Palm says long taps are 'meta-taps,' impresses Solaris admins worldwide
By Tim Stevens 
posted February 11th 2010 10:07AM
posted February 11th 2010 10:07AM
posted February 11th 2010 10:07AM
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I would have said Sudo tap. Sudo make me a sandwich.
@Nitesh
HAH! One of my favorites
http://xkcd.com/149/
http://www.isxkcdshittytoday.com/
How about psudo-tap.
@Leindurstit What is that, official website for PMSing failed webcomic makers? xkcd is rarely shitty.
@Leindurstit:
I'm subscribed to that RSS feed. So far, it hasn't been wrong.
@Nitesh U-U-U-U-U-U-ULLLLLLTRAAAAA TAAAAAP!!!!!!
@Leindurstit
I dunno, the last one made me laugh pretty good.
Though any comic ending in Batman knocking someone out would probably result the same.
@Nitesh
writing or saying "long press plus 'X'" was never too awful for me
@Nitesh do you even know what 'sudo' means?
@Hmm Yes, I use it every day in Ubuntu. It allows me to execute a command with root security privileges. Do YOU know what it means?
@Nitesh Your mention of 'sudo tap' suggests otherwise as the long tap is not granting you extra privileges ;)
how come Google Meta-Buzz won't meta-work on my palm meta pre?
@mantismantis
because Palm shot it down
Ok thats not the truth but seriously Buzz is not something I want. Wont be using it on my computer or my Pre anytime soon, they are too late to the party with their wannabe Facebook crap.
@goatlover Not true. Lynn Fox over at Palm just confirmed on Twitter that Google is working on a version of Buzz for WebOS.
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/229980-google-buzz-webos-confirmed-palm.html
super tap
MEGA tap
ULTRA TAP
UNSTOPPABLE TAP
@BrianH
And after that, its FAP
@BrianH Unreal Tournament?
@adinas
HOLY SH*T
@BrianH:
Spinal Tap?
@Rick James
U sir, have made my day. I laughed until i cried.
What?
I did not understand the post... maybe because i dont own a Pre...
@daha2002 with webOS (on the Pre and Pixi), the area just below the touchscreen is touch sensitive. if you put your finger on that touch sensitive area (Palm calls it the Gesture Area), you are doing a "meta tap." It functions like the Alt key on your keyboard if you combine a "meta tap" with a key press. Meta-V = Paste. Meta-C = Copy. Meta-X = Cut. etc etc
@mantismantis
!
Thats cool, im waiting on a ebay auction to buy an unlocked gsm pre.
Hey, it's just like Emacs!
I would meta-tap that.
Like the guy said in the PreCentral comments, I much prefer gesture-tap to meta-tap.
Great, thanks for sticking a screwed up Eminem ear worm in my head today...
I meta-tap tap on the door with the damned ratchet.
Meta meta ttacking a ho with a damned hatchet.
The bad Apple spoils the bunch.
were the hell is the palm C40, who cares about this..
If you have to press another key after the meta-tap, shouldn't they have called it a pre-tap? Just saying?
@Luke You don't press another key after it, you hold it and press a key. It's essentially Ctrl on Windows. Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+V paste, etc. Same concept, except you rest your finger on the gesture area and hit a key.
The physical keyboard is not complete without these keys: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/02/05/hacklabtos-lisp-machine-keyboard/
@lgs : Insufficient for APL, though. That may be a good thing.
@Cin
I think you missed the point.
Slow news day apparently.
@Freakin Ijit
No kidding.
But at least it's not about Buzz or iPad, so there is that.
Whats so wrong with "long tap"?
So how does this work exactly? While you may hold down alt or ctrl and then press another key, some involve a press of a modifier key and then a press of another key with nothing being held down. I don't think meta keys in unix involve a key being held down.
A long-press means you hold down your finger and don't lift it. A tap means you press down and pull up your finger. So does a meta-tap involve you lifting your finger before or after you do some other action? I suppose if you're just waiting for a pop-up window to appear, you can say meta = long and thus long-press = long-tap = meta-tap. But an action requires another key to be pressed while pressing on the screen, then long-press is clearer than long-tap.
Having these touch/keyboard combos can limit future devices to requiring both keyboards and touch screens if no touch-only or keyboard-only equivalent is implemented.
there should be a like/dislike button for the articles. because this one is a definite like
I would just like to add that I have owned the Pre since release day last summer and had never figured out how to do the copy/paste short cut. The guides always used this weird symbol to represent the meta-tap function, but without actually describing what the symbol really meant. Your one line "hold your finger in the notification area and then press X on the keyboard" finally fixed my frustration.
That being said...this is a horrible key combo for cut/paste...sheesh.
Yo, Engadget! Solaris is great and all (really!) but you really need to give the shout out to Multics. That is, if you want to truly honor your control-meta-hyper-top overlords. Not that I think any of you are actually old enough to remember Multics. . .
@Samurai Jack And just how many currently employed Multics admins are there around at this point to receive a shout out? :)
@Samurai Jack I sorta like the Lisp Machines from LMI and Symbolics (o was it a Xerox Dolphin or something?). I believe Emacs has already been mentioned (Z(e)macs on the Lisp machine?).
@Freakin Ijit I remember using the Symbolics ones way back when at Stanford's CSLI. Dandelions and Dandetigers (or at least that's what we called ('em).)
Oh and...can we have a conversation about the unused button at the bottom the the Pre's screen. The one that i can thing of TONS of good uses for, of which none have been implemented...
@SagaciousT Apparently no one else could figure out a good use for it because it was removed from the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon.
Does Palm sell WebOS phones in Europe? I just checked all the Norwegian operators and then Expansys.com, and couldn't find a thing.
@Sarig Yes. They sell the Palm Pre / Pixi in the UK, Germany, Spain and France.
I like it. But then, I do actually use emacs in my job every day, so I'm biased. 'Meta' is ingrained in my vocabulary.
should have been "Awesome Tap"