CyberGuide Prototype Deliverable

Winter Quarter 1996 2/23/96 Document Author: Jason Bennett Project Sponsors: Gregory Abowd

CyberGuide Team: Matt Howser (Architect/Programmer/Manager) Derek Adams (Programmer/Architect/Manager) Jason Bennett (Technical Writer/Manager)

Installation manual

System requirements:

• 386 SX or higher machine
• Windows 3.1 or higher
• Mouse or Pen input

How to obtain:

Installation:

1. If the Borland Database Engine is installed on the target machine, proceed with step 3.
2. Execute setup.exe found in the BDE directory and follow the instructions.
3. Execute setup.exe found in the Cybergd directory and follow the instructions.

User guide

CyberGuide for Windows-based PCs

Platform: Any 386-or-higher PC with 4 or more MegaBytes of RAM. For interaction with a locator system (to establish position) there must be one free serial port on the PC. The program executable is less than 500 KB. It also requires installation of the runtime database library from Delphi. Total installation is around 5MB including databases, map files, and executable files.

Installation: Refer to installation documentation.

After installation there will be icons in the CyberGuide program group corresponding to the CyberGuide User Interface, the CyberGuide Map Creator, and the CyberGuide Database Creator. (The Database and Map Creators may be combined in a future edition).

Double-clicking on the CyberGuide User Interface icon starts the application. It first asks for the map to load (There is an option on the interface to change maps if the user needs to). After the map is selected (Maps are files with the *.CYB extension and are stored as text files from the Map Creator), the map image appears in the display window. Controls for changing position, zoom levels, and map rotation are displayed beside the map.

The current version of the program does not link with a locator to establish user position, but instead offers controls for the user to manually follow their position on the map.

There are data points (indicated by small circles on the map) that can be clicked with the mouse (or via a pen input device) to choose a project to view. The project database contains information in HTML format about each project. Alternatively, a list of all projects can be viewed by pressing the 'Projects' button on the main interface. An index by staff member is also available by clicking on the 'Staff' button. In both cases, double clicking on the entry moves the display to the position of the project and a 'Show Path' option is given to provide a path from the user's current position to the selected project.

Guide to the source code

For the database portion of the project, we created a TCyberDb component which contains public functions to access the CyberGuide database.

The database is actually 4 dbase tables:

• Projects.dbf --Contains project_id, x_pos, and y_pos
• ProjInfo.dbf --Contains project_id, title, abstract, summary
• Staff.dbf --Contains staff_id, lastname, firstname, title
• Staffprj.dbf --Contains staff_id, project_id

Projects.dbf
• project_id: integer --Unique identifier used to link tables
• x_pos: integer --x coordinate of project
• y_pos: integer --y coordinate of project

ProjInfo.dbf
• project_id: integer --Unique identifier
• title: string --Project title
• abstract: memo --Project abstract
• summary: string --Project summary

Staff.dbf
• staff_id: integer --Unique identifier used to link tables
• lastname: string --Staff's lastname
• firstname: string --Staff's firstname
• title: string --Staff's title

Staffprj.dbf
• staff_id: integer --Unique identifier
• project_id: integer --Unique identifier

For the user interface portion of the project, we used made a form, TCyberGuideForm, that held the TCyberDb component, the TCyberDisplay component, the THTMLViewer component obtained from the internet, and spawns the TLookupForm for project and staff searches.

The user interface contains buttons to Zoom in, Zoom out, Move forward, Move backward, Move left, Move right, Rotate counter-clockwise, Rotate clockwise, select projects, select staff, and load a map. It also, contains text to display the project name, summary, and an HTML component to display the abstract which is in HTML format. The only component used that we did not develop is the THTMLViewer component that we obtained from the internet. The source code is very well commented and mostly self explanatory.