Posted by
michael
on from the up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right dept.
_iris writes: "As reported on the Dot, gesture control (apparently all the rage with the kids after the latest Opera release) is coming to KDE. You can find a _very_ early release of KGesture here." Sounds like a recipe for carpal tunnel to me.
Gesture support is an opportunity.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
I have seen several indifferent or even negative
comments on the gesture support from Linux users.
Having used gestures from the Opera browser, I have seen that they are very usefull and really enhance the WWW experience. They enhance it so much that I cannot understand the negative comments. As noted by other users, no other desktop OS has them, thus it is a genuine chance for Linux to make a head start. Please, before making any comments, think first if it is a constructive comment.
Thanks.
Great...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
Now I can cast miracles to keep Netscape 4.x from crashing.
Actually, I would LOVE to see this in a game like Diablo II. You learn spells, and then you cast them by making gestures with your mouse over your enemies. Being a magic user might actually take some talent then.
Grab UAE or dust off your Amiga and search for a copy of Tower's Curse.
Actually, I would LOVE to see this in a game like Diablo II. You learn spells, and then you cast them by making gestures with your mouse over your enemies. Being a magic user might actually take some talent then.
Re:Before you dismiss this out of 'hand' . . .
by
Masem
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· Score: 2
There are a large number of deaf people that cannot speak clearly due to the fact that they don't know what sounds they are supposed to make with their mouth; they use ASL to communicate both ways ('listening' and 'speaking'). Because of this, they are very agile in ASL, and can 'speak' much faster than typing, particular since most common english words are a single gesture instead of spelt out. So for those in that situation, give them these gloves, a portable linux device, and pipe the output of the glove interpretation program into a text-to-speech program, and, tada, these people now have the ability to 'talk' to any audience, deaf or non-deaf.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I did something like this years ago...
by
Sanity
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· Score: 2
Way back in 1992 I implemented a small piece of software called "Lexicon" which achieved just this on my Atari ST. It was immune to the scale and speed with which the gesture was drawn (I called them doodles), and worked pretty well. I released it as public domain so it may still be floating around.
In 1995 I reimplemented it in Java, and for a while you could navigate my homepage by drawing simple gestures in an applet window. It was really simple and took about 3 hours to implement.
In 1998 I got quite into Window Maker, and started a conversation with Alfredo (Mr W.M) about integrating this functionality into it. I wrote the gesture parsing code, and he wrote a front-end, but it never really got past the experimental stage. I am sure that code is probably floating around somewhere too.
Before long I got bored with it though, it is must faster to hit a key on a keyboard or press a button on a GUI than it is to draw a gesure which is often misinterpreted.
They are great gimmicks, but of limited practical use.
oh, to hell w/ voice recognition. as i don't work in the US i am missing out on the cubicle culture and i'm sitting in my office w/ 2 other people. i think all hell will break loose if we all start mumbling "close window", "open xterm" all day. heck, I imagine a support call coming in, someone here says "Close Window" and the guy on the other end of the phone actually does this... "Uh, no, not you, that was just someone wanting to CLOSE a WINDOW"... hm, chain reaction anyone?:)
on the other hand imagine all the pranks you could play on your co-workers computer if you can teach them to react to everyday words in a real weird way:)
Gesture control represents something new, and to many people, interesting. I am not aware of any other OS/Desktop with gesture interfaces as a component.
Anyway, this does look like a Freshmeat thing, but I think talking about gesture entry, rather than biching about the story, is what the editors intended.
-- ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from Gestures?
by
Raptor+CK
·
· Score: 2
I'd have to disagree with that. I've been running on a gesture system for a while now, and it's actually more convenient for most simple tasks. Since I don't have to move my hand from mouse to keyboard as often, and I have a decent setup (gel wrist pads are amazing), and I *stop* every hour or so to make sure that I don't overdo it, my wrists have been fine.
The reduction of mouse to keyboard switches has done wonders for my overall speed with my system, and caused the small amount of pain that I was already in to go away.
