Discussion: Allow all actions with all gestures

[AchimStuy]

Would it make sense to allow any implemented action with any implemented gesture? I mean, from using perspective it makes not much difference, whether to swipe or to pinch for maximizing and minimizing windows. I usually also have 3-finger-swipe-down instead of pinch for closing current window. So pinch and swipe both have 2 directions and some kind of progress. And it also doesn't matter, whether to use 3 or 4 fingers.

I know, this will need huge refactorings which will break everything. But after this I expect new gestures and new actions being added more easily without breaking existing source code or existing settings configuration.

And as I said above: from user perspective it makes sense. What do you think?

[harshadgavali]

Yes, that's what I want as well. Something like https://github.com/harshadgavali/gnome-gesture-improvements/issues/31#issuecomment-979448954 ,without left/right option. Options for gesture would be.

1. Overview navigation
2. Workspace switching
3. Window switching
4. Window manipulation (those are tied together)
5. Down+left/right combo gesture for unminimised window maniulation
   • Snapping
   • Minimizing
6. Forward/back one.

I was planning this for GNOME-SHELL 42 update, when libadwaita will become available for extension preference window.

[matthijskooijman]

A more explicit configuration of gestures might also make it easier for users to see what gestures are supported exactly by simply listing everything that is enabled (i.e. it was not entirely clear to me what the various options did, if I could just see the gestures explicitly, that would probably help).

One challenge of allowing everything is that it might be more tricky to provide good defaults and/or easy to use toggles that easily enable/disable specific default sets of gestures, and requiring users to configure every gesture manually is probably not ideal.

[thyttan]

This would be good when using the extension "Material shell", since it flips the graphical ui for workspaces to be vertical. Being able to set either 3-finger or 4-finger swipe up/down to move between workspaces would make more sense in that environment.