Some multitouch gestures not working on 13.04

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I have an Acer Aspire S7 (with i7) and I have the same problem. However, it only effects the track pad. Three finger gestures work fine on the touch screen.

I have an Apple Magic Trackpad and it also affects me (only the three finger gestures are not working).

Also occuring on an XPS13. Three finger tap/double-tap works, triggering the application switcher. Only move and resize are not working.

Also occuring on Samsung New Series 9 (NP900X4C-A01FR) with ubuntu 13.04

Occuring on Asus S56 too, just the 3 fingers gestures

Error occurs on ASUS VivoBook x202e

antoine@antoine-asus-lin:~$ xinput -list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=13 [slave pointer (2)]

Note: three finger move and resize gestures do still work on the touchscreen device (the Atmel maXTouch Digitizer) but the Elantech touchpad is the device that doesn't seem to register all of the gestures anymore.

Same here on a Macbook Pro 8,2. Though, I must say that the 3-finger gesture never was too smooth (always sent my windows flying too fast).

I would much prefer to have 3-finger being a drag and drop gesture (for moving files, selecting text and moving windows as usual - by dragging the title bar) and 4-finger moving between desktops same as in OS X, as it feels more natural and results in less disruption when accidentally brushing the touchpad with an additional finger. See also Bug #1094389 for other Mac-related touchpad issues.

Also occuring on the Asus N56VZ with ubuntu 13.04.

Also occurring on the Asus UX31A.

Also occurring on the Asus X201EP. With ubuntu 12.04 instead works great!

uhm, so anyone got an idea why its broken ? I will miss my move window gesture (thats why i went back from gnome 3.8...)

Same here, bug only occurs on Ubuntu 13.04.

Three finger tab and four finger swipe are both recognized so logically I assume the gesture is recognized just not executed.

Oh and the three finger drag and drop is a great idea (by Dražen Lučanin (kermit666)). Also two finger pinch for zoom settings would be handy.

The best idea is probably a user interface to add, remove and customize gestures but that's probably too much work!

"no longer affects:unity"?? How??

Gesture support in Unity using touchpads was removed by design. The 3-finger and 4-finger gestures now only work with a touchscreen.

"Gesture support in Unity using touchpads was removed by design. The 3-finger and 4-finger gestures now only work with a touchscreen."

Serious ????????

This must be some misunderstanding, touchpads are always getting bigger and more powerful and such multi-touch features are expected in a modern OS. Removing these features must be some mistake...

Has anyone found a hack to reenable this manually?

On 05/16/2013 04:32 PM, Sigurdur Rafn wrote:
> This must be some misunderstanding, touchpads are always getting bigger
> and more powerful and such multi-touch features are expected in a modern
> OS. Removing these features must be some mistake...
>
>
> Has anyone found a hack to reenable this manually?
>

I can not agree more.
This must be a mistake!

--
Matthijs Lambooy
CrossmarX BV, Amsterdam
http://www.crossmarx.com
+31654771926
skype callto://matthijslambooy
xmpp:<email address hidden>

Winnaar RADRACE 2006,2007 en 2008: http://www.crossmarx.com/radrace

So support for three and four finger gestures is dropped? Does this mean we'll lose the four finger show/hide launcher gesture -- which is still supported -- too?

I'm sorry to hear that, I didn't know regression was an option on Linux...

"The 3-finger and 4-finger gestures now only work with a touchscreen."
First of all, not true. 3 and 4 finger gestures still work with touchpads. I am using them all the time. Only 'some' gestures don't work. Why this selective removal, was it part of the 'design'?
Secondly, I do not understand what harm the gestures on touchpad were doing, that you had to remove them 'by design'?
Thirdly, why does Unity need to hard code the gestures? One can't even use touchegg without recompiling unity.

Moral of the story, my excellent Asus touchpad deserves better. I am moving to KDE to use touchegg.

"Gesture support in Unity using touchpads was removed by design. The 3-finger and 4-finger gestures now only work with a touchscreen."

Where can I see this design? Is there a document available? Is there more information about this decision?
I found the gestures very useful. So I want to know the reason for this removal.

By the way: Is there an option/hack/workaround to the the gestures working or making new custom gestures? This would be a nice idea for an app...

"By the way: Is there an option/hack/workaround to the the gestures working or making new custom gestures? This would be a nice idea for an app..."

Yes, ginn actually allows you to create custom gestures. You can override any default gesture as well.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/ginn.1.html

I really don't understand this decision. When having a powerful touchpad, why not use its full capacities ??? Moreover, I can GUARANTY you that since this feature has been "fixed"...I'm much less productive.