Maybe you should give it a shot before making any claims, Michael.
Raptor
-- Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Og, I'm turning into a fan boy. Oh well, postmodern.
--
Re:Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from Gestures?
by
Drone-X
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· Score: 2
Damn, I have the habit of always resting my wrists when I type [1]. I also do this when using the mouse, do you happen to know if that's correct behaviour?
[1] Well, I'm not resting them now and I'm typing slower and with more errors than before, also I have the tendency to have my wrists float away. Hope this will pass.
it's good for some things
by
ethereal
·
· Score: 2
IIRC Mentor Graphics (a VLSI design tool) included gesture control. Since most of the time you were mousing components around anyway, it was convenient to use gestures for cut, copy, paste, etc. There were special selection "strokes", and other tool-specific commands. In fact, as I read about libstroke it sounds like the author of that library was inspired by similar CAD programs.
Really, the only thing you need to add for great gesture recognition is another mouse - one for each hand would really improve the gesture complexity you could generate, and make things much faster too. Ultimately I foresee some sort of VR glove (like in the oft-maligned Johnny Mnemonic) where you can type, move things around with your hands, and set up specific hand motions to do certain actions (a karate chop or a scissors motion means "cut", etc.). That would be the real convergence of the mouse and keyboard.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Agree with you about "optional". One major issue that isn't immediately clear to me is how actions get bound to guestures. The more the user can customize and assign, the better; that's something that *VERY* few OSes or apps get right now. Of course, good intuitive defaults are important, but it's not nice to straightjacket users.
On the other hand, the other big unknown is how long it will take before these kinds of interfaces can progress beyond simple commands. I was playing around with OS X voice commands the other day, and I realized there aren't that many. While I'll probably be using a keyboard til I die, it's still interesting for another reason. As you start creating the ability for a computer to do something like "open a new document with vim in my complaint letters folder", progressing to "download all the images with thumbnails on this page and put them in a new folder called 'Kournikova'", you eventually start crossing over into the real ability of a computer to use language. No doubt, these kind of simple OS-related tasks will be the first practical application of this.
Interesting, but I still prefer keyboard shortcuts. Heavy mouse usage makes me rest my hands, which makes my elbows tingle after a while. Seriously, keep your wrists in the air as much as possible. There's a reason you never heard about carpal tunnel syndrome in the era of manual typewriters.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
The multi platform 3D modeling program
blender (full featured and fits on a floppy!) has had this for a few years now. It's really pretty easy to get used to.
Congrats to KDE
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-- The truth is more important than the facts. -Frank Lloyd Wright
After someone mentioned that Blender was guestural (I knew it was but didn't make this connection till recently), I dragged out my wacom tablet and gave blender another spin (I do some work in it, but always found it a pain before), and using the tablet, suddenly blender is a lot more intuitive.
-- I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
And when will we see the this patented?
by
gotan
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· Score: 2
I mean, once it's a huge success and adopted by everyone i'm sure someone will creep out from under some stone and claim the patent, and would now all makers of Software using gestures for input please pay the license for the past 3 years (anyone remember GIFs?).
It's not that i think of this kind of input as an obvious concept, but maybe the folks implementing it should look if there is already someone applying for a patent. It'd also be a good idea to look where and with who the idea crept up first, it'd make looking for prior art so much easier in ten years time.
-- "By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
My god man, look at your user id!!! After all this time you are STILL whining about unnoteworthy news. Well, it's okay. Maybe you were confused and thought you were on a different website. This is slashdot, for the love of god! Come on man! Wake up!
Justin
Before you dismiss this out of 'hand' . . .
by
brickbat
·
· Score: 5
Sorry, had to get that horrible pun out of my system.
Seriously: while gesture controls may not be ready for prime time just yet, consider that the technology may prove useful for those who communicate best using only their hands. A 17-year-old from Colorado recently won the grand prize at the International Science and Engineering Fair for designing a glove that can interpret the movements of someone "speaking" in American Sign Language (ASL) and then output the communication as text.
