tkined1

Usage

Overview

Tkined is an interactive editor for creating and maintaining network maps. Tkined is programmable and can therefore be used as a graphical frontend for quite a number of applications that normally act on a network map (e.g. network management systems, network simulators). Applications run as separate processes that communicate with tkined through a simple protocol. The most common way to implement a tkined application is to use the network management extension Tnm(n) for the Tool Command Language Tcl(n) which encapsulated the protocol and provides access to the editor using the ined(n) Tcl command.

Tkined has evolved from the original ined editor which was written on top of the Unidraw/Interviews framework. Tkined in its current form is a set of Tk(1) scripts and some C code that handles the internal state of tkined objects.

This man page is intended to provide a short overview over menus provided by the Tkined editor.

File menu

The File menu contains commands to save, load or print network maps.

Clear

Clear the current map.

Open...

Load a previously saved map. The saved map file contains a script of ined commands that will reconstruct the map. Loading a map may also restart tkined applications.

Merge...

Merge a previously saved map into the current map.

Save...

Save the current map to the current file name. Tkined will write into the file named noname.tki if you never specified a different file name.

Save As...

Save the current map after choosing a new file name.

Print...

Print or store the current network map in PostScript format. You are prompted to enter a print command or to select a file name which will capture the PostScript output.

Import...

Import a background image. The image file must have the X11 bitmap format.

History...

The editor maintains a history of recently used map files in ~/.tkined/.history. The history command allows to open a map file from the list of recently used tkined maps. This allows to jump from map to map very quickly.

New View

Create a new view. This looks much like spawning a new tkined process, but a new view allows you to copy and paste between the views and saves some resources.

Close View

Close the tkined view. The tkined process will exit if you close the last tkined view.

Select menu

The Select menu contains commands that modify the set of currently selection objects.

Select All

This command selects all objects shown on the canvas.

Select Neighbours

Add all objects linked directly to a selected object to the current selection.

Select Member

Add all member of all selected groups to the current selection.

Select by Type

Add all objects of a given type to the current selection.

Select by Name

Query the user for a regular or glob style expression and add all objects to the current selection whose name matches the expression.

Select by Address

Query the user for a regular or glob style expression and add all objects to the current selection whose address matches the expression.

Select by Label

Query the user for a regular or glob style expression and add all objects to the current selection whose current label contents matches the expression.

Select by Attribute

Query the user for an attribute and a regular or glob style expression and add all objects to the current selection where the content of the selected attribute matches the expression.

The Edit menu contains the following commands for editing maps.

Attribute->Create

Create a new attribute for all selected objects (also avail by Button 3 popup menu).

Attribute->Delete

Delete an attribute from all selected objects, if existing (also avail by Button 3 popup menu).

Attribute->Edit

Change an attribute for all selected objects.

Set Label

Set the label of all selected objects the value of an attribute.

Scale Factor

Set the scaling factor of all selected bar- and stripcharts.

Grid Spacing

Set the spacing between grid points in pixel.

Align to Grid

Align the selected objects on the grid. Objects not selected will not be touched.

Undo

Undo the last change you made. Note that undo currently cannot undo a delete command. If you are not sure you really want to delete, use the cut command (see below).

Redo

Redo the last undone change. A sequence like undo undo redo redo should always bring you back in the initial state.

Delete

Delete the current selection. All objects will get lost since this command does not update the undo buffer.

Cut

Delete the current selection and place all deleted objects on the clipboard. The clipboard is a global buffer shared by all views. You can use the cut command to copy objects form one view to another.

Copy

Copy the current selection on the clipboard without deleting the objects from the current view.

Paste

Paste the objects stored on the clipboard into the current view.

The Structure menu contains commands to modify the structure of the map.

Bring to Front

Bring the selected objects to the front of the map. Background images ignore this command.

Send to Back

Send the selected objects to the back of the map.

Group

Create a new group object. The current selection will become the members of the new group object.

Ungroup

Delete a group object. The member of the group will become visible again or the group frame will be deleted if the group is currently expanded.

