From: Robert Sexton
Date: 1997/09/16
Newsgroups: comp.sys.newton.misc

The following is a bit long.  Sorry.  the New <B>Gesturelaunch</B> is
extremely cool, and I've gone into some detail below.  I have no
affiliation with ICS or Pelicanware, or any of these folks, except
as a paying customer.  I've tried to be as accurate as possible.
Dan Rowly posted a neat little concept description, but I thought
a more technical description might be useful.

Last week, ICS quietly announced the new release of NewtCase, 3.1,
and the long awaited (at least by me) Gesturelaunch for the MP2000.
For those of you who don't know, the original Gesturelaunch ran on
2.0 NOS on the MP120.  (perhaps earlier machines, I'm not entirely
sure)  It was a truly inspired piece of software.  Gesturelaunch
overlays the silkscreen buttons, and will do user defined things
based upon the gesture.  It could launch applications, or execute
Gesturescripts (Newtonscript, I believe).  I set mine up so that
I could launch Pocketmoney, MPG, or Notion without opening the
extras drawer.  It  dramatically improved the usefuness of my MP120.
When I upgraded to a MP2000, losing Gesturelaunch was the only real
drawback to the upgrade.  Luckily the MP2000 was fast enough that
it didn't bother me too much.

The new Gestureslaunch for the 2000 is even better than before.
Really, really better.  Dan Rowley has integrated Gesturelaunch
into Barkeep, and the result is great.  Gesturescript has also been
improved.  I tried barkeep out when it was in the Beta stages, and
I thought it was a neat idea.  Barkeep lets you modify the button
bar.  You can change the size of the icons, remove the labels, and
other tricks that let you squeeze more of them in there.  You can
even disable the button bar and use a little minimalist button bar
that floats around the screen wherever you like.  Its handy if you
want a little more screen real estate.

For me, the best part is the improvements to GestureLaunch.  In
the NOS 2.0 version, there are four gestures per button: squish,
line, carat, and scrub.  The new GL allows you to write arbitrary
letters.  Even better, you can set the preferences so that the icon
gets obscured with a little ink window while you write, so you can
see what you are doing.  GL allows about 43 different letters to
be used (As I count them), so you can have lots and lots of choices.
In my case, I use a 'W' to launch works, a 'C' for the calculator,
etc.  Gesturescripts can now take arguments, and there is now a
before and after script that gets called for advanced scripting
tricks, as well as a default script that gets called when no
specific letter action happens.

There are lots of handy little scripts that come with GL.  Since
they can now take arguments, new things are possible, such as
putting an overlay on the names button that jumps to the first
person starting with 'G'.  Another script allows you to get a pop
up menu of gestures on a button, and then select from the menu.
One of my problems with the old GL was that I would forget what
was on the button.  Now I just program double tap to bring up the
menu, and I can see what is set up on the button.  One other favorite
of mine allows you to insert the date and time at the carat, with
a choice of formats.  This is really handy with the Works spreadsheet,
for entering the current date.  Other goodies include a heap status
script, toggling the backlight, switching the active stores, a
newton reset, and even one that opens a new recording note, and
starts recording.  There are really too many to list.  Naturally,
you can also create your own.

I think we will see new gesturescripts on the net.  I'd like to
see scripts for activating the aliens in dates, or firing up the
Easter egg games in the ROM.  Hardy Macia gave me a useful one for
starting up his Pocketmoney quick entry slip, which I have reproduced
below.  It's handy for people who can't use notepad of background
app buttons:
  
getroot().|pocketmoney:vthick|:post({});

In short, the new GestureLaunch is a terrific piece of work which
has made my MP2000 much nicer to use.  Dan Rowley deserves a round
of applause for doing such a good job with the software.  The user
documentation is also nice, courtesy of Jullienne Flanagan of
Pelicanware.  My hope at this point is that ICS/Pelicanware will
take more steps to improve the distribution of Gesturescripts.
It would also be nice if the Gesturescript editor supported routing,
so that you could fax, mail, or print gesturescripts.  As it stands
now, the product is terrific, and deserves serious consideration
by any Newton user.

It's being distributed by Pelicanware: www.pelicanware.com  

Copyright(C) Robert Sexton
--
Robert Sexton -  Cincinnati OH, USA
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