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Software Blog Post:

My slightly modified VUE: Visual Understanding Environment
1/8/2017

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My slightly modified VUE: Visual Understanding Environment
Sunday, January 8th, 2017
05:04:12 GMT

Software

I slightly modified the wonderful concept mapping software VUE: Visual Understanding Environment to work better for me in Puppy Linux.

My modified source code is available from here:

GitHub.com/Apollia/VUE


My top goals were:

  1. To make it possible in Puppy Linux to successfully open files and web pages by clicking resource buttons attached to VUE nodes (or as I prefer to call them, bubbles).

    If I recall correctly, that already worked in Windows XP, but it mostly didn't work right for me in any edition of Puppy Linux I tried VUE in - namely, Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2 and Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004. (Except I was always able to open other VUE map files.)


    So, I fixed that, in a crude but effective-enough way. And now I can not only open other VUE maps, but do things like launch other programs and scripts, and visit web pages, just by clicking currently inconveniently tiny buttons in VUE.

    Reminds me a little of HyperCard.


  2. To make VUE visually blend in better with my preferred dark desktop theme.


I don't feel like writing in 100% thorough detail about how to compile the source code, but, one way to compile it is by using Apache Ant. (I used v1.10, and in the past, version 1.9.6 also worked for me.)

Once you have Ant installed, you can run the command "ant all" in the "VUE2/src" folder, which after about 20 seconds results in a runnable "VUE.jar" file which you can find at the path "VUE2/src/build/VUE.jar".

And you can run VUE.jar by opening a console in the "VUE2/src/build" folder and typing:

java -jar VUE.jar


It's also possible to build and run VUE using the Eclipse Java EE IDE for Web Developers Neon.2 Release (4.6.2), and probably other versions.

Eclipse also has debugging features I mostly haven't figured out how to use yet, and the useful ability to generate Javadoc pages like these.


This old forum post on how to put VUE into an Eclipse project was helpful, though I didn't follow all of those instructions. I told Eclipse to base the project on the Ant build file at VUE2/src/build.xml, and that worked fine.

Eclipse still listed a bunch of errors even after I excluded these folders using Eclipse's Resource Filters feature:

src/java15
src/oki/old
src/maclib
src/old
src/build

But, Eclipse still was able to build VUE anyway.

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Note by Apollia on Nov. 8, 2023: Please join my Patreon if you'd like to support me and my work!

My main personal website is now Apollia.org. I'm still not sure what to do with Astroblahhh.Com, so it's mostly staying as-is for now.