BUTTONFLY(6D) BUTTONFLY(6D)
buttonfly - a pretty user interface for Silicon Graphics demos
buttonfly [ menufile ]
Buttonfly is a user reconfigurable, hierarchical, graphical menu system.
Buttonfly opens up a window and displays one or more buttons, each with
its own title. Moving the mouse pointer over a button and pressing the
left mouse button selects that button, and will cause it to either execute
UNIX commands (such as running a program) or fly forward and flip
over, exposing one or more new buttons. Each of the newly exposed buttons
may also be selected to either execute UNIX commands or expose a new
level of buttons, and so on.
To go back to the previous set of buttons move the mouse pointer so it
isn't over any of the buttons, and press the left mouse button (i.e.
select the background). The buttons will flip over backwards to bring up
the previous set. Selecting the background at the top level does nothing.
Using the middle mouse button instead of the left mouse button causes the
new menu to be displayed immediately, instead of flipping it in to view.
Pressing the right mouse button will bring up a different pop-up menu
depending on which button the mouse pointer is over. Each menu has at
least a 'Do It' entry; selecting this entry has the same effect that
pressing the left mouse button while it is over the background would.
Pressing the space bar will toggle between a full-screen version of but-
tonfly and the window version. The full-screen version is useful for
presentations to large audiences, where visibility is important.
To exit from buttonfly, press the escape key.
RECONFIGURING BUTTONFLY [Toc] [Back] Buttonfly's menus were designed to be simple to change with any UNIX text
editor (such as vi ). When it is run with no arguments, it looks for
button descriptions in a file called '.menu' in the current directory.
If it is given one argument, it will look in that file for button definitions
instead.
Buttonfly uses a very simple format to describe its buttons. The format
has four different kinds of lines: comments, titles, actions, and commands.
Any line beginning with a '#' character is considered a comment and is
ignored.
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BUTTONFLY(6D) BUTTONFLY(6D)
Button titles, like comments, always start in the first column of the
file, and may be anything not starting with a '#'. Titles may be a maximum
of 36 characters long; buttonfly will automatically separate the title
into a maximum of three lines of twelve characters, separating words
in the title at spaces.
Action lines start with a tab and end with a newline, and may be any UNIX
command. Multiple actions may be specified for a button by listing them
after the button one per line, each starting with a tab. Actions may not
span more than one line, but may be any length. If no actions are specified
for a button, the button is displayed, but nothing will happen when
it is selected.
Commands, like actions, start with a tab character. Currently, the commands
recognized are '.menu.', '.popup.', '.cd.', '.color.',
'.backcolor.', and '.highcolor.'. Everything else is assumed to be an
action and will be executed as a UNIX command in a shell (see sh(1)).
The special action called '.menu.' is used to specify a button that has
several buttons attached to the back of it. When buttonfly sees '.menu.
filename' it will create a new set of buttons from the descriptions in
'filename'. If it cannot find 'filename' in the current directory, then
nothing happens. If 'filename' is '-', then the new set of buttons is
created from the standard output of the previous actions (see example
below). Note that any 'cd' commands in an action list do not affect the
directory in which buttonfly looks for the filenames specified in
'.menu.' commands, becuase actions are executed in a sub-shell (see the
'.cd.' command below).
Another special actions is '.popup.'. It is used to define a pop-up menu
entry attached to a button. When buttonfly sees '.popop. title' it adds
an entry 'title' to the button's pop-up menu. The actions following a
.popup. command will be executed when that menu entry is chosen. But-
tonfly automatically provides a 'Do It' entry, which has the same effect
as pressing the left mouse button.
The '.cd.' action is used to change buttonfly's idea of the current working
directory. When the button containing the .cd. command is pressed,
buttonfly will chdir into that directory before executing that button's
actions, and all buttons underneath that button will also be executed in
that directory (unless they also have .cd. commands). Note that executing
the regular 'cd' shell command in a button does not affect
buttonfly's idea of the current working directory, since all button actions
are executed in their own shell environment.
The command '.color.' followed by three numbers in the range 0.0 ... 1.0
specifies the red, green and blue components of a button's color, and
'.highcolor' does the same for the color of the button as it is being
selected. '.backcolor.' changes the color of the back of the button,
which becomes the background color of the next set of buttons (displayed
when the button flips over). Note that using color commands at the top
of a file, before any buttons have been defined, causes the default
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BUTTONFLY(6D) BUTTONFLY(6D)
colors to be changed for all subsequent buttons. To change the background
color to red for the first button and all subsequent buttons you
would specify:
.backcolor. 1.0 0.0 0.0
in the menu description file before any buttons are defined.
The following are example buttonfly .menu files, with descriptions of
what they do.
This is a very simple button called 'First' that has the buttons defined
in the file '.menu_second' on the back of it.
