Is the Tablet development community being well served by Windows 7 silence?

As I recover from yesterday’s Windows 7 marketing whiplash, I’m contemplating what it means to be a Tablet PC developer as of right now.

Here’s the thing: Microsoft has made it perfectly clear by its Windows 7 silence and now public statements by Windows 7 head Steven Sinofsky that Microsoft is not going to reveal information about Windows 7 until the time is right.

But when is that time? I guess when they tell us, right?

So…did Microsoft tell us anything yesterday when it showcased the forthcoming multi-touch capabilities in Windows 7?

I bet if I were to ask Microsoft, they’d say no. If I were to apply some common sense, I’d say yes.

You see, it’s very important to learn about multi-touch support in the OS early on–especially for us Tablet developers, who are probably some of the most likely early adopters of this technology. Although we can throw just about anything together at the last minute, we want to do more than just “make do,” we want to do something awesome. And for this we need some information and time.

You see, although multi-touch could just be tossed into Microsoft Paint, for instance, it’s not the most inspiring use of the technology. There’s lots more to it than that. Look at Surface or the Office Labs work to see how un-little-windows like a great multi-touch app can be.

Here are just a few of the many developer questions that I think are now before us:

Is multi-touch going to be an equal citizen to mouse events or are these more application-responsible events a.k.a. Google’s multi-touch SDK?

What model are we working with here? Will someone be able to plug in multiple mice and be able to simulate things? Or have two users working within a desktop at the same time?

Is there a notion of clustering or grouping of multi-touch events or IDs or is this all up to the application programmer?

What performance are we talking about? I can imagine that it would vary greatly with the device, but are we talking about some noticable lag or possibly 1/4″ or more of error? This impacts how applications will be written tremendously.

Are we talking COM/.NET like in the Tablet PC SDK?

How many touch points? Again, I’m sure this varies by digitzer, but are there going to be limits, and how do we ask the “driver” what they are? Similarly, how can we tell if a surface supports multi-touch?

Window scaling and rotation make a lot of sense wtih multi-touch. Is this going to be supported like in the early Longhorn demos? Or does a WPF app, for instance, need to own the screen and manage its own rotation?

I can think of a dozen more questions, but I’ll leave it at this for now.

I hope Microsoft is going to reveal more multi-touch developer details at the forthcoming TechEd event. PDC, which is the last week of October, is getting on the late side–particularly if Windows 7 is going to be shipping before the end of 2009. Let’s say Microsoft tries to hit the holiday season, which it missed in Vista. That would place a launch date around October. That’s one year to digest the new technology, get the hardware to develop for it, (is Dell going to work with developers to do this? So far I see no indication of any community efforts on Dell’s part) come up with something phenomenal, implement and test it, and get it ready for Windows 7 launch. It’s doable, but come on. In terms of the information developers need does it really make sense to wait so long? You’re already talking with the hardware manufactures, so why not us developers?

Update: I don’t see on the TechEd site any indication that multi-touch will be discussed there, however, PDC looks like it will have at least one multi-touch session. From the PDC site:

“WINDOWS 7: TOUCH COMPUTING
In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session will highlight the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explain how you can leverage them in your applications.”

My suggestion to anyone contemplating multi-touch development: Don’t wait. Get started now, simulating what you can. You can port things later. The hands-on experience with multi-touch will more than make up for the time lost in having to port your code to whatever multi-touch model Microsoft will make available. That’s my two cents worth, anyway.