Roadmap Tractable project

Introduction

Tractable is a new AS3 class for rotating scaling and dragging DisplayObjects in a multi-touch enabled setup. It's a direct competitor with the build-in gesture "pinch" libraries from Adobe itself which it shipped with the latest release of the Flash Player 10.1. These libraries are insufficient when it comes to intuitive and "free" control allowing only one manipulation at the time (rotate vs. scale).

Tractable also forms an alternative to parts of commercial efforts like Ideums GestureWorks which allows it's users a great deal of manipulation freedom. However, we will not create a full-blown framework like GestureWorks. The tractable project will only focus on the creation of efficient manipulation classes which can be reused in several environments.

History

The most used Flash multi-touch manipulation classes originate from the AS3 branch of the Touchlib project which can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/touchlib/

These classes were quickly developed by the core development team, gave a good direction and showed an open mindset when it came to spreading the possibilities of multi-touch interaction. The performance of these classes and with it the code structure was not optimal.

We would like to develop a behavioral set which follows more in the line of the native Event model from Adobe Flash itself, but allowing for more complex manipulation as well.

Startingpoint

One of our core developers, Mingoes Kukupessy, started of with a draft code version of this event based multi-touch manipulation model. This will be used as an starting point in the SVN. I hope that all participants have access to SVN clients to commit changes to the SVN. I can highly recommend "Versions" when it comes to SVN on Mac-OS X http://versionsapp.com/

Functionality

The new behavioral model should have some basic advantages over the extend on class X model as introduced by the Touchlib AS3 code.

• It should be possible to quickly make every object multi-touchable.
• The code should resemble the native event based model of Flash itself to insure a very easy learning curve.
• Basic physical properties like inertia should be included and easily changeable.
• Every object should be multi-finger compatible when it comes to scaling and rotating.

Core members

We have the privilege to start of with an already impressive line-up. However if you like to join don't hesitate to mail ralph.das@gmail.com. Here are our current team members:

Ralph Das - Co-developer SENSUS platform Mingoes Kukupessy - Bachelor Student and AS3 developer Patrick Brouwer - Freelance AS3 Developer Christian Moore - Co-founder NUIgroup

Compatibility

We will try to be fully compatible with the work done by Johannes Luderschmidt, Immanuel Bauer, Georg Kaindl on their AS3 TUIO implementation found at http://code.google.com/p/tuio-as3/

Milestones

Every great journey begins with some first steps. These are some step for step milestones which lay-out the development trajectory of our class.

• Milestone 1

We have a first iteration of a multi-finger scalable object. Can still be buggy and will be defined as early alpha. (Estimated arrival second week of April)

• Milestone 2

We have several behavioral classes like "Drag, Rotate, Scale". Combining them creates the desired object behavior. (Estimated arrival last week of April)

• Milestone 3

We combine these behavioral classes with gesture events which fire on "Pinch, Rotate, Flick, Swipe" events. And we add some basic physical functionality like "edge-rotate" and inertia. (Estimated arrival mid of May)