15 replies to this topic

[phillipdhall]

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So AutoHotkey is amazing because it lets us do more with our mice and keyboards, helping us bridge the gap between what has been a limiting input method and the speed of our brains/computers. When I saw this product I immediately thought of AutoHotkey.

With touch, and now touchless human interface devices being the imminent future of computing, I'd like to see AutoHotkey embrace these new input methods as a means of launching 'hotkeys'. It will be some time before software applications are updated to take advantage of the new and complex input methods. However if gestures and swipes can be used for AutoHotkey triggers... well, we'd be bridging a gap with power and flexibility.

They're currently taking applications for Beta SDK release. I have little coding experience, but I think the AHK devs, and probably some of the frequent users, would be good applicants :-)

- Phil

[guest3456]

i saw this the other day, reminded me of iron man. its very intriguing but the demo video is mostly 3d CAD stuff and games. i dont know how useful it would be for normal computing such as webbrowsing, email, word processing. also does look like the shoulders would get tired

have you seen the mouse gestures scripts?
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[phillipdhall]

Does not seem very comfortable. Imagine waving your hands all day to perform tasks. Keyboard shortcuts are much more comfortable to use for longer periods.

If I just rest my elbows on the desk it seems no less comfortable than a keyboard or mouse, and switching back and forth between mouse and keyboard has never been my favorite either.

i dont know how useful it would be for normal computing such as webbrowsing, email, word processing.

Just brainstorming...
Webbrowsing - Swipe high to switch tabs, use thumb for back/forward, wipe mid to switching windows (Alt-Tab), pinch a tab to detach it, and place it and size it where you want,
Email - My Outlook is heavilly filtered into about 30 folders with threaded viewing. I can definately imagine 3-dimensional ways to "dig" through my email faster.
word processing - yeah, typing will likely stay on the keyboard, but formatting though... oh, and how about select/copy/paste...

Thing is most of the above won't be implemented in the applications any time soon. That's where autohotkey comes in, in my opinion :-)

[gamax92]

Switching back and forth between mouse and keyboard is hard? ... Seriously? ...

Think about waving your arms around in the air like a maniac to perform tasks? Maybe for gaming but I'd rather just press CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to Taskmanager.

EDIT: Just watched that demo video.
I think having to make a gun firing motion would be slower than just clicking a mouse button. Or even using a joystick.

[Zaelia]

Just for joke, maybe we can add face recognition (shape), dental caries or cancer survey (ultrasonography)... but seriously, I want more information about frenquency wave they use, can be dangerous if we use this leap motion during a whole life of work with this system...

To use a desk is modern, we break our hands or more... use a music stand or work standing or inclined desk (as the beginning of time)... leap motion can divise obesity by x, have a lot of cursor (rubicub game, chirurgy ops, all we can imagine...) and it's a direct pointer, not a symmetry and translate who transit by mouse...

Wait and see...
Keyboard have the same key mapping than a 1860 typewriter (old physical constraint)
Laptop touchpad still sux... why touchpad can't be drag to left or right ?...
Pad or smartphone, indium is too rare for continue touch screen to all products...
Mouse is not so old (1970, we loose ball in 2000), games are still not agree with Y axis as reversed or right click for camera around or fixed to player...
...maybe leap motion can erase all those bad heritage.

[phillipdhall]

What's all this talk about "waving your arms around in the air like a maniac"?!? We're talking about something as simple as pointing a finger.

I must say I'm suprised by the negative and close-minded responses. I suppose we should have stayed with trackballs on our smartphones. For that matter, anyone decent at unix knows that a GUI is just a useless toy, right? I suppose we should all be doing our word processing in VIM?

Our graphics are 3D. Screens are 3D. I don't think this 2D input method is the best. Of course I'm not so foolish as to believe our keyboards and mice are going away tomorrow, but I'm certainly a fan of using the best tool for a given job. I was just hoping AutoHotkey would keep up so it can stay in my toolbelt.

[Lexikos]

How much integration do you think would be needed between the Leap SDK and AutoHotkey? What sort of triggers, and how would the script react?

I expect they'll provide (or someone will soon develop) a basic application which can map gestures to actions (such as keystrokes or command-line commands), similar to SetPoint/IntelliPoint but for the Leap instead of a Logitech/Microsoft mouse. If that's the case, there probably doesn't need to be much Leap-specific coding on the AutoHotkey side.

I think it's an interesting concept, but I don't have any specific ideas. I could request an SDK just to explore interfacing it with AutoHotkey, but:
[*:1hex6l8o]it would only become useful when there are other AutoHotkey users with Leap devices.
[*:1hex6l8o]it mightn't even be necessary (for instance, if the hypothetical application mentioned above exists).
[*:1hex6l8o]I have a "backlog of projects"...

[phillipdhall]

Thank you, Lexikos.

I was imagining AutoHotkey being that "SetPoint" application, but you're right, such a thing may already be part of the SDK.

[G. Sperotto]

I suppose we should have stayed with trackballs on our smartphones.

Bad example. Touch is more comfortable than a trackball and it is apparent at first sight. On the other hand this new technology does not seem more comfortable than a mouse at first sight.

It may be comfortable for some applications, but does not look like something which will replace the mouse for general computing.

Comfort is not everything. Even as of today, touchscreen is considered to be not as comfortable as having physical buttons, but the huge ammount of possibilities brought up by it can certainly make up for this, as we can see from the continuously growing market of tablets.

Perhaps Steve Baullmers (Microsoft CEO) hilariously wrong prediction for the Iphone could be used as an example in here:
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I can clearly see a lot of uses for this new technology and am very curious as to how it works. I also whant to see more in depth what it is is actually capable of

[undine]

when i see this i only see input lag
no way it will replace mouse/keyboard input
but it seems at least much better than kinect in terms of precision
and something like kinect already has its uses for very affordable motion tracking (3d animation)

[mrkafk]

Solution in search of a problem?

Gestures are nice in very specific contexts, like limited space of smartphone screen for example. Other than that, it's faster to use keyboard shortcut.

This looks good as novelty, but when novelty wears out, will you want to keep using it?