[eclipse-dev] Opera/Mozilla style mouse/pen gesture recognition in Eclip

["Chris McLaren" <Chris_McLaren@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the comments. Mouse gestures will be a preference, which is off by default. 

Some people commented about the 'rocker' gesture - a different type of gesture where one presses the primary mouse button then presses the secondary mouse button (or visa versa) in a 'rocking' motion, usually assigned to backward and forward navigation (but should probably be user definable). 

I didn't add this feature yet because I wanted to first discuss the implications of sharing the primary (usually left) mouse button with the editor developers (like Kai, specifically). Getting the secondary button seems fairly non-invasive so far, with the exception of this context menu issue on Motif, but for the rocker gesture you can't really have one direction without the other and until the implications of sharing the primary button are understood, rocker gestures should remain out.

Regarding Motif, I suppose a preference to enable mouse gestures (meaning the user has to 'sign up' for the change in behavior) won't be sufficient for hardcode Motif users. I'm not sure how Opera/Mozilla solve this issue on Motif, if at all. Could someone investigate this? Another option I have is allowing the user to specify that one or more modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Command) must be pressed to enable gesture recognition. This should solve the problem on Motif, but unfortunately will make the feature somewhat less useful. Mozilla supports modifier keys as a preference.

Chris.