What is gesture in Android.

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+1 Q:

What is gesture in Android.

I would like to know what is meant by gestures in typical mobiles more specifically android ones. Android supports gesture recognition.

Is a gesture termed as when user holds the device and shakes it(say upwards, downwards or side- side)?
Is a gesture termed as when a finger is placed on the screen and traced UP,DOWN,RIGHT,LEFT? If so what is the difference between touch screen and gestures.

I am confused between 1) and 2) option.

What is a gesture exactly?

+1 A:

As I understand it, a gesture is anytime a user touches the screen and does a pre-defined motion that the system understands. I would venture to say that shaking the phone is not a gesture, but a function of detecting changes in the accelerometers.

MattC 2009-07-31 13:07:55

@MattC Thank u very much for the clarificationThen by defining the custom gestures can we use it for character recognition. If So how feasible to approach this way?

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:15:08

When you say character recognition, are you talking about an OCR-type application? I would rather present the user with an image and an editbox for them to use the keyboard to select characters that way, but I feel I'm not fully understanding.

MattC 2009-07-31 13:18:56

I want to develop an android app so that it recognises the character as and when user writes on the screen using finger.Is this possible to do this using gestures

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:19:14

@ Mattc Exactly its an OCR kind of app itself,when an user writes a character on a touch sensitive screen,app should be able to recognise the character.

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:25:32

I don't think it's advanced enough in Android to support that yet, but from what I've read the next version of the SDK (code-named Donut) will support character recognition right out of the box. I guess it would be a case of if you want to wait for the next SDK or see if you could bend the current API to your will and make it work. I personally have not done anything gesture-related in my Android development so I can't give you a definite yes-or-no answer to your question.

MattC 2009-07-31 13:28:59

@Mattc Thanks again. Ya even i have seen in the net that next version of SDK will provide character recognition. But i don have any idea til what extent they would provide.I am currently trying out with the touch listeners and touch events with the handwriting recognition algorithm.Is this a right way to proceed ?

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:35:05

I'd look into this and see how this guy did it: http://code.google.com/p/snowservices/wiki/SnowGesture

MattC 2009-07-31 13:40:44

You'll note at the bottom he used that code to create a character recognition engine. He says it's crude but I'm sure with some work you could probably refine it and make it nicer.

MattC 2009-07-31 13:43:21

ya really understandable.I have also glanced before.But how exactly gestures are tested in emulator? I Guess it is not possible as touch events are tested by button clicks in emulator.U really still have a great patience to answer my questions.Thanks in advance!!

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:47:35

I would imagine that you'd just use the mouse to draw the gestures like you would with your finger. Less intuitive, to be sure. But that's the price we pay for emulation. ;)

MattC 2009-07-31 13:49:47

I tried with one of the Gesture recognition sample and app was forced to close in emulator with a single mouse click on the view.How would i get the code of character recogniser from the SVN which is mentioned in the link posted few min back regarding snow services.

Ambika 2009-07-31 13:54:00

svn checkout http://snowservices.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ snowservices-read-only is the command you would use. The character recognition demo specifically is in /trunk/SnowGesture/src/eu/MrSnowflake/android/snowgestures/CharacterRecognizer.java

MattC 2009-07-31 13:59:11

Let me quote that command so it stands out better:"svn checkout http://snowservices.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ snowservices-read-only"

MattC 2009-07-31 13:59:43

ugh, add an "http://" to the beginning of that snowservices.googlecode.com url

MattC 2009-07-31 14:00:14

I was unabe to connect to the server :(

Ambika 2009-07-31 14:08:55

Ya i got it .. Thanks a lot. I will try out this app and update here again.

Ambika 2009-07-31 14:11:42

Yeah, SO is being "helpful" by turning it into an actual link and stripping the "http://" from the front of the URL. :\ Good luck!

MattC 2009-07-31 14:17:16

Well !!! Its helpfull and pretty good content i have now to start and gear up with this agian unless there won be any problem further.Thanks a lot agian!!;))))

Ambika 2009-07-31 14:19:34

+1 A:

I see gestures as being a type of input pattern that you expect from the user. I.e., you can setup mouse gestures in web browsers to do things like going "Forward" or "Back" in the browse by doing a specific "gesture" (maybe middle mouse button click and moving the mouse left goes "Back").

Bryan Denny 2009-07-31 13:12:28

+1 A:

I'll give a brief answer to your bonus question: Yes, it's quite possible to to character recognition from input gestures on Android. In fact, at least one major vendor has already ported an existing handwriting engine to that platform. Works beautifully, but there's a lot of legal and marketing cruft to take care of as well before it ends up on real devices :(

Christoffer 2009-07-31 13:46:58

@christoffer I am also very curious to do this app atleast to some extent.Thank u very much. Do you have any idea of which hand writing recognition engine is best and simple.I tried lot of algorithms which are more complex.

Ambika 2009-07-31 14:00:39

Well, you need a complex algorithm :) Categorizing on-line data is not a trivial task, especially under the constraints of an embedded device.

Christoffer 2009-07-31 14:06:22

ansaurus

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What is gesture in Android.

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