Multi-Touch in Swing

Question

I was under the impression that a touch screen emulated mouse events, however how would I handle multiple touch events?

I have tried adding a JPanel with a MouseMotionListener and outputting the values to the console. I however, am only getting values for the first touch on the screen.

I then tried splitting the screen down the middle, with a JPanel on either side, and a separate MouseMotionListener on each side, each one outputting to the console.

In this configuration, I still only see the values for the first finger on the screen.

Here is what I have so far:

JPanel jPaneL = new JPanel();
jPaneL.setName("Left");
jPaneL.addMouseMotionListener(mouseMotionL);
jPaneL.setBounds(0, 0, 960, 1280);
jPaneL.setBackground(Color.BLACK);

JPanel jPaneR = new JPanel();
jPaneR.setName("Right");
jPaneR.addMouseMotionListener(mouseMotionR);
jPaneR.setBounds(960, 0, 960, 1080);
jPaneR.setBackground(Color.RED);

jFrame.add(jPaneL);
jFrame.add(jPaneR);

And my MouseMotionListener, L and R are the exact same.

private static MouseMotionListener mouseMotionX = new MouseMotionListener() {

    @Override
    public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent e) {
        String s = ((JPanel) e.getSource()).getName();
        System.out.println(s);
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseMoved(MouseEvent e) {
        String s = ((JPanel) e.getSource()).getName();
        System.out.println(s);
    }
};

I have found libraries that support multi-touch, but I am looking to do this without using third-party libraries. How can I go about doing this using just native mouse listeners?

Answer 1

First I want to say that I would really recommend using JavaFX for such an application. You can also integrate your JavaFX project in existing swing applications using JFXPanel.

However I have heard about MT4j which is a framework for multitouch in Java application which also supports Swing. I have not worked with it. So I can not tell you how good it works.