KiTT 1.1

Kivy Touch Tool

This tool is a little Xorg service that provides a way to define multitouch gestures for Xorg UI control. It is based on Kivy for gesture detection and can run a variety of plugins to control the UI. You can easily configure your gestures using a json configuration file.

KiTT takes advantage of the awesome work done by the Kivy team on touch and gesture detection framework. Your mouse has to be detected by Kivy in order to work with KiTT, and thus shall exists as a known /dev/input/event? device.

And here I wrote a blog post about it!

INSTALL

To install the application, just get it from pipy:

pip install kitt

To run it at startup of Xorg, don’t forget to add kitt start in your .xinitrc or .xsession file!

CONFIGURE

Have a look at kivy specific configuration options

• actions configuration file: config_actions.json

To add a new gesture and bind actions, you shall create a configuration file, either in the default path: ~/.kivy/kitt.json or a file you can specify using a command line option.

To configure, the file shall match the following format, be careful, every comma, quote or bracket is important:

{
    "engines": [],
    "actions": {
        "pinch_in"          : [],
        "pinch_out"         : [],
        "two_swipe_up"      : [],
        "two_swipe_down"    : [],
        "two_swipe_left"    : [],
        "two_swipe_right"   : [],
        "three_swipe_up"    : [],
        "three_swipe_down"  : [],
        "three_swipe_left"  : [],
        "three_swipe_right" : [],
        "four_swipe_up"     : [],
        "four_swipe_down"   : [],
        "four_swipe_left"   : [],
        "four_swipe_right"  : []
    }
}

* The `engines` key can contain three plugins: `xlib`, `wnck` and `dbus`.
* The `action` key contains for each known common multitouch gesture the action to trigger,
that depends on the engine you use.

• gestures configuration file: config_gestures.json:

  {
      "move_down" : [],
      "move_up"   : [],
      "move_left" : [],
      "move_right": []
  }

  • The gestures key contains the specific gestures for your touch device. To record them, you have to execute kitt as follows, and copy the long ununderstandable strings that it outputs for each gesture you want to record.

    kitt foreground -v

Here are the different actions available:

• xlib engine: { “function”: “workspace”, “parameters”: { “direction”: “N” } }

switch current worskpace, N being the number of workspaces to jump over (can be a positive or negative number)

{
  "function": "keypress",
  "parameters": {
    "target": ["app1", "app2"],
    "keys": ["KEY1", "KEY2"]
  }
}

executes a key stroke, which can be a combination of several keys (modifier keys, or input keys from the list below) the “target” attribute is one of the wm-class property of the window. It can be found when triggering the action on an unknown window, when in foreground mode.

{ "function": "mouseclick",
  "parameters": {
    "button": "ButtonN"
  }
}

executes a click (can be either Button1, Button2, Button3, button4, Button5)

• wnck engine:

  { “function”: “workspace_up”, parameters: {} }

switch to previous workspace

{ "function": "workspace_down", parameters: {} }

switch to next workspace

• dbus engine:

  { “function”: “send_dbus”, “parameters”: { “service”: “name.of.the.service”, “path”: “/path/to/the/object”, “method”: “methodName” “parameters”: [“param1”, “param2”…] } }

call method on service service, object path object with all needed parameters

DEVELOP

For development, you’ll need zc.buildout (apt-get install python-zc.buildout or pip install zc.buildout)

% git clone https://github.com/guyzmo/kitt.git
% cd kitt
% buildout

EXTEND

To add a new gesture, or new way to interact, you can copy and base your work upon $SRC/kitt/plugin_wnck.py or plugin_xlib.py. The engine plugin_dbus.py has a basic dbus interaction function.

Please fork the project, and send me back patches!

TODO

• implement pinch_in/pinch_out features and other weird gestures ;

• create a GUI, like BTT’s

LICENSE

This whole software is released under the GPLv3.

