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More specifically one would have to compile in libstroke support for the mouse-gestures use metisse for the window-folding effects. After some configuration, one could do many of the very same (or at least nearly the same) things described in the article.

Anyone care to try? :)

Of course, if KDE's not your cup of tea, you can always go for just the core libs, and Xstroke. No recompiling required, and it works with any X app. I'm sure similar functionality is available in Windows as well. You just gotta look.

LibStroke

fvwm has had this functionality using libstroke since version 2.3.4 (2.5.5 is the latest release)

FVWM has supported gestures through LibStoke (apparently what wayV uses as well) for quite some time.

Mouse Gestures (aka Gestural Commands, or Strokes) have also been around for many years; their inclusion in Opera, and now Mozilla, is wonderful and it is great to see this old idea finally gaining favour.

I first saw Strokes demonstrated in late 1986, in an AtariST-based 3D CAD product called JILCAD (written by Lee Hall). I don't know if Lee thought up the idea himself or whether he was implementing a feature he had seen elsewhere.

One neat JILCAD feature that I have never seen replicated elsewhere was the use of two cursors (with a right-click menu): the mouse cursor and a "placed cursor". Left clicking the mouse would position the "placed cursor" (to select a line or point, or to indicate a starting position) in the drawing plane. Moving the mouse to another position would indicate a second location(leaving the first cursor in place). The user would then right-click and choose a command off the menu---the right-click would cause a menu cursor to appear on the menu bar (a menu pallet, actually). For example, to find the midpoint between two points in the drawing: click on the first point, position the mouse cursor over the second point, right-click and select the find the midpoint function.

from the libstroke ( the library behind Kgesture) homepage
Thu May 10 - Version 0.5, featuring a GNOME version of the library written by Dan Nicolaescu, is being tested and will be released soon.

Does that mean the we can expect gnome to have the same feature soon ?

This issue is exactly the reason that I am no longer an IEEE member. I wrote a paper that was accepted into one of their journals, which I thought was great (it was my first journal-published paper). I didn't think it was great when they sent me a copyright assignment form. That's right, they wanted the copyright to the work, not just permission to publish it. I would no longer have the freedom to even photocopy my own paper or put a copy on my web site. I declined to publish it in the journal and have not been an IEEE member ever since.

I have published a few papers in restrictive journals since that time, but that's because I was not the primary author and the major authors had different priorities than I -- academic careers, for example!

It's sad to see these organizations stray from their mission for furthering the art and science and instead becoming a business. Don't get me wrong, businesses are great for some kinds of human and economic activities, but federations of scientists should not be profit-oriented because the profit motive conflicts with the mission of science that they allegedly embrace.

The paper is on my LibStroke web site. It's admittedly not one of the most significant works of scientific literature of the past century, but I felt that it was useful enough to people interested in LibStroke that it shouldn't rot on dead tree or be available to IEEE union members only.

The guy (formerly) at Purdue would be me. :)

The project is LibStroke.

Current status is that it is fully integrated into FVWM2, gEDA, and a number of other apps. It has also been ported to several languages including tcl, Python, Java, and the original C.

In my, uh, copious spare time, I am working on releasing the newest version which, thanks to the hard work of fellow hackers, is the GNOME-aware version.

The development philosophy is to keep LibStroke a small library that can be built upon to add stroke regcognition to apps.

It'd be great if Lionhead released their source, including the gesture recognition. But why wait, then there's...

LibStroke - a stroke translation library
Implemented in C, and with a transliterated Java version included as well.

strokes-mode.el - a strokes recognition minor-mode for emacs
Go easier on your wrists, take a break from C-M-A-|, and make vague mouse wavings at emacs to make it do your bidding.

IMHO, the algorithm used in strokes-mode seems much nicer than that in Black & White, or even libstroke. It could be just a matter of parameters, since for all I know B&W and libstroke could use pretty much the same algorithm as strokes-mode.el.

I'm already looking at tweaking the Java libstroke class to play around with it in a few Java apps I'm poking at.

Alternative interfaces are something that interests me. When total bandwidth is limited by disease or trauma, I think it's a good strategy to look at the axes of motion or expression that still have full bandwidth. Certainly, speech is one route. Another is fine motor control and timing, which can be used a'la morse code key. I wrote one interface that can be used to do a limited amount of command interpretation for someone with a 2-degree plane of mobility. (Mouse, or finger on a touchpad, or pointer on screen.)

LibStroke

For USB info: http://www.etla.net/~n_hibma/usb/usb.pl For links to this and other info: http://www.freebsd.org/projects/proje cts.html

Let's see...

StarTAC phone (VM calls pager when message left)
Pilot w/ alpha pager built in
Digital Camera (Don't usually carry it)
Schrade ToughTool (like Leatherman)
keys to Mailboxes ETC "office space :)"
Amateur Radio, 2meter band handheld

Not bad for less than a kilobuck. And essential for one who has a "virtual office"!

And you don't want to know what I keep in my van. Let's just say it's Y2K compliant. ;-)

Mark

ETLA Technical Services