Re: [Nautilus-list] Feature request: mouse gestures in Nautilus

[Daryl Pawluk <root daryl pawluk lan>]

Simos Xenitellis wrote:

> Dear All,
> 	This is an initial e-mail about mouse gestures,
> or in the general view, a way to associate input device events
> to specific actions.
> 	For example, if someone is browsing using Mozilla,
> she may use the "secondary" mouse button to click and drag
> an imaginative line (or "stroke") to the left in order to
> go to the previous page in the history.
> 	Programmatically, this associates the sequence of
> events:
> 	. secondary button clicked (get position)
> 	. mouse move (record positions while moving!)
> 	. secondary button released (get position)
>
> to the History Back action (Alt-Left arrow, for example).
>
> Using the position values, an application can determing the
> direction of the mouse.
>
> 	This functionality is quite common in PDAs
> and strangely enough with the CAD products.
>
> 	It has become very popular from a couple of postings
> in Slashdot, one discussing the new version of the Opera
> WWW browser that has "mouse gesture" support
> and another that was mentioning  a company called "Sensiva"
> (www.sensiva.com) that has Win/Mac and Linux application software
> to enable gesture support.
>
> 	Reading the comments on mouse gestures, there were two
> groups a people, people either adoring them and other that disliked
> them. The negative group results could be due to user-interface
> unfimiliarity.
>
> 	Thus, one could use the Sensiva Linux client and configure
> it to be used in Linux X applications.
>
> 	Apart from the Sensiva client, there are several
> open-source initiatives such as:
>
> 	http://wayv.sourceforge.net 	(Mike Bennett)
> 	http://http://www.etla.net/libstroke/ (Mark Willey)
> 	http://www.handhelds.org/projects/xscribble.html (HandHelds.org)
>
> This "mouse gesture" functionality looks to be a required feature in
> embedded versions of GNOME and a highly desired one in GNOME in general.
>
> 	There are decisions to be made on where the mouse gesture support
> should be put.
> 	a. How much should be abstracted? Should it be only for pointing
> 	devices like mice? Or for both mice and pens?
> 	b. Should there be an X extension or is there one that can
> 	accomodation the mouse gesture functionality?
> 	c. Should the mouse gesture core be put in the X server, the
> 	graphical environment (like GNOME or KDE), the Window manager
> 	(like sawfish) or as an even higher level applications like
> 	in the Sensiva solution?
>
> 	Since Nautilus is enhancing the user-experience quite
> dramatically, there might be a need to add such support of mouse gestures
> in a clean way. Mouse gestures constitute a big enhancement to the UI.
>
> 	Mouse gestures do not appear to be present in either Windows
> or the Mac and additionally appear not to be patented.
>
> I would be happy if I manage to stir a conversation on mouse gestures.
>
> Thanks,
> simos
>
>
>
>
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while we're on this topic, there is another feature that i think would 
be useful, and that is a lock button on trackballs. some of the Logitech 
TrackMan series have an additional button that under windows can be a 
lock button for draging without holding down a button which on some 
trackballs requires two hands, one to move the ball, one to hold down 
the button. this could also help the physically impaired on mice as 
well. does anyone know if a mouse/trackball button can be made sticky 
under X mouse support? by sticky i mean one click for down a second 
click for up. this would be one way to implement drag-lock, except the 
button would have to be interpreted as button 1 or at least have the 
same function as button 1. lack of this capability is what is keeping 
one physically impaired person that i know of from switching from 
windows to linux. there must be others.

daryl