Bachelor Thesis - Computer Graphics Group
Bachelor Thesis - Computer Graphics Group
Bachelor Thesis - Computer Graphics Group
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Chapter 1<br />
Introduction<br />
This paper deals with the analysis, design, and implementation of a program,<br />
which would allow existing Windows applications, without code modification<br />
or recompilation, to be controlled by user defined mouse gestures.<br />
1.1 Motivation<br />
On small touch screen devices without traditional keyboard, pen input involving<br />
handwriting recognition has become a standard. It is a very efficient input<br />
method when the recognition accuracy is high enough. However, a similar<br />
concept can be also partially adopted in traditional desktop applications or<br />
even the whole windowing system. Mouse gestures are an additional way to<br />
provide user input using a pointing device such as mouse or touch-pad.<br />
On Windows, Opera web browser has probably been the first application which<br />
introduced built-in in support for mouse gestures [17]. Firefox and Internet<br />
Explorer do not support mouse gestures natively, however several extensions<br />
providing gesture support exist [13, 18]. Mouse gestures are quite popular<br />
among users as they allow certain frequent tasks to be performed in a much<br />
more convenient way. For example, to go back in the browser history, it is much<br />
faster just to move the mouse cursor a few points to the left while holding the<br />
right button, than to click the back button in the tool-bar.<br />
Application specific gesture support is a nice feature. However, a general<br />
solution working across all the applications is much more desirable. No such<br />
completely free to use application can be found on the Internet, surprisingly.<br />
Despite the fact that mouse gestures are not a new idea. This lack of an<br />
appropriate existing solution is the main motivation behind taking up the<br />
challenge of developing a cross-application mouse gesture recognition engine<br />
for Windows.<br />
6