NAME

mux − interactive television demo

SYNOPSIS

­mux/mux

DESCRIPTION

­Mux is a standalone application environment run from the Inferno console in emu(1) or started automatically by init(8) in a native environment. It directly uses the draw(3) device and either keyboard or Infrared, and cannot be run under wm(1). It is included in this release only as an example of the use of the Prefab graphics module described by prefab-intro(2). The simpler style of graphics and interaction provided by Prefab and demonstrated by ­mux might be more appropriate than Tk on devices that use infrared remote control for interaction, such as televisions, or devices with limited screen space, such as pocket devices or portable telephones. 

Configuration

­Mux produces a menu derived from the configuration file /services/basic.  Each line in the file has three fields, separated by :, of the following form:

icon:app:label

The ­icon is the name of a bitmap file to displayed in the menu alongside the textual ­label (which is the rest of the line).  When the item is selected, as described below, ­mux runs the Dis file

/dis/mux/app.dis

Applications

The following applications are available:

­fnn Financial reports: a scrolling ‘ticker tape’ along the bottom of the screen. 

­movie Movies: select a film from a menu of categories

­news Today’s Newspaper: on-screen newspapers

­tv Television

­tvlist TV Timetable

­pizza Order Pizza

­email Internet mail

­web Internet Web Browser: simplistic web browser

­register Register with a service provider

­ovid Presentations

­audioctl Audio Control

Interaction

­Mux can be controlled using an infrared device, but for demonstration purposes under emu(1) the infrared is emulated using the keyboard (see ir(2)). The following are the common controls:

­r channel up

­c channel down

­t volume up

­v volume down

­i cursor up

­m cursor down

­j cursor left; rewind

­k cursor right; fast forward

­x return to main menu leaving application running; recall

­newline select item

­space exit and return to the previous screen or menu

FILES

­/services/basic
­/icons/∗.bit

SOURCE

­/appl/mux

SEE ALSO

wm(1), ir(2), prefab-intro(2), virgil(2), manufacture(8), register(8), signer(8), virgild(8)

BUGS

The video demonstrations currently work only on native machines with specific hardware. 
For copyright reasons, some databases are not distributed, or have randomly-generated content.

Plan 9  —  June 06, 2000