Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.1)
Installed from:    Fedora RPMs

Mouse gestures should be globally disabled by default in the KDE desktop configuration.

A desktop's default configuration should be as accessible as possible for unsophisticated, novel, and/or disabled users.  Mouse gestures should be disabled for the following reasons.

1. NON-DISCOVERABILITY: Mouse gestures are an invisible element of the user interface, and therefore not "discoverable".  Unlike icons, menus, or buttons, mouse gestures have no on-screen presence.  A user therefore cannot "discover" them by inspecting the screen.

2. INVISIBILITY: As currently implemented, mouse gestures provide no visual feedback on activation.

3. IMPLICIT ACTIVATION: Although gestures are non-discoverable and invisible, the user *can* activate them without realizing it.  The average user will therefore first encounter mouse gestures by accident, and experience the result as a mysterious and nondeterministic behavior that occurred without the user's conscious intention.  (This distinguishes mouse gestures from, e.g., the command line, which is also not "discoverable", but also cannot be activated implicitly while operating the ordinary desktop GUI.)  This is obviously a bad thing.

4. NON-ACCESSIBILITY: This problem is worsened by the fact that mouse gestures require fine motor control, both to activate *and* to avoid activating.  This is bad for capital-A Accessibility: elderly or disabled users are particularly likely to activate mouse gestures by accident.

5. OBSCURE CONFIGURATION: As currently implemented, mouse gesture configuration is hidden in an obscure portion of the desktop.  The control module is not "attached" to the application which uses the gestures --- pull down "Settings" in Konqueror, and you will see nothing from which mouse gestures are even transitively reachable.  In order to configure mouse gestures, you must open the Control Center, and look under... Peripherals -> Mouse?  Nope.  Desktop -> Behavior?  Nope.  It's under Regional & Accessibility -> Input Actions.  I've been using KDE since 1.2 and I still had trouble finding this.

Some of the above problems are fixable.  For example, if:

+ the user received visual feedback both when the mouse gesture system was activated, and when the specific gesture was triggered --- something like marking menus might be appropriate here; and

+ the configuration system were rewritten so that every application with a mouse gesture applied would automatically get an entry in its "Settings" menu by default.

then it *might* be acceptable to enable gestures by default.  I would still feel uncomfortable with the accessibility --- I think unsophisticated and/or disabled users would still be confused, and unable to fix their configuration --- but an argument could be made for gestures in that case.

As it is, however, it seems obvious to me that the *current* implementation of gestures should be disabled by default, globally, throughout the entire desktop.