APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR EXECUTING MULTIPLE-CONCATENATED COMMAND GESTURES IN A GESTURE BASED INPUT SYSTEM

A graphical editing system is provided which allows a user to draw number of commonly used gestures called primitive command gestures together in essentially one stroke. The primitive gestures are chosen to represent gestural syntax, analogous to a textual command syntax. The primitive gestures are concatenated. i.e., connected in a series of commands by a gestural operator called a break feature. Every input composite gesture is scanned to detect the break features. When found, the composite gesture is broken up into primitive gestures and each gesture is interpreted and executed in the order in which the individual gestures were drawn. The preferred break feature is sharp angle drawn between consecutive primitive gestures. In a composite gesture consisting of two primitive gestures, one being the selection gesture, the break feature is recognized as any departure from the selection gesture.