[$Id: README,v 1.2 2008/03/31 11:41:38 tom Exp tom $]

ABOUT TROWSER
=============

Trowser is a browser for large line-oriented text files (e.g. debug traces)
implemented in Tcl/Tk.  It's meant as an alternative to "less". Compared
to less, trowser adds color highlighting, a persistent search history,
graphical bookmarking, separate search result (i.e. filter) windows and
flexible skipping of input from pipes to STDIN.  Trowser has a graphical
interface, but is designed to allow browsing via the keyboard at least
to the same extent as less. Key bindings and the cursor positioning
concept are derived from vim.

Note: in this context "line-oriented" denotes that each line of text is
considered a data unit.  Color highlighting (including search matches)
will always apply the highlight to the complete text line.

For more details and options please refer to the manual page.


INSTALL
=======

If you're using a Debian, Ubuntu or a compatible Linux distribution, you
should install the "deb" package using:

$ dpkg -i trowser_?.?-?_all.deb

This will place the executable under /usr/bin and the manual page under
/usr/share/man. If that fails, proceed as described in the following:

Manual installation is very simple: To install trowser into /usr/bin
and the manual page into /usr/share/man perform the following steps in
your shell.  Of course you can instell trowser also in any other
directory in your search path instead.

$ cp trowser.tcl /usr/bin/trowser
$ cp trowser.1 /usr/share/man/man1/trowser.1

If trowser fails to start or aborts with an interpreter error, you should
check if Tcl/Tk is installed and has the required version by entering the
following command line in a terminal window (i.e. in a shell):

$ echo 'puts $tcl_patchLevel;exit' | wish

In some Tcl/Tk installations "wish" as such may not exist, but instead the
major and minor version are appended to the executable name (e.g."wish8.5".)
In this case, change the third line in the trowser.tcl script file accordingly.

As of writing this, trowser is tested against Tcl/Tk version 8.5.6. If the
above command returns a version older than 8.4.0, you'll have to upgrade
your Tcl/Tk library.


AUTHOR
======

This program was developed since April 2007 by Tom Zoerner.

The official homepage is http://www.nefkom.net/tomzo/prj/trowser/

To report bugs please send an email to tomzo@users.sourceforge.net
Feature requests are also welcome.


COPYRIGHT
=========

Copyright (C) 2007-2009 Th. "Tom" Zoerner. All rights reserved.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

