Ubuntu – Did 12.04 just add multi-touch gesture support mid-release

gesturesmousemulti-touchtouchpadupgrade

I was reviewing the updates I was about to download today and I

  1. noticed that a lot of them had to do with gesture support,

  2. noticed that many of these were new installs rather than upgrades.

Has 12.04 just added multi-touch gesture support mid-release? If so, what are the capabilities that this adds? Which applications already support these capabilities and can I expect others to add support in the near future?

Here are the packages that were installed:

Install: libframe6:amd64 (2.2.4-0ubuntu0.12.04.1), libgeis1:amd64 (2.2.9.2-0ubuntu1), libgrail5:amd64 (3.0.6-0ubuntu0.12.04.01, automatic)

And here are those that were upgraded (also including many with touch support):

Upgrade: libgrip0:amd64 (0.3.4-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.04.1, 0.3.5-0ubuntu1~12.04.1), eog:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu1, 3.4.2-0ubuntu1.1), ginn:amd64 (0.2.4-0ubuntu1, 0.2.4.1-0ubuntu1)

Of which the descriptions for the new installs are,

libgeis1:

Gesture engine interface support
 A common API for clients of a systemwide gesture recognition and propagation
 engine.

libframe6:

Touch Frame Library
 This library handles the buildup and synchronization of a set of simultaneous
 touches. The library is input agnostic, with bindings for mtdev, frame and
 XI2.1.

libgrail5:

Gesture Recognition And Instantiation Library
 This library consists of an interface and tools for handling gesture
 recognition and gesture instantiation. Applications can use the grail callbacks
 to receive gesture primitives and raw input events from the underlying kernel
 device.

And the descriptions for the upgraded packages are,

ligrip0:

provides multitouch gestures to GTK+ apps

 Libgrip hooks gesture recognition into GTK+ applications.

ginn:

Gesture Injector: No-GEIS, No-Toolkits

 A daemon with jinn-like wish-granting capabilities: it gives applications the
 ability to support a subset of multi-touch gestures without having to integrate
 GEIS or multi-touch GTK/Qt libs.

Adding in a ton of new libraries and upgrading the existing components makes me wonder if 12.04 is meant to start natively supporting gestures other than two finger scroll in the near future. I expected these capabilities to be introduced soon but I thought that they would only be rolled out in a new release, not as upgrades for an existing release.

Anyone have any info about this?

Best Answer

I thought that was a little odd myself. I did some digging and it looks like the upstream project was renamed.

  • utouch-geis
  • utouch-frame
  • utouch-grail

are now:

  • geis
  • frame
  • grail

(See bugs 1029482 and 1029643)

This update reflects the rename along with some bug fixes:

http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/core/precise/main/updates/libframe6

Version: 2.2.4-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 2012-09-10 15:06:58 UTC
  frame (2.2.4-0ubuntu0.12.04.1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * Update debian/watch file for project rename 
  * New upstream microrelease, bug fixes only 
    - Compile fixes when compiled with clang 
    - Accept/reject owned touches that have already ended (lp: #1025297) 
    - Rename project to "Frame" 
    - Remove ChangeLog 
  * Removed frame v1 symbols 
    - Renamed libframe1 package to libframe6 due to SONAME bump 
  * Fix Multi_arch typo in debian/control, should be Multi-Arch 
  * Rename package and update packaging (lp: #1029482) 
    - Added Conflicts and Replaces clauses for libframe-dev and frame-tools 
  * Remove no longer necessary build depends on mtdev and evemu 
    - Added 01-remove-mtdev-dependency.patch and 
      02-remove-evemu-dependency.patch 
    - Run autoreconf to regenerate Makefile.in files 
 -- Francis Ginther <email address hidden> Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:51:55 -0500

1025297 Can't accept owned touch that has ended.
1029482 [Needs-Packaging] frame (renamed from utouch-frame)

http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/core/precise/main/updates/libgeis1

Version: 2.2.9.2-0ubuntu1   2012-09-13 23:06:56 UTC
  geis (2.2.9.2-0ubuntu1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. Only change is the following bug fix: 
    - Fixes regression that caused GEISv1 clients, such as Unity, to not work 
      (LP: #1047596)

1047596 Geisv1 gesture class IDs are wrong

http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/core/precise/main/updates/libgrail5

Version: 3.0.6-0ubuntu0.12.04.01    2012-09-13 23:06:56 UTC
  grail (3.0.6-0ubuntu0.12.04.01) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * Update debian/watch file for project rename 
  * New upstream microrelease, bug fixes only 
    - Fix documentation of UGSubscriptionPropertyTapThreshold 
    - Properly process gestures that end before composition time (LP: #1020315) 
    - Don't expand gestures that have physically ended already (LP: #1023397) 
    - Correct behaviour when a touch ends before ownership is gained 
      for it (LP: #1026962) 
    - Fix include path for correct compilation of some tests 
    - Rename project to "Grail" 
    - Remove ChangeLog 
  * Removed grail v2 symbols 
    - Renamed libgrail1 package to libgrail5 due to SONAME bump 
  * Rename package and update packaging (lp: #1029643) 
    - Added Conflicts and Replaces clauses for libgrail-dev and grail-tools 
  * Remove no longer necessary build depends on mtdev and evemu 
    - Added 01-remove-mtdev-dependency.patch and 
      02-remove-evemu-dependency.patch 
 -- Francis Ginther <email address hidden> Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:18:32 -0500

1020315 quick, single-finger, taps not correctly processed
1023397 grail creates two identical gestures under certain circustances
1026962 grail doesn't work properly if ownership comes for touch whose end is pending
1029643 [Needs-Packaging] grail (renamed from utouch-grail)
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