At least, maximize/minimize is mandatory. That was an awsome feature that I loved in 12.10.

Please, reanable it or reconsider it !

I can only agree with the above posts. The gestures were extremely useful. I am about to donwgrade to 12.04 or 12.10 just to get them back. Please reconsider this.

What the heck ? I used the three finger move windows all the time - and I dont really plan to have a touchscreen...

Jeeeez... Get this feature back !

On 05/30/2013 12:17 PM, Stefan Skotte wrote:
> What the heck ? I used the three finger move windows all the time - and
> I dont really plan to have a touchscreen...
>
> Jeeeez... Get this feature back !
>
LIKE

--
Matthijs Lambooy
CrossmarX BV, Amsterdam
http://www.crossmarx.com
+31654771926
skype callto://matthijslambooy
xmpp:<email address hidden>

Winnaar RADRACE 2006,2007 en 2008: http://www.crossmarx.com/radrace

Well, I did a small blogpost on how to enable that gesture again - it works for me, but please - it might not be for the average user as it involves changing sourcecode and so on.

But it will solve it.

http://elscreemo.blogspot.dk/

@Stefan Skotte

THANK YOU!!!!

What about these Blueprints and their explicit or implicit mentioning to increase touch & gesture support, regardless of the type of input being used?

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/hardware-dx-n-touchpad-support
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-unity-ui-windowmanager
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/hardware-dx-n-touchpad-support
and probably more

Please do not remove features for no good reason and in contradiction with your own goals!!

@Stefan Skotte

worked perfectly!!! thank you so much -
additional note to your blog, you must open up the command line and run touchegg once before it appears in ~/.config/

Oh, you're right - I think i experiemented with it once before, and forgot about that :)

This post, show how we can disable Unity default multitouch gestures and
bring in Ubuntu 13.04 like touchpad gestures.

General idea:
1. We have to disable multitouch gestures form unity, because Gesture support in Unity using touchpads was removed by design. The 3-finger and 4-finger gestures now only work with a touchscreen.
(see http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1172172)
2. Install touchegg for multitouch gesture
3. Fix some issues to get touchegg works fine.

Now follow these steps:

# part 1, disable multitouch gestures from unity
sudo apt-get build-dep unity
cd /tmp
mkdir unity
cd unity
apt-get source unity

edit file /tmp/unity/unity-*/plugins/unityshell/src/unityshell.cpp
and locate the method UnityScreen::InitGesturesSupport() (line 3381 for Unity 6.10.0, line 3287 for Unity 7.0.0), we comment all the lines starting with gestures_.

**************************
void UnityScreen::InitGesturesSupport()
{
  std::unique_ptr<nux::GestureBroker> gesture_broker(new UnityGestureBroker);
  wt->GetWindowCompositor().SetGestureBroker(std::move(gesture_broker));
  /*
  gestures_sub_launcher_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetGestureClasses(nux::DRAG_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetNumTouches(4);
  gestures_sub_launcher_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_launcher_->Activate();

  gestures_sub_dash_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetGestureClasses(nux::TAP_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetNumTouches(4);
  gestures_sub_dash_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_dash_->Activate();

  gestures_sub_windows_.reset(new nux::GesturesSubscription);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetGestureClasses(nux::TOUCH_GESTURE
                                         | nux::DRAG_GESTURE
                                         | nux::PINCH_GESTURE);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetNumTouches(3);
  gestures_sub_windows_->SetWindowId(GDK_ROOT_WINDOW());
  gestures_sub_windows_->Activate();
  */
}
*****************************

cd /tmp/unity/unity-*
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i *deb
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get autoremove

Optionally follows blocks updates to Unity:
echo "unity hold"|sudo dpkg --set-selections

# part 2
sudo apt-get install touchegg

edit ~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf (create the directories if they do not exit)

*************
<touchégg>

    <settings>
        <property name="composed_gestures_time">0</property>
    </settings>

    <application name="All">

        <gesture type="TAP" fingers="2" direction="">
            <action type="MOUSE_CLICK">BUTTON=3</action>
        </gesture>

        <gesture type="TAP" fingers="3" direction="">
            <action type="MOUSE_CLICK">BUTTON=2</action>
        </gesture>

        <gesture type="TAP" fingers="5" direction="">
            <action type="CLOSE_WINDOW"></action>
        </gesture>

        <gesture type="DRAG" fingers="2" direction="ALL">
            <action type="SCROLL">SPEED=7:INVERTED=false</action>
        </gesture>
        <gesture type="DRAG" fingers="3" direction="UP">
            <action type="MAXIMIZE_RESTORE_WINDOW"></action>
   ...

boo! this is a bad tradeoff for usability of a laptop w/trackpad vs. touchscreens.

please find a way to enable this for laptops w/trackpads ... it's such a nice feature.