So, the hard of hearing could control their computer with ASL commands, or dictate letters the same way the rest of us can with a voice-powered word processor, using beefed-up gesture control technology and, of course, hardware that can reliably interpret their hand movements. It's somewhat tangential to the story, but an intriguing concept nonetheless.
I disagree. If you're already holding the mouse, you can move around really quickly with gesture-based navigation in Opera. Of course, this is assuming you're using a real mouse; with a laptop touchpad this wouldn't be convenient at all. --
--
"A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye." -- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
If KDE really wanted to improve their interface, they should make those tiny little toolbar buttons a lot bigger by adding labels. When you increase the size of a target (aka control aka widget), the user can access it faster (something we in the UI industry call Fitts' law). Right now, KDE has billions of tiny buttons that aren't very forthcoming as to what they do (a problem alleviated by a label) and that have crappy access times as a result of their tinyness. Just like all those buttons in M$ office. I guarantee you that few users if any ever use the toolbar buttons in word or excel because they're esoteric and have no speed advantage. Another problem with KDE is lack of progressive disclosure, which is the concept of putting the most simple, basic options at the top-level of an interface, and then giving the user the option of digging down to a more complex level if needed. KDE doesn't do this. They throw 18 billion menu entries, buttons, and other controls straight at the user. When this happens, users will feel completely overwhelmed and won't know where to begin in using program. Just looking at Konqueror makes my head spin.
I'm not bashing KDE for adding a good advanced feature like gesturing, but this seems to be just one more instance in a trend that desktop environments have followed as of late: adding cool, trendy, buzzword-compliant technologies but then completely blowing it the most basic and fundamental UI design principles.
A problem with your arguement--sane defaults
by
Ukab+the+Great
·
· Score: 2
"But you can customize it" people say
"But if you dig deep enough into the configuration, you can change" people say
Such are the ideas that hold linux from the desktop. Many users starting off will do neither, and shouldn't be expected to try to improve things that should have been improved to begin with. If there's something in an interface that is supposed to be done (e.g. labeling toolbar buttons) and makes an interface more usable, it should be the default.
A challenge for the great Mosfet
by
Ukab+the+Great
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· Score: 2
I decided to give it a try, and my keyboard usage has droped way down. I really like rolling one's hand over the mouse buttons to move forward and back, not to mention the quick gestures to minimize or close.
I use a screen with a lot of realestate, so keeping mouse movements to a minimum via not having to hit small targets is a good thing. Besides, you can always use it the old fashioned way.
the original mail from mike pilone
by
n3m6
·
· Score: 2
Hello All,
I wrote KGesture the other day. It is a gesture recognition application
for KDE. As far as I know, it is the first of its kind and offers
something MS doesn't.
Problem 1:
KGesture relies heavily on DCOP to communicate with running applications.
Most of the feedback that I have been getting back from users is that they
can't do what they want because the application doesn't make it available.
I was wondering what the possibility of increasing the number of methods
available in a stub is? Does performace take a hit as the number of
methods in an interface increases?
For example, most users want back() and next() from Konqueror exposed so
they can control the browser with gestures. Also, minimizing applications
(I suppose through a KWin interface).
What are the chances of getting these exposed? Is KGesture going about
this the wrong way?
Problem 2:
Currently users must use the 'dcop' command to find the method they want
to trigger. Is there a DCOP browser out there, or a widget that builds a
tree from DCOP information?
Letting the user easily select a dcop function would be a big plus.
If your interested, KGesture can be found here:
http://www.slac.com/~mpilone/projects/
It started as a little adventure in stroke recognition, but people seem to
like it, and it is a new approach to computer interaction (at least on the
desktop with a mouse! CAD apps have been doing it with a pen forever).
Thanks in advance,
-mike
Mike Pilone Computer Scientist
mpilone@slac.com http://www.slac.com/mpilone/
Visit http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel #u nsub to unsubscribe
Am I the only one who quickly abandoned B&W, due to frequent misinterpretation of gestures? I'd try to punish my creature, and instead I'd get him to drop the food he's holding. Gesture commands are stupid, especially when we have a perfectly good keyboard to use.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Am I the only one who quickly abandoned B&W, due to frequent misinterpretation of gestures?
