Managing Customizations

Highlights--Keeping Track of What's Changed

Macros and Gestures that you have customized should get a light-blue highlight in the tree.  Their parent chords and hands should also get a highlight to help you find them again, but this is buggy at the moment. Macros and Gestures from import libraries should similarly get a light-yellow highlight.  Macros and Gestures that did not load completely or conflict with another gesture get a red highlight, and should be fixed or removed.

Saving your edits to XML

If you've made any changes with the editor, a * will appear in the title bar next to the customization file name. If you want to quit the editing session but aren't ready to test your changes on the device yet, use the Save/Save As... commands to store the session in an XML user-customization file.  The MultiTouch Utilities installer creates a directory in your user account where your user customization files will be stored by default.  The exact name of this directory depends on your platform:


If you want to store global customization files in a Fingerworks application directory where all users/accounts can share them, use the FingerWorks/user_config/ directory provided.  This directory and its entire contents will be preserved even if you uninstall or install a new version of the editor.  

WARNING:  Backup your XML user-customization files periodically, because it's impossible to read customizations back out of the device if the XML files are somehow lost!  

Transferring to the Selected Device

When ready to test your edits, hit the Transfer to ->  toolbar button.  If you haven't done so already, you'll be prompted to save to an XML file before the transfer starts. Next, a customization binary file is generated and transferred to your device. (A progress bar should appear briefly during the transfer). A few seconds later, your iGesture or TouchStream product should behave fully 'customized'.  (On some systems, it may be necessary to replug the USB cable after the transfer.)

Hotkey De-Scrambling for non-US Qwerty OS Input Locales

Users of the French(Azerty), German(Qwertz), and US(Dvorak) operating system Input Locales may notice that their gestures are producing the wrong hotkeys for some commands. Selecting the appropriate locale in the Device->Descramble Hotkeys for Input Locale menu automatically compensates all gesture hotkeys for OS locale translation.  This feature is only for:

All others should keep the default Input Locales menu selection of US English (Qwerty).

Those making a non-default locale selection must also do the following:

Note that for now, this de-scrambling feature works only for gesture hotkeys and key event macros, not 'text' macros and messages.
Note that the locale menu setting is remembered across editor sessions within one PC, but not actually stored in the XML Customization files.
 

Importing and Exporting Packaged Customizations

The Export button permamently packages any changes you've been working on in a self-contained library. For instance, you might want to create one library for a collection of custom photo-editing gestures, another for a collection of mail-automation gestures, another for an Emoticon pad and so on. Once you've exported each collection into its own library, you can import any combination of these into a new editing session.  When you save that session, its user customization file will include just references to those libraries, not their entire contents.  This way revisions by you or a third party to any of the libraries get included automatically each time you re-open your user customization file.

You should place export/import libraries either in your platform's ~/MyGestures/ home directory or in the FingerWorks/app_config/ directory.  The library importer looks for libraries first in your ~/MyGestures/ home sub-directory, then in their straight home directory ~/,  then in FingerWorks/user_config/ and finally in FingerWorks/app_config/.  This way a particular user can override any shared library in FingerWorks/app_config/ with a different version they've placed in their home directory.

Printing the Gesture Map

To view your customized gesture map as printable html, click the "View->Printable Gesture Map in Web Browser..." menu option. This command will:

Your browser must access the latest stylesheet at http://www.fingerworks.com/xsl/GestureMap2html.xsl to translate the xml map into a pretty html table. If browser does not launch, or your default browser does not support XSLT Stylesheets (need IE 5/6 or Netscape 7), or browser is not connected to the internet, try copying html-view-of-GestureMap.xml to an internet-connected computer with newish web browser.