Ubuntu Multi-touch Gesture Support

Since ubuntu announced it's support for multitouch/multi gesture trackpad like it's write in here we're interested to try it on our new netbook which it's hardware was support multitouch.

One of my key goals for Ubuntu 11.04 has been to introduce full multitouch support through X.org. In technical terms, this means adding touch support to the XInput protocol. You may see others refer to multitouch in X.org as simply XInput 2.1. We hatched our plan back at UDS-N to push hard on developing the XInput 2.1 protocol and implementing it as best as possible in 11.04 [Chase Douglas]

As far as i know, Multitouch gesture is technology which bring by MacOS X in line with MacBook Pro, multitouch facilitates user to select, scroll, maximize, and minimize easily without using a mouse (CMIIW) except you can using some primitive touchpad function like drag, pinch/spread, flick, hold, rotate, and tap. This technology is very interesting and some poeple says that this is mouse killer.

Cononical have some related works which have deal with Multi-touch some of them are Utouch, ginn, and GTK/Qt libs, you can contribute by fixing bugs or making some testing and reported on their official page here.

Multi-touch Gesture Support Using Ginn

Ginn is short of "Gesture Injector: No-GEIS, No-Toolkits", such ubuntu deamon with jinn-like wish-granting capabilities, Ginn gives applications the ability to support a multi-touch gestures without having to integrate uTouch-GEIS or multi-touch-enabled GTK/Qt libraries.

Configure Ginn

Ginn is available to Unity (both in Maverick and Natty). Even if you have the uTouch stack installed and are using the GNOME Desktop, you will not get any response from the gesture recognizer (Grail) if you perform the 3- and 4-finger system gestures. If you want to just use the standard GNOME Desktop while also getting support for system gestures, you can use Ginn to assign gestures in the global section to Compiz Shortcuts.

Zoom out the virtual desktop (4-tap): 4-fingers-Tap -> Super+E.
      <wish gesture="Tap" fingers="4">
        <action name="action1" when="update">
          <trigger prop="tap time" min="20" max="400"/>
          <key modifier1="Super_L">E</key>
        </action>
      </wish>

Bring up all windows (3-pinch): 3-fingers-Pinch -> Super+W
      <wish gesture="Pinch" fingers="3">
        <action name="action4" when="update">
          <trigger prop="radius delta" min="-80" max="-50"/>
          <key modifier1="Super_L">W </key>
        </action>
      </wish>

Ubuntu Multi-touch in Action

Interested to try it guys ?, i think if your hardware support it you must try. This article just an introducing of Ubuntu Multi-touch Gesture support which didn't discuss technical issues in detail, if you want to taste it or contribute on related resources, you can visit folowing reference links :