There are limitations to gesture controls, but B&W is built for it. It's part of the game, because you're a god, so waving your hand around should produce miracles, not some function key being pressed. It's part of the mystique and aura of the game, and involves you in the story more. So while gesture based commands may be slightly gimmicky for everyday workstation use, it works well in a game where you're supposed to be a 'god', producing magical effects with the wave of a hand. I have temporarily given up the game cause it never really saves my games, but I really like the gestures for this game only. I'll stick to keyboard commands for everything else I think.
new life for porn browsing
by
Dark+Paladin
·
· Score: 3
You know, I could comment from there - but I'm not:). John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
How to use this effectively
by
benploni
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· Score: 5
After spending some time playing with this, I have learned a few things:
1) Don't bother with fancy gestures yet. Only simple ones, like L will work with any reliability.
2) You *must* pause before and after the gesture. This is CRUCIAL. A slight pause, gesture, pause.
3) Scale doesnt matter. Small l, big L, it doesn't matter. It would be nice if I could filter smaller motions.
4) Understand dcop. dcop will allow you to do gestures for all sorts of KDE apps. For example, you could have gesture that makes the konquror web browser "go back", or "reload". Or it could have kmail cheack your mail. Try running kcdop, a graphical dcop browser, to get an idea of what's possible.
DCOP is one of the most wicked things about KDE. And you know what? Each and every KDE application is linked against DCOP so potentially -- all of them support it. Konqueror definitely supports DCOP, and has a nice interface for simpler methods like "open a new window" but for more complicated things like "back" or "reload" it gets a little tricky but you CAN do it... fully control your Konqueror for the command line.
DCOP and the DCOP interfaces will only get better and better, KDE should push and promote this stuff. It's something GNOME really can't compete in, yet, not even with Bonobo.
-- (Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Not new, not revolutionary...
by
joto
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· Score: 3
No, it's not new, and it is not revolutionary. But it is a good idea that has taken surprisingly long time to catch on in the mainstream. While I can probably see better uses for it than in a web-browser (e.g. a CAD-program, or some other mainly graphical app, such as computer games or graphics applications), it is interesting to see if the time is ripe for such a good idea to finally reach the mainstream...
In case you don't like to take my word for it, gesture recognition has existed in at least one free GPL'd C++ library for quite a few years (long before Gtk came to life, and AFAIK also before Qt, at least before it became popular). The library is called Amulet and has several other interesting features, such as a constraint solver for geometry layout. Another interesting aspect of Amulet is that it does not use class-based inheritance, but uses a prototype-based approach (in the form of a C++ library) instead.
But the history goes even further back. Basically, Amulet is just a reimplementation in C++ of an even older Common Lisp library called Garnet. Sadly Garnet seems to be relatively unmaintained these days, but it provides many of the same features in a much better suited language (yes, Common Lisp is better suited for this kind of programming, although I must admit that modern C++ is a surprisingly flexible language, given it's static nature).
Unfortunately Gnome doesn't have anything like DCOP, therefore every program would have to implement this itself.
BTW: does anyone in here know how hard it would be for Gnome to be made compatible with DCOP (excluding the actual applications that would have to be modified)?
Gesture-based input only good for closed systems?
by
dmccarty
·
· Score: 2
When the last/. gesture-based story was posted, I followed a poster's comment and downloaded Sensiva. But while the program works well*, has a beautiful interface and offers a new way of controlling UI, it doesn't perform the killer function: work faster than existing solutions. No matter how fast I can wheel and deal with my mouse and enter all kinds of fancy symbols it's still faster to enter a keyboard combo and not have to move my hands from the home keys.
Now in a closed system, such as a game, drawing program, etc., mouse usage is much more important. But for general use, gesture-based input will only work at the expense of speed.
