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xcruiser - a filesystem visualization utility
xcruiser [ -display
dpy ] [ -background color ] [ -geometry geom ]
XCruiser is a
filesystem visualization utility which compares a filesystem to a 3D-formed
universe and allows you to "cruise" within it. It constructs a universe
from directory trees, and you can navigate with a mouse.
Here are simple
analogies. Every file in a filesystem is shown as "a planet" with a solid
circle. Similarly directories are "galaxies" (hollow rings) and symbolic
links are "wormholes" (green curves). Unlike the real universe, a directory
can contain subdirectories inside, which forms a hierarchical filesystem.
The radius of each star is determined by its mass (i.e. filesize) and the
position is determined by its name. Closer names are placed closer to each
other. Shorter filenames are placed closer to the center of the galaxy.
You
have one main window. Planets are shown as solid circles in warm colors.
Galaxies are cyan or white, and wormholes are green. The program also displays
the current velocity and the name of current galaxy where your ship is
in. The current direction is indicated in revolving green meters around
the center of the screen. You can move the white cross cursor with a mouse.
Unreadable files or directories appear in magenta.
There're two types of
flying mode, which appears at the next to the velocity at the top left
of the screen as a letter "P" (Polar) and "C" (Cartesian). In polar flying
mode, you can change your direction with a mouse and drive forward with
the left button. In Cartesian flying mode in contrast, your ship moves in
parallel without changing the direction. When you reach close enough to
a galaxy, the ship "enters" the galaxy and slows down. Outer stars are
displayed in darker colors.
Left button: Accelerate forward.
Middle button: Open the file (incompletely implemented).
Right button: Accelerate backward.
Z: Reposition the ship.
X: Change the flying mode.
V: View/hide the information.
M: View/hide the direction indicators.
Return or O: Open the file.
F: Freeze the ship.
Q: Quit the program.
Space: Accelerate forward.
Cursor keys: Move the cursor.
(You need to turn off auto key repeating when you're using keyboards.)
- -display dpy
- Specifies an X display name.
- -background color
- Background
color.
- -geometry geom
- Window geometry.
Other options are configurable as X
resources. See XCruiser.ad for details.
Please take care
of motion sickness. (I'm not joking!)
I developed XCruiser (XCruise)
when I was a junior student in university. At that time I was inspired
by the idea by a certain professor that tree-like filesystems are not necessarily
appropriate to us, since we sometime remember objects with spatial hints.
First I developed this on my Macintosh SE/30, and then ported to X11 with
a monochrome terminal. Hope that this program give some idea to those who're
developing user interfaces.
XCruiser comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
Yusuke
Shinyama (yusuke at cs . nyu . edu)
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/
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