It's terrible UX to strip a user from a feature and prevent them from re-enabling it. That feature alone swayed me towards Unity (seriously, it was that convenient...), and now I'm back to XFCE.

This was one of the nicest function, they remove it. Were can we complain ?

Where*

Not even an option to enable it? This is Bullsh*t.

Hey Graham, please be considerate of others if you want to participate in
these discussions. There are polite ways to express your opinion. We should
all abide by the code of conduct.
Dana 29. 12. 2013. 10:55 osoba "Graham Carroll" <email address hidden>
napisala je:

> Not even an option to enable it? This is Bullsh*t.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1172172
>
> Title:
> Some multitouch gestures not working on 13.04
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1172172/+subscriptions
>

BOOO! Ubuntu is losing the spirit.. Down with unity

It's unbelievable that 4 iterations later and this still isn't an option
yet despite the numerous amounts of requests....If a feature is to be
disabled that used to exist and was used for productivity purposes it makes
sense to always keep it an option to not hinder the productivity of the
users who were utilizing it before!

On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 7:26 AM, trendzetter <email address hidden>wrote:

> BOOO! Ubuntu is losing the spirit.. Down with unity
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (1166242).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1172172
>
> Title:
> Some multitouch gestures not working on 13.04
>
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> "3 finger pinch to maximize/restore windows" and "3 finger press and
> drag to move window" used to work on my Asus X201E on 12.10, but not
> after upgrading to 13.04. All other gestures mentioned in
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch#Supported_Gestures, including four
> finger ones work.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
> Package: unity 7.0.0daily13.04.18~13.04-0ubuntu1
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-19.29-generic 3.8.8
> Uname: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic x86_64
> ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
> Architecture: amd64
> CompizPlugins: No value set for
> `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
> Date: Wed Apr 24 13:31:49 2013
> InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-21 (2 days ago)
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64
> (20121017.5)
> MarkForUpload: True
> ProcEnviron:
> LANGUAGE=en_IN:en
> PATH=(custom, no user)
> XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
> LANG=en_IN
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: unity
> UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-04-21 (2 days ago)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1172172/+subscriptions
>

This was my favorite gesture control, and a huge gain in productivity. It makes no sense to remove it...

@Stefan:

Does your method work for 13.10?

Anyone tried Stefan's method on 13.10?

Yes, it works on 13.10.

i got it works fine on Saucy but not perfectly.

Sometimes gets some errors with 4 fingers actions whith touchegg, but i can work with it.

Any update? This is a huge disappointment.

Its completely absurd that this was abitrarily removed and restricted to touch devices. touchpads are not going away any time soon and modern touchpads have great gesture support that ubuntu is failing to utilize.

I find it awkward that Unity reserves 3 and 4 finger gestures when a touchscreen is not present. Re-compiling unity to get touchegg to work is an unnecessary hassle. This should be patched upstream.

I agree...since when has Linux become so close minded like windows limiting
user's productivity?

Shame on Canonical!
On Jun 16, 2015 5:01 PM, "Siddhanathan Shanmugam" <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> I find it awkward that Unity reserves 3 and 4 finger gestures when a
> touchscreen is not present. Re-compiling unity to get touchegg to work
> is an unnecessary hassle. This should be patched upstream.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (1166242).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1172172
>
> Title:
> Some multitouch gestures not working on 13.04
>
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in unity package in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> "3 finger pinch to maximize/restore windows" and "3 finger press and
> drag to move window" used to work on my Asus X201E on 12.10, but not
> after upgrading to 13.04. All other gestures mentioned in
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch#Supported_Gestures, including four
> finger ones work.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
> Package: unity 7.0.0daily13.04.18~13.04-0ubuntu1
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-19.29-generic 3.8.8
> Uname: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic x86_64
> ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
> Architecture: amd64
> CompizPlugins: No value set for
> `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
> Date: Wed Apr 24 13:31:49 2013
> InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-21 (2 days ago)
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64
> (20121017.5)
> MarkForUpload: True
> ProcEnviron:
> LANGUAGE=en_IN:en
> PATH=(custom, no user)
> XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
> LANG=en_IN
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: unity
> UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-04-21 (2 days ago)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1172172/+subscriptions
>