Gestures For The Linux Desktop

geoffsmith writes "Just stumbled upon a gesture system for the linux desktop called 'wayV'. It works similarly to Mozilla gestures, except at windowing system level. For example, hold down the middle mouse button and draw an 'N' and netscape pops up, or draw a slash through a window and it kills the window's process. There are .debs available and the author is currently porting it to win32."

Comments

apt-get install from Debian

[CAPSLOCK2000]

This software is allready in Debian, so all you Debian heads, save the author's website, and install with:
# apt-get install wayv

(well, actually sudo aptitude install wayv for me, but that's beside the point)

Re:apt-get install from Debian

[taviso]

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

Download it here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://download.com.com/3001-2344-891022.html

FVWM

[James Lanfear]

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

Re:Pointless

[moonbender]

Not true: to click on an icon, the cursor has to be at a specific point on the GUI; furthermore the icon has to be visible, eg it must not be covered by a window.
(And yes, I am aware the parent was troll more than anything, but it's on-topic, and I'm sure some people could think the same without being malevolent.)

StrokeIt

[eddy]

No idea, but StrokeIt sounds similar.

Personally I feel the only gestures worth bothering with is the hold-mousebutton-click-other for navigating back/forward.

Re:Oh puhleeze.

[Katravax]

Liar. You're just trying to sound like a keyboard snob. Opera gestures don't happen by themselves -- you have to hold the right mouse button down. I also highlight text to break pages apart to make them easier to read, and I have never accidentally kicked off an Opera gesture, and Opera is my primary browser. In addition, you can turn the gestures off. There is no way for gestures in Opera to "get in the way".

Useful?

[sepluv]

Although this is quite an interesting (and even humorous) idea I doubt if it will be used by many Linux users (unless it is quite simple with a few mouse gestures which are easy to make but not easy to make by mistake). I'm sure some people will like it, but, as has already been pointed out, it is probably quicker clicking the icon. Even if it does speed things up a bit, one has to learn all those gestures and make sure one does not make any by accident.

When I had mouse gestures enabled in my browsers (Mozilla, Opera and Phoenix), I found myself making them by accident and closing the window or something. Maybe they should make them customisable (choose your own gestures - that would be cool and people probably have their own personal gestures they find it is easier/harder for them to make ;-) ) and also make it so one can choose which indivdual gestures you want installed (i.e.: not the kill the app one if your fingers slip sometimes).

If that was done they might be more useful and mainstream (and, maybe, used in many apps and OS's), but still I (like many others, probably) just couldn't be bothered learning all the damn things and they seemed like more pain than they were worth - I know how to user my browser/OS quickly and well by pointing and clicking or by the keyboard, and I do not really need a third harder-to-learn that is of questionable value and unlikely to speed up my browsing or OS use.

Re:Useful?

[Jack Zombie]

Maybe they should make them customisable (choose your own gestures - that would be cool and people probably have their own personal gestures they find it is easier/harder for them to make ;-) ) and also make it so one can choose which individual gestures you want installed (i.e.: not the kill the app one if your fingers slip sometimes).

Actually, you can customize and choose which individual mouse gestures you want to use in Phoenix/Mozilla with the Optimoz Mouse Gestures Extension. All you need to do is go to the directory where you installed Phoenix/Mozilla (for example, C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla), then navigate into chrome\mozgest\content\ and open the gestimp.js file (so, following the previous example, it would be C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\chrome\mozgest\content\g estimp.js). Now, edit whats in function initGestureTable() -- for example, edit
addGesture("L", "g.BrowserBack", "BrowserBack();");
to
addGesture("LUDR", "g.BrowserBack", "BrowserBack();");
in order to change from performing a "Left" gesture to go back one page to "Left, Up, Down, Right". You can also delete the gestures you dislike this way. Its archaic and troublesome, I know, but it works.

Personally, I only use the "Left" for Back, "Right" for Forward, "Up" for Stop, "Down" for New Tab, and "Down, Right" for Close Tab. All the rest is bloat that gets in the way, for me at least.

Gestures for BeOS and MacOS X

[stew77]

I wrote something similar for BeOS - it's called FourWays. Now the trick is that all BeOS applications use BMessages for communications, and that in conjunction with SpiceyKeys, you can use gestures to control any BeOS application.

Also, theres Cocoa Gestures for MacOS X.

Re:Whatever happened to Popmouse for Windows?

[Aldreis]

You could take a look at Sensiva. It has been around for years, and could even record actions as a macro and assign it to a custom gesture.

Re:StrokeIt.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can set any gesture, pre-known or ones you "teach" to it, to do virtually anything with strokeit.
highly configurable and customizable.

mine has close window set to C - which is freakin fast and easy to draw. faster than closing out the normal way by far.
examples:
close - c
maximize - foward slash
minimize - reverse foward slash
refresh - r
back - left
next - right
top of the page - up
email - E
etc..

and even bookmarks. i could set slashdot to S.. simple.

this thing is a must for me while mousing with one hand.

Voil�... 2 mice!

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually do this. It is possible with X 4.
Just edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 like this... ... here's the first snippet (put it where your mouse config already is):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IntelliMouse"
# It's a wheel mouse
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
# serial
Option "Resolution" "520"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Needed for the wheel to work
Option "SendCoreEvents"
# Important! That makes this mouse a "main" one.
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse2"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
# This is the config for a five-button mouse.
# It was originally for a trackball, which
# turned to be low-quality
# (but it was way cheap).
# I use it now with a normal 2-button+wheel
# mini-mouse. It is left this way so that
# I can go back to the trackball if I want...
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
# It's a PS/2 mouse but it should work ok
# with a serial in /dev/ttyS1
# Option "EmulateWheel" "On"
# Option "EmulateWheelButton" "6"
# Unneeded options
Option "EmulateWheelInertia" "0"
# Hmmm, forgot to try how this works.
# Maybe I'll tweak it next...
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Ye olde wheel-translating config
Option "HistorySize" "1000"
# Can't remember what this does. Seems
# to record the last mouse movements.
Option "Resolution" "450"
Option "SendDragEvents" "On"
# Ooh. So many options, so little time.
Option "SendCoreEvents"
# This mouse is a "main" one, too.
Option "Buttons" "7"
# This makes the trackball work. It has
# five buttons plus a wheel which
# gives 2 more.
EndSection ... and so it ends, the first snippet: ... now, the second snippet (at the end of the config file):

# This is were you describe your system with the
# components you gave previously in the
# config file.

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse2" "CorePointer"
# Just one of them can be the "Corepointer"
InputDevice "Mouse1"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection ... and this is the end of second snippet.

Voilà! Two mice working at the same time! Someone with small hands here couldn't use the same mouse I do...

Now, come to think, maybe I opened Pandora's box.