KTB - KDE Tree Browser

Introduction

KTB is meant to easily explore medium to large directory hierarchies and to print the hierarchy out (possibly tiled on a number of sheets). It uses the algorithm described by Sven Moen, Brown University, in the IEEE Software from July 1990. This algorithm compacts a directory tree vertically. KTB offers the possibility of modifying the tree vertically, so in theory it is possible to reach a "fully" compacted tree.

KTB should be relatively simply to use: just double-click on a string (which represents a directory) in order to disply its children. Repeat this until you see everything you want. You can scroll around the sheet with the scrollbars or by simply dragging the sheet.

Customizing

In order to modify the tree vertically, hold down the shift button, and drag the base of a branch (i.e. where all the lines from the children met). This is (IMHO) the only non-obvious KTB feature.

By pressing the right mouse button you get the main menu. There are four submenus:

File

Print

Print the sheet on a Postscript printer. KTB dumps the tree as a PostScript document, the background and the images will be printed too. NOTE: check if the background image is appropriate for printing.
You can specify some edge marks if printing on several paper sheets in order to fit the result more easily together.
EPSF printing is only enabed for one page output, resize the image if necessary.

Dump image

Dump the sheet to a PNG file.

Save / Load

You can save the current hierarchy with all the image names used to a human readable file, and load it later.

Exit

Node

All of the following entries operate on the selected node (i.e. directory).
Set root/reset root

Display only nodes descending from the current (highlighted) node. Reset displays all the nodes again.

Hide selected

Do not display the children of the current node. Clicking on the node again displays all the children. If the node has no children, it will be deleted. NOTE: The directory itself will NOT be deleted.

Open recursively

Open all children, grandchildren and so on of the current node.

Open in Konqueror

Display the current directory in Konqueror by opening a new window.

Set Font / Set Font Color / Set Line Color / Line Width

Set the appropriate property of a node and all of its descendants.

Set Image / Delete Image / Image position

Set the image and image position of a node. You can use all KDE supported images.

Background

You can set here the background color or background image of the sheet and/or of the margin. Note: only the sheet background will be printed.

Help

Should be obvious.

Bugs/TODO

History

Ktb is a rewrite of TB, which was (is) an XView based file manager. It had no capabilities for displaying images, but you could rename, copy, move files around. TB was originally written as a frontend for multiple filesystems, with a filesystem layer to easily add new ones.
KTB was created as an exercise for KDE development. As KFM fulfilled all needs for a filemanager, these capabilities were left out. And since KDE/Qt makes displaying images easy, displaying images was added.

Thanks to:

Stefan Probst for encouraging me to rewrite TB in KDE. Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel for some KDE insider tips. Stefan Hegny for the PostScript support.