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Gestures With Multitouch In Ubuntu 10.10

Posted by Soulskill on from the touchy-feely dept.

jitendraharlalka writes "Mark Shuttleworth recently announced on his blog that the first cut of Canonical's UTouch framework is ready and will be available in Ubuntu Maverick. He goes on to talk about the development of 'touch language' by the design team. The 'touch language' will allow the chaining of basic gestures to create complex gestures. The approach is quite different from the single magic gestures implemented elsewhere. In Maverick, a few Gtk applications will support gesture-based scrolling."

9 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. One gesture by dasdumper · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe I can stop using the same gesture when my wifi card does not work.

  2. It's just a toy by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Having tried multitouch, it's useless in the long term. It is a nice gimmick to show in an advertisement, but for using it for longer than 15 minutes at a time, it's not a good idea -- you'll hand will get sore in no time.

    Even for mobile devices, there is simply no better thing than the good old keyboard. If you try the on-screen touch thingy on an iPad or most Androids, it may be enough for typing a single line of text. On an N900 with a proper physical keyboard, you're in good shape after several hours of typing. And since you can't have that many distinct gestures, traditional keyboard shortcuts are so much better.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:It's just a toy by shmlco · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your hand will get sore? You're kidding,right?

      There was probably some guy like you shaking his head thirty years ago. "Mice? Sorry, I tried one and it's totally useless. You always have to take your hand off the keyboard to do anything at all."

      "Not to mention how sore your hand will get mashing buttons and dragging it around your desktop."

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
    2. Re:It's just a toy by JanneM · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Swype is very overrated. Works fine for 90% of what you write (if you're using a well supported language), and makes the remaining 10% a pain to use. If you use more than one language, or want to use uncommon or non-standard vocabulary that 90% drops to something like 60% or worse.

      Besides, swype doesn't need multitouch. I agree with the OP; it's a nice gimmick but not particularly useful.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  3. Re:Hardware support is still weak by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Speaking of drivers, I bought an HP printer with claims to support only Mac and Windows. Lo and behold, turns out there is a 'NIX driver, HPLIP, that is very similar to typical Windows drivers in that it is a unified center of settings and even shows the HP logo in Ubuntu's taskbar.

    Familiar-feeling stuff like that goes a long way toward spreading desktop Linux adoption. Yet, for some reason, they don't simply add it to their standard driver CD.

  4. Minigames! by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Funny

    They are introducing multi-touch in 10.10 because in 11.04 the close and minimize buttons
    will run around the borders of your windows and you'll need two hands to catch them.

    This is much better than the current 10.04 "Memory" min-game where you try to remember which side the buttons are on.

  5. Re:Good job Mark, you've overcomplicated it ... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Redhat makes half its money from RHEL.

    You can even sell GPL software that uses closed art, for example.

    I have bought GPLed software on my phone, perhaps the dev won't get rich, but so what. We don't need more rich folks, we need more people doing what they love making a decent income.

  6. Re:Hardware support is still weak by turbidostato · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk."

    Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.

  7. Re:Hardware support is still weak by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Vendor specific nonsense that ignores the standard interfaces across all operating systems (MacOS included) does squat to encourage adoption of Linux. If anything, lack of this sort of nonsense for Linux is actually a considerable net gain. Incidentally, Linux has been using the "MacOS printing system" since before Apple was.

    If it were up to HP, I wouldn't be able to use my all-in-one as a network printer under Linux either.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.