Ladies, please.
Let us not lose sight of the intent, due to the poor ambiguity of natural language.
Obviously, it was (and still is) possible to do real work on, say, vintage graphics hardware.
The present question is
this: is it
practical to do work on a given system, that is, is it
more productive than a traditional workstation with keyboard and mouse?
When one says "it can't be done", it's not meant to be taken literally, but used as shorthand for this question. That is, to be understood in the context of this thread.
To deny and change context on the fly, is disingenuous to everyone else, who are mostly reading this thread for ideas. No one cares about a pedantic or trifling argument.
So, just because it's possible to do work on a 640x480 machine, doesn't mean you're rushing out to get a spare Pentium from the local Goodwill and put Protel or Autotrax or whatever on it. Because that just wouldn't be practical, would it?
Back on topic: have Simon or Dave actually used a Wacom or similar tablet? From what little I've used, they seem to be quite good. Accuracy is achieved through feedback as usual; the pen moves the cursor when in proximity, and action is made when pressing. Precision is much better, with natural proprioceptive motion and no ballistics. There are multiple buttons on the tablet face (typically mapped to common actions: change pen/style, mode / select / whatever, etc.), and three (or more?) on the pen itself (e.g., pen down, thumb-forward and thumb-backward).
Now, using that kind of interface, with software that wasn't designed for it, may be more challenging than productive, even with the accuracy improvement. There are a lot of shortcuts in, say, Altium, that you simply don't have enough face buttons for on a tablet. You'll have to poke at menus constantly, or have a keyboard off to the side anyway (which will be just as slow to use, having to look over and reach to it with your free hand). And then you might as well use a mouse instead, it's more compact.
Could an EDA tool be designed around a tablet, or changed to support one, and use it effectively? I think the answer is, unquestionably, yes. Altium is unlikely to do this (unless they have already, and I'm completely ignorant of it?), but a very keen user could perhaps develop KiCAD to do so!
Doing real [productive] work, entirely on a smart phone, I don't know about that. The working area is just so small, relative to your fingers. You have precision in a given gesture, but not many degrees of freedom as far as where to begin and end such gestures. Consider the lowly on-screen keyboard: at a dozen keys across, it's already straining to provide accurate results, especially if you're going fast (for which a predictive dictionary is a must!). Entering arbitrary text, accurately and quickly, is all but impossible.
Now, on a tablet as such, it's not so bad -- there is room to put your hands down and do touch typing. There is a lot of area for your fingers to gesture over, and multi-finger (and multi-hand!) gestures are very feasible. The lack of tactile feedback (hmm, for now, perhaps?) is a big barrier to
touch typing, though.
Tim
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