Slashdot Mirror
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."
I guess I thought this software always came with my distribution. I've been making a certain gesture at the Linux desktop for some time with no effect.
No word yet on what gestures the Linux port of "Leisure Suit Larry" will support.
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)
To me, gestures is a violation of POLA (Principle of least astonishment). When gestures are on in Opera, they get in the way, because I sometimes 'randomly' select text when I browse/read (it helps me read faster, dunno why).
So make me a believer. Tell me _why_ gesturing (as the scourge that it is to me) should haunt me even on my desktop?
No, I'm not trolling, I'm generally curious about why people think this RSI inducing "input method" is useful, and why I should use it instead of my well-optimized keyboard shortcut scheme.
I really hope that the gestures they use are the same as Mozilla's. I use the gestures a lot, and if I'm ever forced to use IE, I find myself gesturing to no avail.
However, I recently tried using Opera which also has gestures capability. The problem I had is that a lot of the gestures are different than Mozilla's gestures, causing me to do Mozilla gestures out of habit without effect (or the wrong effect) inside Opera.
On an operating system level this could be problematic. What if I absent-mindedly do a Mozilla gesture, but in this operating system's gestures, it causes me to lose my work before it was saved? Or some such similar disaster.
Already I know I would have problems with the closing windows by drawing a slash through it. In Mozilla and Opera, you close it by gesturing L, R, L.
Probably the best way to avoid all these gestures getting confused with each other ("now let's see, was that for Opera? Mozilla? or the operating system?") is to develop some sort of gesturing standard that's generally agreed upon as intuitive that we all can remember and use.
Also, what if I have Mozilla installed on a system that also has an operating system gestures program installed? Which gesture takes priority when the same thing means two different things to two different programs that are monitoring the mouse at the same time?
FVWM has supported gestures through LibStoke (apparently what wayV uses as well) for quite some time.
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.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I use ratpoison. The only gesture I do is to the mouse, not with the mouse.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
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.
Blimey, it's hard enough training new users to use a mouse. We've all been there:
"No, clicking twice isn't the same as a double click"
"No, you shouldn't move the mouse between the two clicks of a double-click"
etc etc ad nauseum.
Gestures are going to make this even more of a pain...
I've come across software like that in the Windows platform for years, yet I failed to understand how it would improve my everyday interaction with my PC. Of course some people like it and lets face it : it is quite impressive, even 'trendy'. So people will play with it for a few hours and then pretty much forget about it (I know I have). A minority may even continue to use such a system on a regular basis but not me (or anybody I know of for that matter ...).
, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/pendragon/publication s/programming-overview.html).
;) departments) are spending millions on that area. Sure, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they aim for profit. But they do offer a few solutions.
... I wonder how many people would agree with that ...
... what if, just if, something happened and I would not be able to use my fingers anymore ? The Gestures-type-of-application (I just can't remember its name !) proved quite useful at that point. Not an adequate replacement of ones fingers but quite usefull nevertheless. Therefore, everytime I see similar software I feel a little more 'secure' and optimistic; it's silly I know ... Thats all.
Yet, for all its 'useless-ness', pointing device based gestures and similar technologies can be of importance for a particular sect of the 'computer users' population : People with disabilities. (check Google on that, and btw here are a couple of quick links http://knowltonian.net/NJIT/webaccessibility.html
I know that my post is on the verge of being moderated 'offtopic' or even 'flamebait' but the truth is that the FS/OSS community has not come up with any serious technologies to aid/help people with disabilities in their effort for satisfactory interaction with their computer. On the other hand, commercial entities/corporations (yes, like Microsoft but also Adobe, Sun etc.; in fact most of the big corps have dedicated research (or marketing
And yes, I am aware of the accessability options provided by modern FS/OSS desktops. But do you think they are enough when compared to commercial solutions ?
It is true that people with disabilities is a very small minority in the FS/OSS world (any statistics anyone ?) so it would not seem wise to 'waste' resources on the development of such software (mouse gestures, visual gesture recognition, voice recognition etc.)
Why did I post this ?
A few years ago I had an accident which resulted into several broken fingers. Ever tried to use a keyboard while most of your fingers are broken or cracked ? I tell you, it's a bitch.
A friend of mine helped me by installing a Gestures kind of software and a trackball in my brand new Win95 (no 'booo' please) box. It didn't solve everything but it did seem to make my interaction easier. My 'torment' only lasted a month or so but since then I often wondered
I don't understand, why gestures are so popular. I tried Mozilla gestures once, but run into problems with them. At first, they seemed to be a great help, but eventually they just started to make my life difficult. For example, when I tried to paint a piece of text by dragging mouse from right to left, the gesture system decided that I wanted to go to the previous page. Well, that's just stupid. And if I remember correctly, it doesn't help to drag mouse from left to right while painting a section, because it assumes that I want to move forward a page. For me, this kind of a system just makes life harder.