Touchscreen gestures?

[Faust]

Hi,

I was wondering if it would be possible to map action with touchscreen gesture? As we have keyboard, everything is going to be mainly on it, so being able to custom some touchscreen gestures could be nice!

 

[WizardStan]

A quick google takes me to something called "EasyStrokes": mouse gestures for linux.  There's probably other solutions as well.

 

[Faust]

In fact I was more thinking about swipe, pinch, etc.... to control things like on windows 8.1/10 tablet.

Here is the third party app' I'm using with default touchscreen gestures:

 https://www.youtube.com/embed/JI810SgZWlQ?feature=oembed
 

 

[TrashyMG]

Anything is possible if you start coding it up yourself.

 

[WizardStan]

Pinch and rotate are gestures that are built into touchscreen driver (from what I recall).  I can't imagine it would be too difficult to add two-finger swipe as well.  From there it's just a matter of configuring a gesture controller to do whatever you want with it.

 

[TrashyMG]

Pinch and rotate are gestures that are built into touchscreen driver (from what I recall).  I can't imagine it would be too difficult to add two-finger swipe as well.  From there it's just a matter of configuring a gesture controller to do whatever you want with it.

I know my lenovo W510 with the latest Fedora seems to now have two finger swiping.

 

[Faust]

I think it would be better to have the ability to custom this kind of gesture natively from the OS, like key shortcut than through a third party software.

 

[DaMummy]

Question, how often do people place their finger on the pandora screen outside of the occasional fingernail tap when it's not worth it to pull the stylus out for one touch?

 

[WizardStan]

I think it would be better to have the ability to custom this kind of gesture natively from the OS, like key shortcut than through a third party software.

That's not how linux works.  That's barely how Windows works.  Depending on how you define it, "the OS" is responsible for very little of what you actually use.
Consider something as basic as clipboard management: you select some text, hit ctrl-C in one program, and ctrl-V in another and it gets copied over.  This is "in the OS" for Windows, but Linux needs additional packages.  The benefit being that you can get different clipboard managers with different behaviors and the just replace each other.  Except that Windows ALSO has the ability to replace its clipboard manager because it too is an additional package that is only "in the OS" because Microsoft wrote it.
So what is it that you really want?  If you want the ability to recognize these gestures then it's already there, it's part of the touchscreen driver (at least the pinch and zoom), but just like everywhere else a program needs to be modified to take advantage of these in order to work.

 

[Faust]

Question, how often do people place their finger on the pandora screen outside of the occasional fingernail tap when it's not worth it to pull the stylus out for one touch?

It's because you don't have to use the screen to use the Pandora that touchscreen gestures is relevant, if you needed to use screen, it would have been less interesting because gestures would have been already used, you see?

I think it would be better to have the ability to custom this kind of gesture natively from the OS, like key shortcut than through a third party software.

That's not how linux works.  That's barely how Windows works.  Depending on how you define it, "the OS" is responsible for very little of what you actually use.
Consider something as basic as clipboard management: you select some text, hit ctrl-C in one program, and ctrl-V in another and it gets copied over.  This is "in the OS" for Windows, but Linux needs additional packages.  The benefit being that you can get different clipboard managers with different behaviors and the just replace each other.  Except that Windows ALSO has the ability to replace its clipboard manager because it too is an additional package that is only "in the OS" because Microsoft wrote it.
So what is it that you really want?  If you want the ability to recognize these gestures then it's already there, it's part of the touchscreen driver (at least the pinch and zoom), but just like everywhere else a program needs to be modified to take advantage of these in order to work.

Oh I see! Thanks for the informations, I understand a bit more. I'm not a linux guy so I'm not really aware about how it works.

 

[WizardStan]

I'm glad you understood, I'm not sure I explained very well or if I was just rambling.
But yeah, Linux is all about customization, there's very little "in the OS" itself, just a set of programs which are considered default.  That's why there's so many different flavours of Linux, each one packages things a little differently with different defaults.
If there's something specifically that you want to do and think would be of good use to everyone then find the program that does what you want to do and suggest it be included by default.

 

[Faust]

Ahah, yeah clear enough to me.

I've  found an opened source library that includes the use up to two fingers, but it's an android library:

"I have been developing a library to support basic 1 nad 2 finger gestures on Android with a very very simple drop in functionality.

Most gestures can be set as easily as:

view.setOn2FingerGestureListener (new On2FingerGestureListener () {
@Override
onSwipeup() {
}

onSwipedown() {
}
});The library is opensource and can also be downloaded as a JAR file (.jar).

I haven't decided upon a license yet (will most probably be Apache), so currently it is under NO License."

https://github.com/championswimmer/SimpleFingerGestures_Android_Library

I'm not able to say if everyone wants it, I'm only suggesting   ^_^ .
Moreover I'm unable to create anything, unfortunately.
 

 

[WizardStan]

Sorry, I don't think I was clear.
Supporting two finger gestures is probably possible in the touchscreen driver itself, but all that will do is put a message on the input queue "user swiped two fingers left/right".  That's all that this library does as well, just looks for the swipes and lets the application using it know what happened.  It has no functionality on its own.
The question is, what do you actually want it to do?  Do you just want it included as customizable gestures so if someone swipes two fingers it opens a program or something?  Do you want it tied to home/end or scrolling?  Do you want it just available so that applications can take advantage of it if they want?  What do you actually hope to accomplish beyond "detect swipe with two fingers"?

 

[Faust]

In fact I understood, that's why I said that I'm unable to create something, I know that only library isn't enough to makes things work. I don't have any ability in coding right now. Actually I was thinking about including it as customizable gestures by default. For myself, I don't know exactly what, maybe reduce/ increase brightness, or maybe something more particuliar, like taking a call or hanging it up, while listening music switching to the previous/next track. 

 

[Ligachamp]

I thought the Pyra will only have some sort of "fake" multitouch? I remember ED saying, it will only recognize a second fingertip and allow basic functions like rotate and so on.

 

[TrashyMG]

I thought the Pyra will only have some sort of "fake" multitouch? I remember ED saying, it will only recognize a second fingertip and allow basic functions like rotate and so on.

yeah... so what does that have to do with gester features? three figer swipes are out of the question sure.

 

[WizardStan]

The touchscreen can physically detect a bounding box, the min/max of two points.  By watching how the corners of the box change it can determine pinch and rotation but there's no technical reason I can think of that it can't add motion as well.  Someone'll probably have to code it into the driver and that may not actually happen, but that's a resource problem, not a tech problem.

 

[thatgui]

Question, how often do people place their finger on the pandora screen outside of the occasional fingernail tap when it's not worth it to pull the stylus out for one touch?

It's because you don't have to use the screen to use the Pandora that touchscreen gestures is relevant, if you needed to use screen, it would have been less interesting because gestures would have been already used, you see?

I do not want to dismiss your point > I guess DaMummy just wanted to hint at the fact that it may not be feasible to use a Pyra in that way, simply because of the clamshell design and the probably not very sturdy hinge mechanism.

 

[Faust]

Actually I see what He was meaning, and I don't think that touchscreen gestures are really necessary, and it wouldn't be practical to use everytime I guess. But I think it could be usefull