Bachelor Thesis - Computer Graphics Group

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