KOffice 1.2.1 Supported by DRT Design Recovery Tool

Thursday, 9 January 2003  |  Uteam

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 highlighted. Moreover, the action itself is described visually from fragments 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

Comments:

Nifty! - Anders Juel Jensen - 2003-01-09

This is outright *awesome*! /kidcat

Source instrumentation needed - David Faure - 2003-01-09

Yep, this looks great. If only it could be turned into a valgrind plugin ... so that no source instrumentation is needed. Yes I know, we are being spoiled and lazy since valgrind exists :) (The point is that the least time it gets to set it up, the most useful it is. If it takes too much time to set it up everytime one needs it, other debugging techniques will still be preferred). David, who has bad memories of the instrumentation recompiles for Insure... (and the docu for DRT indicates that it's the same kind of nightmare there....)

Re: Source instrumentation needed - UNSW DRT Team - 2003-01-11

Hi, We will look into valgrind. However, even if it does allow us to obtain (caller,callee) information upon every function call and exit --- including those in shared libraries and without too much of a slow down in the application execution --- we would still need to recompile the application code. Currently, DRT patches the source of the application to make it run in a way suited to DRT. In particular, this involves two things: * having a non-blinking cursor in a color different from the rest of the application display; this allows us to easily track the cursor from screenshots (so that we can zoom in on the user's focus in an action) * preventing frequent polling, which currently confuses the DRT action detection mechanism While we hope to remove the second requirement soon, the cursor issue will still remain. One could imagine heuristics that automatically find the cursor, but what happens if the blinking cursor was off during the screenshot? Also, what happens if the application uses a non-standard cursor, such as kspread? To alleviate the burden of instrumentation, we have already provided scripts to automate the procedure for LyX 1.2.1 and KOffice 1.2.1. We hope to have more scripts soon. In the near future, we plan to provide p2p networking so that users can easily search and browse action collections created by others. This means that it is possible to use the tool to understand the design of an application without having to do any demonstrations/instrumentation yourself. We also plan to provide collaborative commenting, so not only would users share their action collections, but they could also comment on code that they have finally understood and others would benefit from those comments/analyses as well. UNSW DRT Team

Re: Source instrumentation needed - Don Eberhardt - 2004-11-18

Where does the "kde" come in on your title to this? Where are you located? I run a small business in Glastonbury, CT and sell instrumentation. My wife is Kathleen, so our initials spell KDE. Perhaps you will be so kind as to reply to this Email, to satisfy my curiosity. Will you please? Thanks, Don

Re: Source instrumentation needed - Anonymous - 2004-11-18

How about visiting http://www.kde.org ?

Wow - shm - 2003-01-09

Pretty neat.

Frightning - i do not understand anything - anonymous coward - 2003-01-09

Although i took a look at the webpage i do not understand how and when to use. I hope i am not the only one. May be someone is so kind and could explain it in a dummy proof way ;o) For example i do not know what is meant by execution bursts. If i understood correctly "execution burst consists of the methods called" means that the programm checks code-execution on the code/programming base ?! Does this mean DRT will help you to pay attention to the more important code lines and to improve them first ? Thanks for any reply. Kudos to the kdeteam for 3.1 ASA gentoo 1.4 is out i will install it at my home machine. best regards. sincerly your anonymous coward

Re: Frightning - i do not understand anything - UNSW DRT Team - 2003-01-11

Hi, It's hard to explain in only a few words. We recommend reading our paper: http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/536115.html (You can download it in several formats or view it as a graphic; see the links in the top right corner.) This should give you a better idea of what we are trying to achieve, including future work. The paper contains some technical material, but this can be skipped if you are just interested in understanding the point of the tool. UNSW DRT Team

Please don't do this - Manfred Tremmel - 2003-01-11

Please don't write "X Windows": man X