First
.menu. .menu_second
Here are three buttons. The 'Parent' button is purple and will flip over
and display the other two buttons when pressed (they will be displayed on
a purple background, since that is the color on the back of the first
button). The 'Demonstrate...' button changes directories and then runs a
program when pressed, and 'Recurse' flips over and shows the first button
again, this time on a blue background since the '.backcolor.' command
changes the background color to blue.
#Save this in a file called '.menu'
Parent
.color. .89 .10 .89
.backcolor. .89 .10 .89
.highcolor. 1.0 .5 1.0
.menu. child
#Save the following buttons in a file called 'child'
Demonstrate GL/NeWS Interface
cd /usr/NeWS/demo
glnews
Recurse
.backcolor. 0.0 0.0 1.0
.menu. .menu
Here is a very complicated button, which builds a button file based on
the files it finds in a directory full of files. When pressed, it builds
the file and then uses .menu. to flip over, exposing entries for all the
files it found. Note that this allows you to delete or add image files,
and the buttons will always be accurate. It also has a pop-up menu on it
giving help; the first .popup command specifies the title of the menu using
the %t feature of Silicon Graphics menus.
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BUTTONFLY(6D) BUTTONFLY(6D)
Show An Image
cd /usr/demos/data/images
#
# The following two lines must all be on the
# same line in the .menu file
#
/bin/ls *.rgb | awk 'BEGIN{FS="."}{print "Show " $1
"\n\tipaste /usr/demos/data/images/" $0 "\n"}'
.menu. -
.popup. ShowImage Menu %t
.popup. Ipaste Man Page
wsh -c man ipaste
Buttonfly will not work if the first character of a file is a TAB followed
by anything other than .color., .backcolor., or .highcolor. It is
safest to eliminate any blank lines from the files you create.
Buttonfly may crash if given an arbitrary file as input.
The maximum number of buttons on any level of the hierarchy is 32.
If a program fails to run, nothing happens-- no error messages or warnings
are given. This can be considered either a feature or a bug.
Specifying %F, %f, %x, or %m as part of a .popup. title will give bad
results, and may crash the program. Using %t to specify a title works,
but any actions specified for that entry will never be executed (since it
is impossible to select a title entry).
AUDIO With the release of IRIX 6.3, audio was added to buttonfly. When
the buttons fly forward or back, the system will play corresponding audio
files located in /usr/demos/Demo_Interfaces/Buttonfly.
If the middle mouse option is used to move through the buttons without
flight, the audio will not play. The audio option can be toggled off by
running buttonfly -a
INTEGRATION WITH WEB-BASED INTERFACE [Toc] [Back] With the release of IRIX 6.3, we have added a web-based interface to the
demos. Since this interface already sorts demos based on categories, we
were able to use a perl script ( mkmenu ) to access the sorted lists of
demos and create buttonfly heirarchies dynamically. When buttonfly is
started now, by default, it will have the categories from the web UI:
Features, Industries, and Hardware.
The sub-categories which fall beneath these are viewable from the
Search page of the web-based interface. This is accessible from the system
toolchest FindDemos menu option, or by typing http://localhost/Demos
from your local web browser.
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BUTTONFLY(6D) BUTTONFLY(6D)
Although these demos do not require the traditional structure, this
structure is still supported, particularly since these changes were made
via scripts, not in the buttonfly source code.
To use buttonfly for accessing demos from the web-based interface (located
in /usr/demos/General_Demos ) and demos with the traditional heirarchy,
just install or link the traditional heirarchy into
/usr/demos/Buttonfly. The mkmenu script automatically adds a button
based on the menu file located in the new directory beneath
/usr/demos/Buttonfly.
Thant Tessman and Gavin Bell Audio support: Diana Starr Perl scripts: David
(Sprout) Anderson
/usr/demos/Demo_Interfaces/Buttonfly/
.menu - custom menu file which supports
the display of demos from the web-based
interface and any demos in
Times-Italic.bw - font file
buttonfly - executable
buttonfly.sh - script to process input for buttonfly
buttonflyAudio - script to process input for buttonfly, includes audio
demofind - script that finds demos
in.aiff - audio for buttons flying in
manwsh - script: launches shell with man page
mkmenu - script: dynamically creates
buttonfly menu files for demos
installed in web interface
out.aiff - audio for buttons flying out
sea.rgb - texture
redirect - script: redirects output of demo
/usr/demos/Buttonfly
buttonfly - for convenience, this is a link to the above buttonfly.sh script
buttonflyAudio - for conveniece, this is a link to the above buttonflyAudio script
Additional Demo Trees - Traditionally structured buttonfly heirarchies
can be installed in this directory
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS [Toc] [Back] Must have at least 24 bitplanes.
PPPPaaaaggggeeee 5555 [ Back ]
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