Widget ideas#

• text window showing a subset of a gigantic (>100GB), should allow filtering, search, folding of blocks
• scrollbar with background image that can be updated. idea: show summary of environment in which we scroll.
• graph with objects I can click on and select associated data in other widget. Lasso to select a group of associate objects
• 2d heat map where I can click to find associated data. Select a group (possibly a la gimp). Ideally, zoomable, scrollable
• display two or more images on top of each other with a transformation for each, combine them (transparency, difference). Allow to zoom and scroll.
• layout manager that allows to stack widgets (e.g. Map of scrollable area on to of scrollable)
• text label that shows image behind text (e.g. Bar that shows value etc). The image could be blended with background color to make text more readable.

Text summary#

• thumbnails per page (section?)
• identify important words, assign colors, show them on reduced representation of doc (a couple pixel per page)
• when zoomed in show sentences that are important
• could apply to websites, clusters of docs etc.

Application idea#

Trace viewer#

• View strace, truss
• Focus on single line records but be ready for multi-line
• Display text as-is or parsed into columns
• Try to have light weight classes (point to records)

Columns:

• Time
• Pid/thread id
• Name of syscall
• Args
• Result

Sort by:

• Time
• Pid/thread id
• Syscall
• Args (textually, useful for file names)
• Result (useless?)

Filter by:

• Time
• Pid/thread id
• Syscall (list of names?)
• Args (substring, regexp?)
• Result

Actions:

• on pid/thread id
  • show command (if possible)
  • set filter to exclude/include
  • if still running: pstack, attach dbg, jstack, memory use
• on syscall:
  • man page
  • set filter to exclude/include explicitly
• on args
  • set filter to exclude/include with text under cursor as default value
• on result
  • set filter to exclude/include
  • explain value

Graphs:

• time
• name of call
• values
• args: checksum of text, extract from text

General types:

• number
• time
• text

Additional fields: Use cases:

• where is the app looking for that file?
• what is taking time?
• find string in read or write, identify the file (previous open that returned the file descriptor)
• find sigsegv
• find children spawned
• pid to execve command
• find errors (system calls return error code, child processes returning error codes)
• timing graph (time, pid or system call time)
• show network connections?
• show open files?
• bookmark position
• take snapshot
• copy paste
• jump to other process talking to this one (port number, lsof, pid, strace)
• open multiple strace commands, merge in one view
• load multiple files, merge (time)
• diff (ignore time)

Implementation techniques#

• Use composition to display image background behind widget: swing
• glazed lists seem interesting for searching/filtering lists