Gesture states & events

Every gesture can be treated as "state machine". At any given time, each handler instance has an assigned state that can change when new touch events occur or can be forced to change by the touch system in certain circumstances.

A gesture can be in one of the six possible states:

• UNDETERMINED

  This is the initial state of each gesture recognizer and it goes into this state after it's done recognizing a gesture.

• FAILED

  A gesture recognizer received some touches but for some reason didn't recognize them. For example, if a finger travels more distance than a defined maxDist property allows, then the gesture won't become active but will fail instead. Afterwards, it's state will be reset to UNDETERMINED.

• BEGAN

  Gesture recognizer has started receiving touch stream but hasn't yet received enough data to either fail or activate.

• CANCELLED

  The gesture recognizer has received a signal (possibly new touches or a command from the touch system controller) resulting in the cancellation of a continuous gesture. The gesture's state will become CANCELLED until it is finally reset to the initial state, UNDETERMINED.

• ACTIVE

  Recognizer has recognized a gesture. It will become and stay in the ACTIVE state until the gesture finishes (e.g. when user lifts the finger) or gets cancelled by the touch system. Under normal circumstances the state will then turn into END. In the case that a gesture is cancelled by the touch system, its state would then become CANCELLED.

• END

  The gesture recognizer has received touches signalling the end of a gesture. Its state will become END until it is reset to UNDETERMINED.

State flows

The most typical flow of state is when a gesture picks up on an initial touch event, then recognizes it, then acknowledges its ending and resets itself back to the initial state.

The flow looks as follows:

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Events

There are three types of events in RNGH2: StateChangeEvent, GestureEvent and PointerEvent. The StateChangeEvent is send every time a gesture moves to a different state, while GestureEvent is send every time a gesture is updated. The first two carry a gesture-specific data and a state property, indicating the current state of the gesture. StateChangeEvent also carries a oldState property indicating the previous state of the gesture. PointerEvent carries information about raw touch events, like touching the screen or moving the finger. These events are handled internally before they are passed along to the correct callbacks:

onBegin

Is called when a gesture transitions to the BEGAN state.

onStart

Is called when a gesture transitions to the ACTIVE state.

onEnd

Is called when a gesture transitions from the ACTIVE state to the END, FAILED, or CANCELLED state. If the gesture transitions to the END state, the success argument is set to true otherwise it is set to false.

onFinalize

Is called when a gesture transitions to the END, FAILED, or CANCELLED state. If the gesture transitions to the END state, the success argument is set to true otherwise it is set to false. If the gesture transitions from the ACTIVE state, it will be called after onEnd.

onUpdate

Is called every time a gesture is updated while it is in the ACTIVE state.

onPointerDown

Is called when new pointers are placed on the screen. It may carry information about more than one pointer because the events are batched.

onPointerMove

Is called when pointers are moved on the screen. It may carry information about more than one pointer because the events are batched.

onPointerUp

Is called when pointers are lifted from the screen. It may carry information about more than one pointer because the events are batched.

onPointerCancelled

Is called when there will be no more information about this pointer. It may be called because the gesture has ended or was interrupted. It may carry information about more than one pointer because the events are batched.