MyGestures - mouse gestures for linux

Mouse gestures - "draw" commands using your mouse/touchscreen/touchpad. Now with multitouch gestures on synaptics touchpads (experimental).

Installing from source:

sudo apt install pkg-config autoconf libtool libx11-dev libxrender-dev libxtst-dev libxml2-dev git make
git clone https://github.com/deters/mygestures.git
cd mygestures/
sh autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

Generating a .deb package (optional)

After installing from source:

sudo apt install debhelper
dpkg-buildpackage # it'll probably complain about not being able to sign the package. thats fine.
ls ../mygestures*.deb

Usage:

mygestures                       # use default button (button 3) on default device (Virtual core pointer)
mygestures -l                    # list device names  
mygestures -d 'elan touchscreen' # mygestures running against an specific device
mygestures -m                    # experimental synaptics multitouch mode  *
                                 # * see next section

Optional: If you want multitouch gestures on your synaptics touchpad

Installing the custom synaptics driver:

sudo apt-get install -y git build-essential libevdev-dev autoconf automake libmtdev-dev xorg-dev xutils-dev libtool
sudo apt-get remove -y xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
git clone https://github.com/Chosko/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics.git
cd xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
./autogen.sh
./configure --exec_prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

Enable the option SHMConfig:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

cat > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf < EOL
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "evdev touchpad catchall"
Driver "synaptics"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "Protocol" "event"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
EOL

Reboot the computer and then test the new driver:

synclient -m 10

And then in mygestures:

mygestures -m

Gestures configuration:

In the first execution mygestures will create a configuration file for your user:

~/.config/mygestures/mygestures.xml

Mygestures works by capturing your mouse movements and define them in terms of basic directions:

           U - (Up)
           D - (Down)
           R - (Right)
           L - (Left)
           7 - (Top left corner)
           9 - (Top right corner)
           1 - (Bottom left corner)
           3 - (Bottom right corner)

A "movement" can be defined by composing this directions under a name.

<movement name="T" value="RLD" />      <!-- T is a sequence of right+left+down -->
<movement name="V" value="39" />       <!-- V needs more precision to be defined.-->
<movement name="C" value="U?LDRU?" />  <!-- C (notice the use of regex) -->

Then you should define some contexts (used to filter applications):

<context name="Terminal windows" windowclass=".*(Term|term).*" windowtitle=".*">
   <!-- some gestures here -->
</context>

<context name="All applications" windowclass=".*" windowtitle=".*">
   <!-- some gestures here -->
</context>

Inside each context you can define the gestures:

<gesture name="Run gedit" movement="G">
  <do action="exec" value="gedit" />
</gesture>

<gesture name="Copy (Ctrl+C)" movement="C">
  <do action="keypress" value="Control_L+C" />
</gesture>

Example of actions can be:

Window management

<do action="maximize" /> <!-- put focused window to the maximized state -->
<do action="restore" /> <!-- restore window from maximized state -->
<do action="iconify" /> <!-- iconify window -->
<do action="toggle-maximized" /> <!-- toggle focused window from/to the maximized state -->
<do action="raise" /> <!-- raise current window -->
<do action="lower" /> <!-- lower current window -->

Program operation

<do action="kill" /> <!-- kill the current application -->
<do action="exec" value="gedit" /> <!-- launch some program -->

KeyPress

<do action="keypress" value="Alt_L+Left" /> <!-- send key sequence -->

More key names can be found on the file /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h