wstroke

Port of Easystroke mouse gestures as a plugin for Wayfire. Mouse gestures are shapes drawn on the screen while holding down one of the buttons (typically the right or middle button). This plugin allows associating such gestures with various actions. See the Wiki for more explanations and examples.

Packages for the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 release are available here: https://launchpad.net/~kondor-dani/+archive/ubuntu/ppa-wstroke

Note: this branch requires a recent version of Wayfire and wlroots (see below). For older versions, use the wayfire-0.7 branch.

Dependencies

• Wayfire at least version 0.8.0 (see below for compiling for older Wayfire versions)
• wlroots at least version 0.16 (tested with 0.16.2).
• Development libraries for GTK, GDK, glib, gtkmm, gdkmm and boost-serialization (Ubuntu packages: libglib2.0-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libgtkmm-3.0-dev, libboost-serialization-dev)
• glib-compile-resources (Ubuntu package: libglib2.0-dev-bin)
• nlohmann_json, recommended to use the same version that Wayfire uses (currently version 3.9.1)
• Vala compiler (for building, Ubuntu package: valac; or use the no_vala branch instead)
• Optional, but highly recommended: WCM for basic configuration
• Optionally libinput version 1.17 or higher for improved touchpad support (to allow tap-and-drag for the right and middle buttons, required for drawing gestures without physical buttons)

Building and installing

meson build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

If you get build errors, your Wayfire version might be too old (or too new). For older Wayfire versions, try the following:

• For version 0.7.0, use the wayfire-0.7 branch (run git checkout wayfire-0.7 before building).
• For older Wayfire versions of the 0.8.0 series (between commits 3cca6c9 and d1f33e5), use this state (run git checkout 4f2e8f0 before building). If using multiple monitors, you can separately apply the fix to issue #5: git cherry-pick 1c02905a4e
• For moderately old versions of Wayfire (between commits d1f33e5 and 3ac0284), use this state (run git checkout 0401b4f before building). If using multiple monitors, you can separately apply the fix to issue #5: git cherry-pick 1c02905a4e
• For recent versions of Wayfire, use this branch (and report issues for build failures).

Running

If correctly installed, it will show up as "Mouse Gestures" plugin in WCM and can be enabled from there, or with adding wstroke to the list of plugins (in [core]) in ~/.config/wayfire.ini.

Configuration

Basic options such as the button used for gestures, or the target of gestures can be changed with WCM as the "Mouse Gestures" plugin, or by manually editing the [wstroke] section in ~/.config/wayfire.ini. Note: trying to set a button will likely make WCM to show a warning (e.g. "Attempting to bind BTN_RIGHT without modifier"); it is safe to ignore this, since wstroke will forward button clicks when needed.

Gestures can be configured by the standalone program wstroke-config. Recommended ways to obtain an initial configuration:

• If you have Easystroke installed, wstroke-config will attempt to import gestures from it, by looking for any of the actions* files under ~/.easystroke. Even without Easystroke installed, copying the content of this directory from a previous installation can be used to import gestures. It is recommended to check that importing is done correctly.
• An example configuration file is under example/actions-wstroke-2. This is installed automatically and will be used by wstroke-config as default if no other configuration exists. You can copy this file to ~/.config/wstroke manually as well.

Gestures are stored under wstroke/actions-wstroke-2 in the directory given by the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable (~/.config by default). It is recommended not to edit this file manually, but it can be copied between different computers, or backed up and restored manually.

Focus settings

For a better experience, it is recommended to diable the "click-to-focus" feature in Wayfire for the mouse button used for gestures. This will allow wstroke to manage focus when using this button and set the target of the gesture as requested by the user.

To do this, under the "Core" tab of WCM, change the option "Mouse button to focus views" to not include the button used for gestures. E.g. if the right button is used, the setting here should not contain BTN_RIGHT, so it might look like BTN_LEFT | BTN_MIDDLE (note: it is best to set this by clicking on the edit button on the right of the setting and manually editing the text that corresponds to this setting). Don't be alarmed by the warning that appears ("Attempting to bind BTN_LEFT | BTN_MIDDLE without modifier"); this is exactly the intended behavior in this case.

The same can be achieved by editing the option focus_buttons in the [core] section of ~/.config/wayfire.ini.

What works

• Importing saved strokes from "actions" files created with Easystroke (just run wstroke-config).
• Drawing and recognizing strokes.
• Actions on the active view: close, minimize, (un)maximize, move, resize (select "WM Action" and the appropriate action).
• Actions to activate another Wayfire plugin (typical desktop interactions are under "Global Action"; "Custom Plugin" can be used with giving the plugin activator name directly), only supported for some plugins, see here.
• Generating keypresses ("Key" action).
• Generating mouse clicks ("Button" action).
• Generating modifiers ("Ignore" action -- only works in combination with mouse clicks, not the keyboard).
• Emulating touchpad "gestures" with mouse movement, such as scrolling or pinch zoom in apps that support it ("Touchpad Gesture" action; "Scroll" action from Easystroke will be converted to this).
• Running commands as a gesture action.
• Getting keybindings and mouse button bindings in the configuration for actions.
• Recording strokes (slight change: these have to be recorded on a "canvas", cannot be drawn anywhere like with Easystroke; also, recording strokes requires using a different mouse button).
• Identifying views and using application specific gestures or excluding certain apps completely; setting these in wstroke-config by interactively grabbing the app-id of an open view.
• Option to target either the view under the mouse when starting the gesture (original Easystroke behavior) or the currently active one.
• Option to change focus to the view under the mouse after a gesture.
• Basic timeouts (move the mouse after clicking to have a gesture / end the gesture if not moving within a timeout).

What does not work

• SendText action (removed from settings, will be converted to Global)
• Ignore in combination with keyboard keypresses.
• Individual settings (which button, timeout) for each pointing device
• Advanced gestures
• Touchscreen and pen / stylus support