Liqbase :: In my own words.

Smile, it's not every day you get to see things differently.

It is not just the words, but how we present them.

We communicate daily through billions of connections using binary text.
Everybody looks the same, so digital and lifeless.

Why don't we change that?

When others read mail from you, they should see it in your hand writing.
It should show your mums' messages in her handwriting. 

This document I am typing now will almost certainly be read using my very own handwriting.  

It personalises communication.  
It should be usable in SMS, IM, Meego and Maemo forums, Twitter, Facebook, Slashdot - literally all over the web.  It should work in IRC even!

Let's give everything a new, more natural face. :)

Your neatest handwriting is important.  The sketchfont takes your best effort and most correct letter and uses it to show you your ideal font.
Completely readable and carrying your hope and best wishes to people.  
To get it perfect, each letter may take many grades of careful polishing!

The UX has become the Users' Experience.

Unique and Distinctive.
A new experience and way to bring digital words to life.

I read my own writing every day when I look at my graffiti wall.
I often think of seeing others handwriting in there.
I like the way my mum writes her m's but I haven't seen it in a while.  It makes me smile when I think of her writing.
If it comes via normal IM/Email/SMS methods it will be good.

People around the world talking to each other in text every single day, an email becomes a carefully handwritten letter, irc becomes a theatre. 

##### Wait

How much is an idea like that worth?

You tell me.

The prototype runs really well, hopefully you are reading it yourself.  
But this is only my voice.  We need to work together to give us all our voices.

For this innovation to be usable in MeeGo officially, a re-implementation of sketchfonts must become part of Qt.
This is because Liqbase is Open Source, GPL licensed and available for Maemo on the Nokia N810 and N900 and soon to be buildable on MeeGo in the community section.  I have been endeavouring to fixup some of the bugs and let it run as I can this last 12 months.
I (Gary Birkett) own the copyright upon the sketch and sketchfont format and am clear in my conscience that this is my right to sell a reimplementation of it elsewhere.
I will work with the Qt implementation teams and the best of the Community to recreate the handheld sketching backend along with support for contacting the sketchfont server to send/retrieve fonts.

##### Smile

What makes you smile?
I spend so much time online it is often from a comment, sometimes I see a tweet that really connects or a Slashdot line makes me giggle!
But something that really made me smile, during the MeeGo conference whilst at the Guinness brewery, there was a girl sat in the corner of a bar writing in her journal.
It warmed my heart that in the centre of all these giants of technology there she was recording her night in analogue.
It would be nice to read her comments around the web using that same curly script and happy face :)

When I send them a smiley why not have the system send a tip?
Capture the smile.

I want to setup a website to count every smile, to let you silently and simply pass on gratitude to someone.
It will also be a button on your screen on About dialogues and when installing Apps so you can let the developers know how much you like their stuff.
Sharing new hand drawn smileys and giving personalised feedback.

Wherever you go around MeeGo its a simple way to participate! 
If you enable the feature, when you smile at someone in IM or IRC or Twitter or somewhere, it might also send a tip back to them.
Some people are happy to tip a great amount whilst others will stay low :)
That needs a serious amount of management to handle.

MeeGo Smile

##### Requirements

Firstly, this needs writing up, officially and cleanly somewhere just what we need to do.
As many people around IRC know, I tend to talk and communicate than spend time wikiediting or rfc writing.

To setup the sketchfonts and smiles to be globally usable is a big job, for a start a large server with lots of storage and a fast database engine is required.
At the same time, we need to modify Qt to read and write sketchfonts for display and downloading.
Once Qt can handle sketchfonts, we can then modify the user applications to make use of this new feature.

Show up in #meego-smile and we can discuss it more.

##### Requirements
(*) Web Database Servers for hosting global sketchfonts and smiles uploaded from people.
(*) Web Database Servers for hosting global smiles uploaded from people.