LIST OF KEYS

0                  F33                L2                 Touroku            idiaeresis
1                  F34                L3                 U                  igrave
2                  F35                L4                 Uacute             j
3                  F4                 L5                 Ucircumflex        k
4                  F5                 L6                 Udiaeresis         l
5                  F6                 L7                 Ugrave             less
6                  F7                 L8                 Undo               m
7                  F8                 L9                 Up                 macron
8                  F9                 Left               V                  masculine
9                  Find               Linefeed           W                  minus
A                  G                  M                  X                  mu
AE                 H                  Mae_Koho           Y                  multiply
Aacute             Hankaku            Massyo             Yacute             n
Acircumflex        Help               Menu               Z                  nobreakspace
Adiaeresis         Henkan             Meta_L             Zen_Koho           notsign
Agrave             Henkan_Mode        Meta_R             Zenkaku            ntilde
Alt_L              Hiragana           Mode_switch        Zenkaku_Hankaku    numbersign
Alt_R              Hiragana_Katakana  Muhenkan           a                  o
Aring              Home               Multi_key          aacute             oacute
Atilde             Hyper_L            MultipleCandidate  acircumflex        ocircumflex
B                  Hyper_R            N                  acute              odiaeresis
BackSpace          I                  Next               adiaeresis         ograve
Begin              Iacute             Ntilde             ae                 onehalf
Break              Icircumflex        Num_Lock           agrave             onequarter
C                  Idiaeresis         O                  ampersand          onesuperior
Cancel             Igrave             Oacute             apostrophe         ordfeminine
Caps_Lock          Insert             Ocircumflex        aring              oslash
Ccedilla           J                  Odiaeresis         asciicircum        otilde
Clear              K                  Ograve             asciitilde         p
Control_L          KP_0               Ooblique           asterisk           paragraph
Control_R          KP_1               Otilde             at                 parenleft
D                  KP_2               P                  atilde             parenright
Delete             KP_3               Page_Down          b                  percent
Down               KP_4               Page_Up            backslash          period
E                  KP_5               Pause              bar                periodcentered
ETH                KP_6               PreviousCandidate  braceleft          plus
Eacute             KP_7               Print              braceright         plusminus
Ecircumflex        KP_8               Prior              bracketleft        q
Ediaeresis         KP_9               Q                  bracketright       question
Egrave             KP_Add             R                  brokenbar          questiondown
Eisu_Shift         KP_Begin           R1                 c                  quotedbl
Eisu_toggle        KP_Decimal         R10                ccedilla           quoteleft
End                KP_Delete          R11                cedilla            quoteright
Escape             KP_Divide          R12                cent               r
Eth                KP_Down            R13                colon              registered
Execute            KP_End             R14                comma              s
F                  KP_Enter           R15                copyright          script_switch
F1                 KP_Equal           R2                 currency           section
F10                KP_F1              R3                 d                  semicolon
F11                KP_F2              R4                 degree             slash
F12                KP_F3              R5                 diaeresis          space
F13                KP_F4              R6                 division           ssharp
F14                KP_Home            R7                 dollar             sterling
F15                KP_Insert          R8                 e                  t
F16                KP_Left            R9                 eacute             thorn
F17                KP_Multiply        Redo               ecircumflex        threequarters
F18                KP_Next            Return             ediaeresis         threesuperior
F19                KP_Page_Down       Right              egrave             twosuperior
F2                 KP_Page_Up         Romaji             equal              u
F20                KP_Prior           S                  eth                uacute
F21                KP_Right           Scroll_Lock        exclam             ucircumflex
F22                KP_Separator       Select             exclamdown         udiaeresis
F23                KP_Space           Shift_L            f                  ugrave
F24                KP_Subtract        Shift_Lock         g                  underscore
F25                KP_Tab             Shift_R            grave              v
F26                KP_Up              SingleCandidate    greater            w
F27                Kana_Lock          Super_L            guillemotleft      x
F28                Kana_Shift         Super_R            guillemotright     y
F29                Kanji              Sys_Req            h                  yacute
F3                 Katakana           T                  hyphen             ydiaeresis
F30                L                  THORN              i                  yen
F31                L1                 Tab                iacute             z
F32                L10                Thorn              icircumflex