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
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.