* I found that it works well for simple symbols. More complicated glyphs, such as figure eights, and symbols with crossover lines, were hopeless, no matter what size or speed I tried them. --
-- Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
First off, I'm not a Dotcor, but rather someone that uses Opera for their browsing. While gesture navigation does take some time to get used to, I would have to say if implemented as well as in Opera, then it could effectivly reduce CTS. When using Opera, one can use the mouse to move everything and if your mouse is already ergonomic (ala my Logitech Mouseman+), then they way you move is no different that simply moving the mouse. It could reduce time typing, and movement on the mouse because of the smaller are the mouse has to travel (assuming that the PS2 rate is high enough, or if it's USB).
Yes. It's a revolutionary almost-new form of HCI. If you believe the hype, it's as significant as the change from command-line to point-and-click.
Hopefully, though, it'll never become mandatory, because just as mouse can be slower than keyboard, this isn't as fast as using a keyboard and mouse in the conventional way. --
They could advance the technology even further
by
Rosco+P.+Coltrane
·
· Score: 3
When the "gesture control" program will be able to recognize more than 26 "gestures", they'll be able
to create a very nifty "letter gesturing" control.
This will be groundbreaking ! I suggest that we call this new feature "handwriting recognition". My friend next to me, always very creative, suggests that we call is "grafiti", but somehow I can't imagine that a company would be so misguided as to use such a silly name.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
-- "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm sure at least some of you have done over the phone tech-support (even a litle).
Ever have trouble getting someone to right-click and drag? Try this:
"OK, now close your current window by holding down the right and middle mouse button, while making a square, clockwise, aterting from the top left corner. Now, open a new konsole by holding down the right mouse button, and then moving right a short distance, then down, then right for a short distance, then up."
DarkWinter, part-time gesture phone support expert, fulltime psychotic.
--
Even if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can't be sure until you see the RealDuck
So could I use this to send a relpy to all the Spam I get? I've got a great gesture for them.
-- Americans could not be more self absorbed if they were made of equal parts water and paper towel. -Dennis Miller
Your a wanna-be (feature's already there)
by
Duley
·
· Score: 3
Erm, try right clicking on the toolbar handle and this is what you get:
Text Position->Icons Only, Text Only, Text aside icons, Text under icons.
There are your labels. Been here ever since KDE2.0 development first started. You can also select icon size and got a selection of small, medium, and large.
As for "progressive disclosure", I don't see this problem but if you do almost all of the menus and toolbars are constructed out of XML. Edit them if you think you can do better and post it to the KDE mailing lists (or the application author).
Slashdot Mirror
I have seen several indifferent or even negative
comments on the gesture support from Linux users.
Having used gestures from the Opera browser, I have seen that they are very usefull and really enhance the WWW experience. They enhance it so much that I cannot understand the negative comments. As noted by other users, no other desktop OS has them, thus it is a genuine chance for Linux to make a head start. Please, before making any comments, think first if it is a constructive comment.
Thanks.
Netscape: "RAM! We need more RAM!"
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
In 1995 I reimplemented it in Java, and for a while you could navigate my homepage by drawing simple gestures in an applet window. It was really simple and took about 3 hours to implement.
In 1998 I got quite into Window Maker, and started a conversation with Alfredo (Mr W.M) about integrating this functionality into it. I wrote the gesture parsing code, and he wrote a front-end, but it never really got past the experimental stage. I am sure that code is probably floating around somewhere too.
Before long I got bored with it though, it is must faster to hit a key on a keyboard or press a button on a GUI than it is to draw a gesure which is often misinterpreted.
They are great gimmicks, but of limited practical use.
--
oh, to hell w/ voice recognition. as i don't work in the US i am missing out on the cubicle culture and i'm sitting in my office w/ 2 other people. i think all hell will break loose if we all start mumbling "close window", "open xterm" all day. heck, I imagine a support call coming in, someone here says "Close Window" and the guy on the other end of the phone actually does this ... "Uh, no, not you, that was just someone wanting to CLOSE a WINDOW" ... hm, chain reaction anyone? :)
:)
on the other hand imagine all the pranks you could play on your co-workers computer if you can teach them to react to everyday words in a real weird way
Gesture control represents something new, and to many people, interesting. I am not aware of any other OS/Desktop with gesture interfaces as a component.
