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README for XCruiser (version 0.3)
$Id: README,v 1.1.1.1.2.2 2003/01/26 18:29:18 euske Exp $

WHAT IS IT?

XCruiser (formerly known as XCruise) 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.

OPERATIONS

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.

Default controls:

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.)

OPTIONS

  -display dpy          Specifies an X server to connect.
  -background color     Background color.
  -geometry geom        Window geometry.

Other options are configurable as X resources. See XCruiser.ad for details.

A DOCTOR'S WARNING

Please take care of motion sickness. (I'm not joking!)

HISTORY

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.

LICENSE

XCruiser comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

AUTHOR

Yusuke Shinyama
Contact: yusuke at cs . nyu . edu
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/