At least certain embodiments of the present disclosure include an environment with user interface software interacting with a software application to provide gesture operations for a display of a device. A method for operating through an application programming interface (API) in this environment includes transferring a scaling transform call. The gesture operations include performing a scaling transform such as a zoom in or zoom out in response to a user input having two or more input points. The gesture operations also include performing a rotation transform to rotate an image or view in response to a user input having two or more input points.