devices are and how many possibilities for new user interaction paradigms they afford.

So Hans suggested contacting Ettore Pasquini from 3DConnexion about the possibility of them donating a SpaceNavigator to the KOffice project for testing purposes. Well, that was only last week, and this week a box with three SpaceNavigators already landed on my desk. These are nice, solid feeling, attractive to handle things that come out of the box with drivers for Linux.

For an early review of what is possible with the SpaceNavigor on Linux, see this review on Linux.com, SpaceNavigator: An affordable 3D controller for Linux.

I will be distributing them among KOffice hackers for playing with and testing Hans' code this week, and I am sure that during the development of the KOffice 2 series of releases we will find more and more interesting uses for this unusual and fun interaction tool.

Thanks Ettore and 3DConnexion!

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Comments

by Odysseus (not verified)

I'm sure the guys working on Marble and KStars would love to borrow one of these :-) Perhaps some of the games too?

John.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

We can hit two birds with one stone as it were -- I can propose sending one to Inge Wallin, who's both involved in KOffice and in Marble :-)

by Torsten Rahn (not verified)

Yes, please send one to Inge - that should keep him from working on KChart ;-)

by annma (not verified)

Awesome! Thanks a lot to 3DConnexion! Glad to see Krita coming along so nicely!

by Inge Wallin (not verified)

Haha! I should threaten to work on other projects than Marble more often.

Now... A beer at Akademy to the person who suggests the best usage of this little device in kchart. :-)

by Torsten Rahn (not verified)

Well, a whole beer crate goes to the person who suggests the best usage of this little device in Marble ;-)

by moltonel (not verified)

Pardon my feeble imagination, but how usefull can a 3d controller be for a 2d drawing application ?

by Cyrille Berger (not verified)

The third dimension is used for zooming. While the first and second is used for panning.

by Martin (not verified)

Could you also use it for drawing? The simplest thing might be to map the 3rd dimension to pressure, in order to re-use the way pressure-sensitive devices are handled. While this might not be the best idea, perhaps someone who is playing with the device can come up with a better one...

by liquidat (not verified)

Thanks 3DConnexion!
And they should get the possibility to advertise that somehow - I'm sure they would appreciate some positive official statement or something.

by ettore p (not verified)

Glad to be of help! And thanks Hans for the work :)

by Martin (not verified)

Thanks again! And welcome to the Dot!