juTable

Description

juTable is a java mockup of a uTable / uPen tabletop system. It has been developed for exploring new orientation methods for interactive tables. You can reuse the source code and modify it for your own purposes. It is reasonably extensible, although not thoroughly commented. License info here.

Downloads

How to use juTable

  1. Launch juTable by double-clicking on the jutable.jar file or by typing java -jar jutable.jar on the command line. If it does not work, make sure you have a Java Runtime Environment installed.
  2. Drag the documents on the table. Be careful not to draw on the table at this point.
  3. Change the orientation method using the left pane of the dialog box on the top left corner of your screen. For now, the "Custom" method should be the same as the "Rectangle" method.
  4. Add users around the table by dragging them from the icon on the bottom left corner of the window. You can remove users by dragging them back into that icon.
  5. Rotate users by dragging them to the left or to the right using the right mouse button(sorry this is horrible, but I did not have time to do better).
  6. Activate the vector field by checking the "Use vector field" checkbox in the dialog box.
  7. Display the vector field by clicking on "Show vectors" and/or "Show colors". Change the orientation method again to compare fields. Check the "Smooth field" option and compare again.
  8. Add custom orientation areas by dragging directly on the table using the mouse. Make sure you are in the "4 - Custom" orientation mode.
    • First draw the area. Your gesture should start and finish near the table's border. Include a maximum of one table corner in the area, two corners or more are not supported. Your area should appear in gray. If nothing happens, try again (you were in the wrong mode).
    • Second, specify the center of attraction by drawing a segment towards the direction you want the documents to be oriented to. The longer the segment, the more homogeneous the orientations will be.
  9. Relaunch the application to clear the table and try something different. There is no reset option for now.

Contact

Pierre Dragicevic

This work was done while I was visiting the Pervasive Human Computing Interaction Lab at Tsinghua University in June 2007.