Anyway, this does look like a Freshmeat thing, but I think talking about gesture entry, rather than biching about the story, is what the editors intended.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I'd have to disagree with that. I've been running on a gesture system for a while now, and it's actually more convenient for most simple tasks. Since I don't have to move my hand from mouse to keyboard as often, and I have a decent setup (gel wrist pads are amazing), and I *stop* every hour or so to make sure that I don't overdo it, my wrists have been fine.
The reduction of mouse to keyboard switches has done wonders for my overall speed with my system, and caused the small amount of pain that I was already in to go away.
Maybe you should give it a shot before making any claims, Michael.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
IIRC Mentor Graphics (a VLSI design tool) included gesture control. Since most of the time you were mousing components around anyway, it was convenient to use gestures for cut, copy, paste, etc. There were special selection "strokes", and other tool-specific commands. In fact, as I read about libstroke it sounds like the author of that library was inspired by similar CAD programs.
Really, the only thing you need to add for great gesture recognition is another mouse - one for each hand would really improve the gesture complexity you could generate, and make things much faster too. Ultimately I foresee some sort of VR glove (like in the oft-maligned Johnny Mnemonic) where you can type, move things around with your hands, and set up specific hand motions to do certain actions (a karate chop or a scissors motion means "cut", etc.). That would be the real convergence of the mouse and keyboard.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
On the other hand, the other big unknown is how long it will take before these kinds of interfaces can progress beyond simple commands. I was playing around with OS X voice commands the other day, and I realized there aren't that many. While I'll probably be using a keyboard til I die, it's still interesting for another reason. As you start creating the ability for a computer to do something like "open a new document with vim in my complaint letters folder", progressing to "download all the images with thumbnails on this page and put them in a new folder called 'Kournikova'", you eventually start crossing over into the real ability of a computer to use language. No doubt, these kind of simple OS-related tasks will be the first practical application of this.
Interesting, but I still prefer keyboard shortcuts. Heavy mouse usage makes me rest my hands, which makes my elbows tingle after a while. Seriously, keep your wrists in the air as much as possible. There's a reason you never heard about carpal tunnel syndrome in the era of manual typewriters.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
(Yes, XEmacs is an OS/Desktop!)
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
By freezing a standard too quickly, bad implementations can be propogated more often than necessary.
--
FYI, ACDSee's scrollwheel support also helps, and is probably better for quickly scrolling past some of the crap that shows up on usenet sometimes.
--
Just so that everyone knows:
The multi platform 3D modeling program
blender (full featured and fits on a floppy!) has had this for a few years now. It's really pretty easy to get used to.
Congrats to KDE
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
I mean, once it's a huge success and adopted by everyone i'm sure someone will creep out from under some stone and claim the patent, and would now all makers of Software using gestures for input please pay the license for the past 3 years (anyone remember GIFs?).
It's not that i think of this kind of input as an obvious concept, but maybe the folks implementing it should look if there is already someone applying for a patent. It'd also be a good idea to look where and with who the idea crept up first, it'd make looking for prior art so much easier in ten years time.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
My god man, look at your user id!!! After all this time you are STILL whining about unnoteworthy news. Well, it's okay. Maybe you were confused and thought you were on a different website. This is slashdot, for the love of god! Come on man! Wake up!
Justin
Sorry, had to get that horrible pun out of my system.
Seriously: while gesture controls may not be ready for prime time just yet, consider that the technology may prove useful for those who communicate best using only their hands. A 17-year-old from Colorado recently won the grand prize at the International Science and Engineering Fair for designing a glove that can interpret the movements of someone "speaking" in American Sign Language (ASL) and then output the communication as text.
