Multi-finger gestures in Ubuntu 10.10

Mark Shuttleworth just announced on his blog that Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, which will be released on October 10, 2010 (10.10.10), will support a multi-touch interface.

A framework called UTouch created by Canonical for this purpose was incorporated into Maverick.


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So far, the development is aimed at supporting the Dell XT2 (in the photo), the happy owners of which can already evaluate the results achieved. The release is expected to support a vast number of devices from various manufacturers, including the Apple Magic Trackpad.

The development team has created a certain "language of touch", which, it is claimed, is superior to everything that was created for this purpose earlier.

Now it is possible to describe not only individual gestures, but also to link them into chains, creating whole “sentences”. Basic gestures, or primitives, are similar to individual verbs, and their sequence can describe much more complex actions.

New code published in Launchpad under licenses GPLv3 and LGPLv3; modules for subsystems (such as X and Gtk) may be distributed under compatible licenses. For the curious and sympathetic, there is a PPA, details are presented in the official announcement for developers .

The new framework uses the recently published Peter Hutterer update for input X protocols related to multitouch. It adds gesture processing and gesture event delivery.

Quite a large number of applications in Maverick will already support scrolling gestures. Evince will be refined to demonstrate some of the more advanced techniques that developers can then add to their applications. Managing windows in Unity will also support gestures, so users of 10.10 Netbook Edition with touch screens or multi-touch pads (multi-touchpad?) Will be able to enjoy gestures to the fullest.

If you also want to enjoy, you can also install Unity on the desktop: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook and select the appropriate session when choosing a user.

Plans after 10.10 include the formation of a normal API for developers and provide system services for processing gestures.

Mark wants to "touch" all the main applications - the browser, mail, file manager, chat, photo manager and media player - at 11.04.

The news is also published on Canonical's official blog.