[pointerevents] Initial thoughts for gestures (#636)

patrickhlauke has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/pointerevents:

== Initial thoughts for gestures ==
Dropping this here for now as an initial brain-dump/reference.

# Initial ideas/approaches for handling simple gestures

Two of the more mature/useful approaches?

## Apple's gesture event for rotation and zoom

* [Handling Events > Handling Gesture Events](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006511-SW23)
* [WebKit JS > GestureEvents](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkitjs/gestureevent)

Single gesture event, which includes information about:

* [rotation](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkitjs/gestureevent/1633278-rotation)
* [scale](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkitjs/gestureevent/1632653-scale)

This would not help with simple "swipe" type detection

## Hammer.js

Different concept: single object that adds various "recognizers" for common interactions

* [Getting started](https://hammerjs.github.io/getting-started/)
* [pan](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-pan/)
* [pinch](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-pinch/)
* [press](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-press/)
* [rotate](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-rotate/)
* [swipe](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-swipe/)
* [tap](https://hammerjs.github.io/recognizer-tap/)

## Further ideas

For Pointer Events, it may be useful to provide the ability to access the actual specific pointers that were involved in a gesture? Similar to coalescedEvents?


Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/pointerevents/issues/636 using your GitHub account


-- 
Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2026 14:44:52 UTC