tdeaddons/doc/konq-plugins/fsview/index.docbook

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<!ENTITY fsview "<application>FSView</application>">
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<sect1 id="fsview">
<sect1info>

<authorgroup>
<author>
<personname><firstname>Josef</firstname>
<surname>Weidendorfer</surname></personname>
<address><email>Josef.Weidendorfer@gmx.de</email></address>
</author>

<!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS --> 
</authorgroup>

<date>2006-02-24</date>
<releaseinfo>3.5.1</releaseinfo>

<abstract>
<para>The &fsview; Plugin for &konqueror; is another view mode for
objects of mimetype <literal>inode/directory</literal> for local
files. It can be viewed as an alternative to the various iconviews and
listviews for browsing the content of your local file system.</para>
</abstract>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>kdeaddons</keyword>
<keyword>konqueror</keyword>
<keyword>plugins</keyword>
<keyword></keyword>
</keywordset>

</sect1info>

<title>&fsview; - the File System View</title>

<sect2>
<title>Introduction</title>

<para>The &fsview; Plugin for &konqueror; is another view mode for
objects of mimetype <literal>inode/directory</literal> for local
files. It can be viewed as an alternative to the various iconviews and
listviews for browsing the content of your local file system.</para>

<para>The unique property of &fsview; is its ability to show whole
nested folder hierarchies using a so-called tree map for graphical
visualization. Tree maps allow for displaying metrics of objects in
nested structures: each object is represented by a rectangle whose
area is proportional to its metric. The sum of the children's metrics must be
equal to or smaller than the parent object's metric.</para>

<para>For &fsview;, sizes of files and folders are choosen as
metric, where the the size of a folder is defined to be the sum of the
sizes of its subitems. This way, big files even deep down in the
folder hierarchy can be spotted easily be looking for large
rectangles. So &fsview; can be looked at as a graphical and interactive
version of the &UNIX; <command>du</command> command.</para>

<para>The integration of &fsview; as part of Konqueror allows it to
use the standard features like context file menus, and mime type
sensitive actions. But it was choosen not to implement automatical
update of file system changes by watching: if you delete a file shown
in &fsview; outside of &konqueror;, you have to update manually by
&eg; pressing <keycap>F5</keycap>. The reason for this decision is
the potentially huge amount of files which would have to be watched
for changes, and thus, could put an unreasonable pressure on system
resources for a small feature.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>
<title>Visualization Features</title>

<para>This section explains the graphical visualization of &fsview;
in detail.</para>

<sect3>
<title>Item Drawing Options</title>

<para>In &fsview;, an item of the tree map visualization is a rectangle
representing a file or folder of your file system. For easier navigation,
rectangles have a meaningful coloring and labeling options.</para>

<para>The color of a rectangle, switchable via menu item
<menuchoice><guimenu>View</guimenu><guisubmenu>Color
Mode</guisubmenu></menuchoice> can be either
<guimenuitem>Depth</guimenuitem> for easy detection of the nesting, or
a color mapping of different file attributes like name, owner, group,
or mime type.</para>

<para>A rectangle can be labeled with the various attributes
of the corresponding file or folder. For an attribute, you can
choose, whether it should be shown at all, only if space is available,
or if space should be taken from children (thus introducing
errors to pure tree map drawing constrains). Additionally, you can choose
the relative location of the label in the rectangle.</para>

</sect3>

<sect3>
<title>TreeMap Drawing Algorithms</title>

<para>For drawing algorithms in tree maps, the rule that the area
is proportional to the metric of an item should hold true.
With the tree map in &fsview;, this goal isn't always met: we draw borders
to show the nesting of items, and this border takes space for a item
which is possible lost for the areas of child items. Note that
less space is lost for the border if the rectangle is quadratic.</para>

<para>Similar, it is good for a better overview to let all rectangles
at least have its name as label, taking space, too. It is an option to
always force space for labels, or only to draw labels when empty space
is available. In the latter case, the tool tips appearing when the
mouse is kept over an item for some time, can help a lot. They show
information for the item the mouse is currently over, together with
its parent relations up to the root item of the tree map.</para>

<para>How the space of an item is split into subareas for children is
left to the implementation. It is always better to try to split areas
in such a way that rectangles are as quadratic as possible, both for
labeling and less space lost by borders. The best methods in this
regard are <guilabel>Rows</guilabel>, <guilabel>Columns</guilabel>, or
<guilabel>Recursive Bisection</guilabel>.</para>

<para>You can choose the minimal area of items to be drawn via the
menu item <menuchoice><guimenu>View</guimenu><guimenuitem>Stop at
Area</guimenuitem></menuchoice>. Instead, a hash pattern will be drawn
over the parents area to signal that this space is in fact occupied by
a child.</para>

</sect3>

</sect2>

<sect2>
<title>User Interface</title>

<para>&fsview; supports multiple selection of items, similar to the
iconview and listview. This allows for actions to be done
simultaneously to a set of files. A simple mouse click always selects
a single item below the mouse pointer. Use a mouse click in
combination with pressing the &Shift; key for range selection or the
&Ctrl; Key for selection toggle. Note that by selecting an item, subitems can no
longer be selected. Selecting an item will also clear the selection of all its
parent items before.</para>

<para>There is keyboard navigation available in tree maps: use
<keycap>Left Arrow</keycap> and <keycap>Right Arrow</keycap> keys to
move the current item between siblings, and the <keycap>Up
Arrow</keycap> and <keycap>Down Arrow</keycap> keys to go up and down
the nesting hierarchy. <keycap>Space</keycap> selects the item, in
conjunction with &Shift; does range selection, and with the &Ctrl; key
hold down simultaneously, toggles selection of the current item. Press
<keycap>Return</keycap> to run the open action onto the current item.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>
<title>Credits and License</title>

<para>Originally, &fsview; was meant as a small test application and
usage tutorial for the TreeMap widget developed within
<application>KCachegrind</application>.</para>

<para>Copyright by Josef Weidendorfer, licensed using GPL V2.</para>

&underGPL;
&underFDL;

</sect2>

</sect1>
</article>