Gosture

By AyuanX, 22-Aug-2018

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What is Gosture

Gosture is a Linux X Window system productivity tool, written in Go language.
Gosture implements system-wide customizable mouse gestures as well as keyboard shortcuts.

How to use Gosture

1. Prepare your Gosture configuration file at ~/.Gosture.cfg.
   An example of configuration file is provided as Gosture_Config_Example.txt.
   You can use it as a starting point. E.g. run cp Gosture_Config_Example.txt ~/.Gosture.cfg
2. Tweak the configuration to your needs. (Check detailed instructions below.)
3. Run Gosture in background and enjoy the mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. E.g. run nohup ./Gosture &
   After launching, you can control it through the icon in system tray.
   Tip: you can add it into your X Window Startup Applications so that it automatically runs at your login.

The following operations are defined by default in the provided configuration example:

Operation	Action
Mouse Middle Button	Trigger a mouse gesture
Gesture ↙	Minimize active window
Gesture ↗	Maximize / Restore active window
Gesture ↓→	Close active window
Gesture ↑	Scroll to top (Equivalent to Home key)
Gesture ↓	Scroll to bottom (Equivalent to End key)
Gesture ←	Copy selection to clipboard (Equivalent to Ctrl+Insert)
Gesture →	Paste from clipboard (Equivalent to Shift+Insert)
Gesture ↑↓	Snap window to top edge (Equivalent to Super+Up)
Gesture ↓↑	Snap window to bottom edge (Equivalent to Super+Down)
Gesture ←→	Snap window to left edge (Equivalent to Super+Left)
Gesture →←	Snap window to right edge (Equivalent to Super+Right)
Super+Alt+Z	Run gedit (Super key is also known as Windows key)
Super+Alt+X	Run terminal (Super key is also known as Windows key)
Super+Alt+C	Run calculator (Super key is also known as Windows key)

How to configure Gosture

Gosture configuration file ~/.Gosture.cfg is a standard JSON file.

Option	Description
mouse-gesture-enable	true: enable mouse gesture; false: disable mouse gesture
mouse-gesture-trigger	can be a single [Mouse Button] like 2; or a [Modifier Key]-[Mouse Button] combination, like Control-2

Definition of mouse buttons:

Mouse Button	Description
1	Left Button
2	Middle Button
3	Right Button
4	Scroll Up
5	Scroll Down

Definition of keys:

Modifier Key	Description
Shift	Shift Key
Lock	Caps Lock Key
Control	Ctrl Key
Mod1	Alt Key
Mod2	Num Lock Key
Mod3	(Usually not mapped to any physical key)
Mod4	Super Key (also known as Windows Key)
Mod5	AltGr Key (usually absent on US keyboard)

• To get an acurate list of all modifier keys in your system, run xmodmap.
• To find a specific key name, run xev.
  You can also reference these documents:
  http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_show_keycode_keysym.html
  http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/List_of_Keysyms_Recognised_by_Xmodmap

Definition of mouse gestures:

All eight directions are supported; directions are mapped to digits on Num Pad.

.	.	.
7 (↖)	8 (↑)	9 (↗)
4 (←)		6 (→)
1 (↙)	2 (↓)	3 (↘)

• For example: gesture of "↑→" is 86; gesture of "↖↘" is 73; gesture of "←↓→" is 426.
  Tip: Mixture of orthogonal stroke and diagonal stroke in one gesture (like "↗→" or "↙↓↘") is supported, but not recommended.

Current supported actions:

Action	Description
minwin	Minimize active window
maxwin	Maximize active window / Restore it if already maximized
closewin	Close active window
key,[key1],[key2],...	Send a key combination. Each key is delimited by comma
cmd,[executable],[dir]	Run [executable], can be a program or script with arguments. [dir] is optional working directory

Dependencies and credits

• https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgbutil
• https://github.com/mattn/go-shellwords
• https://github.com/getlantern/systray
• https://github.com/skratchdot/open-golang