Gesture-enhanced single-touch, also known as "dual control", "gesture touch", and often "dual-touch", describes the ability of a
touchscreen
A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is often ...
to register certain two-finger
gestures
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or o ...
, despite lacking hardware that would allow it to fully register all two-finger movements. A very common application of gesture-enhanced single-touch technology is the
pinch-to-zoom gesture, which allows the user to zoom in or out by moving two fingers farther apart or closer together while touching the display.
Technical background
An important technical reason for the limitation to gesture-enhanced single-touch instead of allowing dual-touch or
multi-touch
In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN, MIT, University ...
is the type of sensor hardware in the display. Many
touchscreen technologies obtain two independent measurements per touch to acquire a 2-dimensional position. Given two distinct touches, however, this returns two pairs of measurements, which can be combined in two ways, producing an ambiguous result. Thus, it is not possible to exactly determine the position of two distinct touches. Still, the average position can be approximated, as well as the distance between the touches, which suffices for some gesture applications.
See also
*
Multi-touch
In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN, MIT, University ...
References
External links
Annotated Bibliography of References to Gestures, Touchscreens, and Pen Computingby Jean Renard Ward
Touchscreens
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