So, the hard of hearing could control their computer with ASL commands, or dictate letters the same way the rest of us can with a voice-powered word processor, using beefed-up gesture control technology and, of course, hardware that can reliably interpret their hand movements. It's somewhat tangential to the story, but an intriguing concept nonetheless.
I disagree. If you're already holding the mouse, you can move around really quickly with gesture-based navigation in Opera. Of course, this is assuming you're using a real mouse; with a laptop touchpad this wouldn't be convenient at all.
--
"A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye." -- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
If KDE really wanted to improve their interface, they should make those tiny little toolbar buttons a lot bigger by adding labels. When you increase the size of a target (aka control aka widget), the user can access it faster (something we in the UI industry call Fitts' law). Right now, KDE has billions of tiny buttons that aren't very forthcoming as to what they do (a problem alleviated by a label) and that have crappy access times as a result of their tinyness. Just like all those buttons in M$ office. I guarantee you that few users if any ever use the toolbar buttons in word or excel because they're esoteric and have no speed advantage. Another problem with KDE is lack of progressive disclosure, which is the concept of putting the most simple, basic options at the top-level of an interface, and then giving the user the option of digging down to a more complex level if needed. KDE doesn't do this. They throw 18 billion menu entries, buttons, and other controls straight at the user. When this happens, users will feel completely overwhelmed and won't know where to begin in using program. Just looking at Konqueror makes my head spin.
I'm not bashing KDE for adding a good advanced feature like gesturing, but this seems to be just one more instance in a trend that desktop environments have followed as of late: adding cool, trendy, buzzword-compliant technologies but then completely blowing it the most basic and fundamental UI design principles.
"But you can customize it" people say
"But if you dig deep enough into the configuration, you can change" people say
Such are the ideas that hold linux from the desktop. Many users starting off will do neither, and shouldn't be expected to try to improve things that should have been improved to begin with. If there's something in an interface that is supposed to be done (e.g. labeling toolbar buttons) and makes an interface more usable, it should be the default.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFit ts.html
I decided to give it a try, and my keyboard usage has droped way down. I really like rolling one's hand over the mouse buttons to move forward and back, not to mention the quick gestures to minimize or close.
I use a screen with a lot of realestate, so keeping mouse movements to a minimum via not having to hit small targets is a good thing. Besides, you can always use it the old fashioned way.
Hello All,
l #u nsub to unsubscribe
I wrote KGesture the other day. It is a gesture recognition application
for KDE. As far as I know, it is the first of its kind and offers
something MS doesn't.
Problem 1:
KGesture relies heavily on DCOP to communicate with running applications.
Most of the feedback that I have been getting back from users is that they
can't do what they want because the application doesn't make it available.
I was wondering what the possibility of increasing the number of methods
available in a stub is? Does performace take a hit as the number of
methods in an interface increases?
For example, most users want back() and next() from Konqueror exposed so
they can control the browser with gestures. Also, minimizing applications
(I suppose through a KWin interface).
What are the chances of getting these exposed? Is KGesture going about
this the wrong way?
Problem 2:
Currently users must use the 'dcop' command to find the method they want
to trigger. Is there a DCOP browser out there, or a widget that builds a
tree from DCOP information?
Letting the user easily select a dcop function would be a big plus.
If your interested, KGesture can be found here:
http://www.slac.com/~mpilone/projects/
It started as a little adventure in stroke recognition, but people seem to
like it, and it is a new approach to computer interaction (at least on the
desktop with a mouse! CAD apps have been doing it with a pen forever).
Thanks in advance,
-mike
Mike Pilone Computer Scientist
mpilone@slac.com http://www.slac.com/mpilone/
Visit
http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-deve
Am I the only one who quickly abandoned B&W, due to frequent misinterpretation of gestures? I'd try to punish my creature, and instead I'd get him to drop the food he's holding. Gesture commands are stupid, especially when we have a perfectly good keyboard to use.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You know, I could comment from there - but I'm not :).
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
After spending some time playing with this, I have learned a few things:
1) Don't bother with fancy gestures yet. Only simple ones, like L will work with any reliability.
