KOffice 1.2.1 Supported by DRT Design Recovery Too

UNSW DRT Team writes "DRT is a design recovery tool for interactive graphical applications running under X Windows. The tool automatically captures actions performed while using such an application. Functions particularly relevant to each action are identified. Moreover, the action itself is described visually from a fragment of the application display. One can search and browse these actions to learn about the design of an application. The latest version, DRT 0.2.2, now supports shared libraries, which allows applications such as those in KOffice to work. This version also includes template drt files for all KOffice 1.2.1 applications for easy instrumentation."

Re:I don't get it

[amichail]

Hi,

Please see the following paper for motivation and examples:

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/536115.html [nec.com]

(See the links in the top right to download/view.)

Amir

Replay

[oliverthered]

I want to replay the actions,
and Is there an easy way to interrate DTR with QT (e.g. through the pre-processor). So that I can just compile anyones app with DRT enabled.

Re:Replay

[amichail]

Hi,

The tool is designed to help you understand
other people's code. How would replaying
actions help in that regard?

Could you be more specific in your second question?
The DRT manual already describes how to instrument
most X applications to work under DRT.

Amir

Re:Replay

[oliverthered]

Ok, it looks like DRT logs the actions.
If it logs them and could replay them you could use it for Macro programming.

Also, I just wan't to compile -lreplay, not have to muck around with code.
Preferably compile QT/GTK -lreplay.

Re:Replay

[amichail]

Hi,

You may wish to look into programming by example/demonstration, which does as you suggest and more: it generalizes user examples into complete programs/macros:

http://lieber.www.media.mit.edu/people/lieber/PBE/ [mit.edu]

However, that's not the purpose of DRT. DRT is a tool to help you understand other people's code by considering concrete scenarios/actions.

As for automatic instrumentation without code changes, that would be difficult right now even if we focus just on qt/gtk.

DRT currently patches applications to ensure they do not perform too much polling (which confuses DRT action detection) and also that they have a non-blinking cursor of a unique color (to allow cursor tracking). Amir