Approach to Gesture-based Editing of Diagrams

In current business and product development processes, creating and editing diagrams (e.g. Statechart diagrams, Flowcharts or BPMN) play an important role. Three input methods can be distinguished: traditional mode-based editors, sketching editors, and gesture-based editors. Most of today's diagram editors are mode-based and use mouse & keyboard as input devices. (Multi-)touch inputs have not been integrated very well, yet, although a variety of touch input devices, such as (multi-)touch monitors and tablet computers, are quite common today. I present an approach for gesture-based editing of diagrams. The idea is that mode-based diagram editors are extended by off-the-shelf unistroke gesture recognizers. In these diagram editors, users can perform editing commands, such as creating, modifying, and deleting components, by uni-stroke touch gestures.