xodometer 1.1
As my first X application I present xodometer, which tracks the total distance
your cursor and pointing device (typically a mouse) travel. It also maintains
"trip" distance since the application started or since you clicked on a trip
reset button.
A pull-down menu allows you to select in which units the distance is
displayed, from millimeters to nautical miles to light-nanoseconds, and more.
xodometer requires a one-time calibration procedure which is fully described
by reading the man page or by entering "xodo -full_help".
xodometer was inspired by the Macintosh Mouse Odometer program written by
Sean P. Nolan, while xneko by Masayuki Koba provided my initial insights into
writing X programs.
An IBM RS/6000 model 320 running AIX 3.2.3 with mwm and X11 Release 4 was the
primary developement environment, although some small amount of testing was
done on a Sun SPARC 1+ running SunOS 4.1.1 with twm. Please report any bugs
and be sure to fully specify your configuration.
Although in theory the cursor distance can be reliably tracked, the actual
distance your pointing device moves is only APPROXIMATED and will not be very
exact, so don't report this as a bug :-)!
Again, remember that this was done as an exercise to learn Xlib programming;
use xodometer without warranty! It took me thirty days to write, which
seems like a long time, but maybe not too bad considering the learning curve
and the fact that I'm over forty.... (-:
Installation
The xodometer tar file is available via anonymous FTP from FTP.Lehigh.EDU in
the directory pub/xodo. After modifying the Imakefile variables as
required generate your Makefile from the Imakefile in the standard manner.
Then run "make" followed by "make install". Sample Makefiles have been
provided for your pleasure.
I welcome comments, enhancements, and bug reports. Take care.
Stephen O. Lidie
Lehigh University Computing Center
lusol@Lehigh.EDU
Revision History
lusol@Lehigh.EDU, LUCC, 93/02/23.
. Original version 1.0 release.
lusol@Lehigh.EDU, LUCC, 93/03/05
. Version 1.1 release. Display absolute screen coordinates of the
cursor to assist in calibrating xodometer. Use select rather than
setitimer and signals for the microsecond timing requirements.
. Various bug fixes/observations by Larry W. Virden (lwv26@cas.org).
. More valuable bug fixes/observations by Ti Kan (ti@bazooka.amb.org).
Ti also tested xodometer on the following platforms:
USL UNIX SVR4.2.1 "Destiny" on a i486 PC
SCO UNIX SVR3.2.2 on a i486 PC
Altos UNIX SVR3.2 2.1bC0 on a i486 PC
SunOS 4.1.2 on a Sun Sparc IPX workstation
Stratus FTX SVR4 2.1 on a Stratus XA/R fault-tolerant server
Many thanks!