Collapse

Collapse an expanded group to show its icon. A new group is always initially collapsed.

Expand

Expand a group object so that the member of the group become visible. The group itself is shown as a rectangle enclosing its members.

Join Group

This command can be used to add objects to an existing group. You have to select the objects to add and the group to add to. A dialog will ask you to select the parent group if there are ambiguities.

Leave Group

All selected objects will be removed from any group they belong to.

The Icon menu contains six sub menus allowing to manipulate the appearance of tkined objects.

Node

This sub menu contains all configured node icons.

Network

This sub menu contains all configured network representations.

Group

This sub menu contains icons for group objects.

Reference

This sub menu contains icons for reference objects.

Font

The Font sub menu contains symbolic names for all available fonts.

Color

The Color sub menu contains symbolic names for the colors available. This sub menu will only appear if you are working on a color display. Tkined will map all colors to black if your application or your saved map expects color definitions and you are sitting in front of a monochrome display.

The Options menu allows you to set the page size and orientation and offers some checkbuttons to control the look-and-feel of tkined.

Media

This sub menu controls the size of the drawing area.

Orientation

Set the orientation of the selected media. You can choose between landscape and portrait mode.

Flip Toolbox

Toggle the Toolbox appearance (the box containing the tools to create new tkined objects) between left and top.

Show Toolbox

You can show or hide the tkined toolbox (the box containing the tools to create new tkined objects) using the Show Toolbox toggle.

Lock Editor

Locking the editor disallows creation and deletion of objects. You can Unlock the editor by turning the Lock Editor switch off again.

Memory Validation

If you have compiled and installed the Tk/Tcl libraries and tkined with the memory validation define, this toggle enables/disables memory validation. Note: Memory validation is very time consuming and at least not even recommended for debugging.

Memory Trace

If you have compiled and installed the Tk/Tcl libraries and tkined with the memory validation define set, this toggles enable/disable of memory allocation tracing. Trace information is written to stderr of tkined.

Memory Info

If you have compiled and installed the Tk/Tcl libraries and tkined with the memory validation define set, this prints some memory usage statistics to stderr of tkined.

Strict Motif

Toggle tkined's appearance between a nicer motif-like and strict motif look-and-feel, as done by John within tk.

The Help menu contains some infos about the editor and some short help texts.

General

General information about tkined.

Status

Some status information about the editor. This is mainly for maintenance.

Key Bindings

A short note about the key bindings inside the canvas. This may help you to learn about the various ways to use the mouse buttons.

Customization

You can customize the tkined editor to your specific needs. You may load your own icon bitmaps and define the width of various network types. All customization is done using tkined.defaults files, that are very similar to xrdb(1) files. Since there is no way to access the defaults database of the server from within tk, the defaults files are searched in the current directory, ~/.tkined, $tkined(library)/site and $tkined(library) in this order.

width

height

You can specify the default width and height of the drawing area using the with and height attribute.

node i

You may specify icons to represent machines for the i-th node menu entry. The definition consists of two strings. The first one is the filename of the bitmap and the second is the name of the icon as shown in the node menu. A colon can be used to create a path of submenus, e.g. Sun:SparcStation 2.

group i

The definition of an icon for a collapsed group is done in the same way as for a node icon.

network i

The definition of the i-th network consists of the line thickness to use and the name that appears in the menu.

reference i

The definition of an icon for a reference object is done in the same way as for a node icon.

interpreter i

The i-th interpreter is defined by its file name. It is the responsibility of the interpreter to define new menus using the ined create MENU command.

font i

The font menu is build using the font definitions. The i-th menu entry represents font i which must be given as an X11 font name followed by the name used in the font menu.

color i

The contents of the color menu is given by an X11 color name and the name for this color used in the color menu. The color menu does not appear on monochrome displays.

Files

/usr/local/lib/tkined1.5.0/tkined.defaults

/usr/local/lib/tkined1.5.0/init.tcl

/usr/local/lib/tkined1.5.0/bitmaps/*.xbm

$HOME/.tkined/tkined.defaults

$HOME/.tkined/*.xbm

$HOME/.tkined/.history