##### Qt Modifications
(*) Qt GUI & Meegotouch:  Must integrate sketchfont support.
(*) Qt User applications: IM/Email/SMS/Web/IRC/+ need to add support.
(*) Qt Training program:  This is required to teach the users to write correctly.
(*) Qt Smile Widget:      This goes where you can reference an emailaddress to register smiles.


##### Special Requirements
(*) Wide ranging developer UX UI kernel graphics and managerial needs, it may be necessary to simply open channels and allow people to occupy those that suit until we sort out.
(*) Would like to use all of my existing Open/Closed communication channels and developer/managerial communities on and around Maemo and MeeGo to try and make this happen.  

If you know of my work, you will know of the hope I have in it and and the nice feelings that can come from this.

##### Formal Offer

Based on my simple sketching format, which pre-dates liqbase implementation.
I will license and oversee implementation within Qt.
Since the licensing of Qt is under Nokia control, portions of this work may or may not be open source.
Qt text rendering areas should handle using these fonts just like a regular one.

##### Future

We need to ensure the Qt core and QML renderers can correctly handle the sketchfonts.
If they work from the core then all the other apps will adapt and be able to make use of them.
This is a retroactive upgrade.

There is potential to backport support for use on Symbian and even earlier handsets, Qt support for sketchfonts extends their usage beyond Linux.  It allows Windows or Mac applications to be sketchfont enabled.

##### Further Investigation

(*) Detail further user cases for sketchfonts including, but not limited to:
	famous fonts
	classy artistic
	symbolic sets

(*) Detail knowledge of kerning and sub pixel rendering to ensure high quality output.

(*) Rendering speed optimisations and improvements by cache or process streamlining.

(*) Improvements to the training method, certain languages have a wide amount of symbols.

##### Implementation Breakdown

(*) Sketchfont Qt implementation
	Goal: Implement support for sketchfonts directly within Qt/QML widgets.
	      Usable by any widget as easily as specifying fontname by using email address.
	      Sketchfonts should be fully dynamic objects within Qt implementation.
    Time: 12 months, then rolling.
	Team: Qt development team, OO API specialists, UX specialists, integrators, managers, documentation, translators, testers
	integration into Core Qt, QML and webkit is required.
	Contact: #meego-sketchfont invite araujo,rodrigo,robot101,tero,dawn,sts,burchr,arjan,thiago,johnflux,enadam,ka,mohammadag,venemo,alterego,konttori+recommends from each per this area

(*) Sketchfont Trainer (local)
	Goal: Specific on device sketchfont selection, editing and viewing.
	      Specific goal, during conversation allow an untrained friend to make an initial font in under 5 minutes.

	      Name
	      Scale "o"
	      Glyphs
	      Letters
	      Numbers
	      Symbols
	      Smiley
	      Self
	      
	Time: 6-12 months, then rolling.
	Team: Qt development team, UX specialists, integrator, manager, documentation, translators, testers
	Contact: #meego-training invite burchr,thiago,john,adam,ka,mohammadag,timeless,rm,venemo,ka,alban,marco
	Contact: PenPen developer, Anidel, adele+team, Jussi+team, wazd + recommends
	
(*) Sketchfont App IM
	Goal: Instant messaging/SMS/MMS application making full use of personalised experience.
    Time: 6 months, then rolling. 
    Team: Qt development team, UX specialist, integrator, manager, documentation, testers.
	team should be versed in current IM technology, Collabora have this experience.
	Should be a retroactive upgrade to existing IM source once Qt implementation exists.
	Contact: #meego-im *collabora are experts here + as many as possible
 
(*) Sketchfont App Web
	Goal: Web frontend for Twitter/Facebook making full use of personalised experience.
	Time: 6 months, then rolling.
	Team: QML development team, UX specialist, integrator, manager, documentation,  testers.
 
(*) Sketchfont Backend (web)
	Goal: Backend server database and structures for serving sketchfonts to people.
	Time: 6 months, then rolling.
	Team: Server development team, DB specialist, integrator, manager, testers.
 
