Touch Screen Programming

[Howard Ralston]

Hello,
I have been asked to help another student to with her senior project. It will involve an application using touch screen technology. I will use Java or Visual C++ to write the application, but I cannot find any books that relate to touch screen programming. I have never tried nor spoken to anyone who has written a program for use with a touch screen. Can anyone give me some guidance in making the first step toward writing a program for a touch screen?
Thanks,
Howard

[Nathan Pruett]

I did a search on "touch screen monitor Java" on Google and found quite a few projects that use both, but no descriptions on what they did to get it to work... I suspect that the OS simply treats the touch screen as a mouse and you get mouse events... but I will try to look into this further...

-Nate

[Howard Ralston]

Nathan,
Thanks for the help! I met with her yesterday, and she seems amenable to creating the project as an application using a regular monitor with a mouse (time constraints). However, I would like to find out for myself how the touchscreen would affect the programming effort. I believe I will try to contact one of the manufacturers and ask.
Howard

[Kyle Brown]

I've worked with several touch screens in the past and every single one of them came with a driver that made it look to the OS like it was a mouse. Dragging your finger made the mouse move. Often it would interpret sudden movements on a single spot as a mouse click, or double-click -- often you could set this up in the driver configuration screen.
The bigger issue is to design your GUI so that it works well with a touch screen. That means things like big buttons, no controls (like drop-downs -- nasty things!) that require a resolution smaller than a finger, etc...
Kyle

[rajiv81]

does anybody out there know how to programme a microcontroller to control a touch screen, without a pc? say, use a small touchscreen to contol a dvd player?
just help point me in the right direction... maybe a webpage or something... thanks

[Paul Stevens]

I will point you in the right direction.
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