2) You *must* pause before and after the gesture. This is CRUCIAL. A slight pause, gesture, pause.
3) Scale doesnt matter. Small l, big L, it doesn't matter. It would be nice if I could filter smaller motions.
4) Understand dcop. dcop will allow you to do gestures for all sorts of KDE apps. For example, you could have gesture that makes the konquror web browser "go back", or "reload". Or it could have kmail cheack your mail. Try running kcdop, a graphical dcop browser, to get an idea of what's possible.
KDE Rules, Good luck!
DCOP is one of the most wicked things about KDE. And you know what? Each and every KDE application is linked against DCOP so potentially -- all of them support it. Konqueror definitely supports DCOP, and has a nice interface for simpler methods like "open a new window" but for more complicated things like "back" or "reload" it gets a little tricky but you CAN do it... fully control your Konqueror for the command line. DCOP and the DCOP interfaces will only get better and better, KDE should push and promote this stuff. It's something GNOME really can't compete in, yet, not even with Bonobo.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
In case you don't like to take my word for it, gesture recognition has existed in at least one free GPL'd C++ library for quite a few years (long before Gtk came to life, and AFAIK also before Qt, at least before it became popular). The library is called Amulet and has several other interesting features, such as a constraint solver for geometry layout. Another interesting aspect of Amulet is that it does not use class-based inheritance, but uses a prototype-based approach (in the form of a C++ library) instead.
But the history goes even further back. Basically, Amulet is just a reimplementation in C++ of an even older Common Lisp library called Garnet. Sadly Garnet seems to be relatively unmaintained these days, but it provides many of the same features in a much better suited language (yes, Common Lisp is better suited for this kind of programming, although I must admit that modern C++ is a surprisingly flexible language, given it's static nature).
BTW: does anyone in here know how hard it would be for Gnome to be made compatible with DCOP (excluding the actual applications that would have to be modified)?
Monkey sense
Now in a closed system, such as a game, drawing program, etc., mouse usage is much more important. But for general use, gesture-based input will only work at the expense of speed.
* I found that it works well for simple symbols. More complicated glyphs, such as figure eights, and symbols with crossover lines, were hopeless, no matter what size or speed I tried them.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
First off, I'm not a Dotcor, but rather someone that uses Opera for their browsing. While gesture navigation does take some time to get used to, I would have to say if implemented as well as in Opera, then it could effectivly reduce CTS. When using Opera, one can use the mouse to move everything and if your mouse is already ergonomic (ala my Logitech Mouseman+), then they way you move is no different that simply moving the mouse. It could reduce time typing, and movement on the mouse because of the smaller are the mouse has to travel (assuming that the PS2 rate is high enough, or if it's USB).
Anyways, that just me rambling.
Hopefully, though, it'll never become mandatory, because just as mouse can be slower than keyboard, this isn't as fast as using a keyboard and mouse in the conventional way.
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This will be groundbreaking ! I suggest that we call this new feature "handwriting recognition". My friend next to me, always very creative, suggests that we call is "grafiti", but somehow I can't imagine that a company would be so misguided as to use such a silly name.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ever have trouble getting someone to right-click and drag? Try this:
"OK, now close your current window by holding down the right and middle mouse button, while making a square, clockwise, aterting from the top left corner. Now, open a new konsole by holding down the right mouse button, and then moving right a short distance, then down, then right for a short distance, then up."
DarkWinter, part-time gesture phone support expert, fulltime psychotic.
Even if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can't be sure until you see the RealDuck
So could I use this to send a relpy to all the Spam I get? I've got a great gesture for them.
Americans could not be more self absorbed if they were made of equal parts water and paper towel. -Dennis Miller
Text Position->Icons Only, Text Only, Text aside icons, Text under icons.
There are your labels. Been here ever since KDE2.0 development first started. You can also select icon size and got a selection of small, medium, and large.
As for "progressive disclosure", I don't see this problem but if you do almost all of the menus and toolbars are constructed out of XML. Edit them if you think you can do better and post it to the KDE mailing lists (or the application author).