(*) Sketchfont Marketing
	Goal: To sell the custom font experience to the public.
 	      People with Nokia devices will be happily able to enter/edit their fonts.
	      Other devices/computers can upload/use their own but must license implementation from us. 
	      Digitising sketchfonts during school lesson times allows historical improvements to be charted.
	Time: 6 months, then rolling.


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##### Smiles Indepth

All around MeeGo, pressing Smile buttons will reward you with their personal smiley. :)
Pressing it will instantly flip a virtual coin, transferring it from user to target.
The gratitude returned is the hand drawn smiley from the related sketchfont.

Click it when you are pleased with something you saw/read/did that makes you smile.

Users are able to redeem their virtual tips and top up their account as required.

Add this to all places displaying a user or app information dialogue for ease of use.
User configurable coin size, can choose the size of the coin from 0 to x.
Single webhit registering the Smile is required, return value is the custom smiley sketch.

Seed all user accounts with an initial purse which they can pass to others.
This gives incentive for people to use it and fill in their smiles.

Embed widget in lots of apps as a single simple UI element.
Operator can topup his coins or withdraw any rewards as required.
Operator cannot withdraw more than he/she/they have received.

All through MeeGo apps and sites a single way to say thanks to someone and receive personalised feedback.

Additional upgrade to IM/SMS/IRC to send smiles when :) sent digitally.

Groups and collaborations can work out their own sub distribution equation.

We can have a smile gallery showing all the happy faces.

This can easily be extended into the Ovi brand umbrella.

##### Implementation Breakdown

(*) Smile managerial and legal
	Goal: Setup and Coordinate a worldwide smile database 
	Time: Ongoing
	Contact: #meego-smile_mgt invite tsg,tero,quim,dawn,konttori,aapo,jussi,richard,Tuija,Gian-Luca,kot,z4chh,sts,burchr,Jaffa,lardman,rob,rodrigo,arjan,thiago,kathy,greg,danielw,timeless,valerio,frals,adele,niels,bergie,daniels,wjt,sjoerd,alterego + close recommends from each.
	Additional real contacts
	Mum, Dad, Luke, Julie and Jason, Phil, Sheila, Rick, Dom, Darren, Craig, Tracy, Joanne and Ray, Sandra and John.
    Some of this will obviously be offline.  I have *no* idea how something of this scale will work and need your input.

(*) Smile widget (Qt/QML/HTML)
	Goal: Small Smile instance.  Simple resounding confirmation.
	Time: 2 months, then rolling.
	Team: Qt development team, UX specialist, integrator, manager, documentation, testers.
	Contact: #meego-smile_dev 

(*) Smile site (web)
	Goal: General web based Smile server, main interaction user has will be smile gallery.
	Time: 6 months, then rolling.
	Team: HTML development team, UX specialist, integrator, manager, documentation, testers.
    Contact: #meego-smile_dev

(*) Smile Backend (web)
	Goal: Backend server database and structures for managing Smile fund exchange.
	Time: 6 months, then rolling.
	Team: Server development team, DB specialist, manager, documentation, testers.
    Contact: #meego-smile_dev

=======================================

Transfer of rights can involve stock options from numerous MeeGo supporters.
Around Meego however, I will deal directly with Nokia and providing the offer is acceptable I am happy for it be marketed as a Nokia Innovation.

These ideas will help make Nokia be more personal and connect us.

By my estimates, I think we can get this into Qt quickly and make it workable. :)
I believe it can be implemented during 2011 with worldwide takeup during 2012.

This sketchfont customisation is implemented at present within Liqbase which is an ongoing Open Source research and development project built for Nokia N810 and N9-00 devices and recently expanding to many other ARM and x86 ATOM devices on MeeGo.


Gary Birkett,
Smile Architect.








ps, who the f*ck is @Alice?

