gnubik(6)

NAME
gnubik - an interactive, graphic Magic cube program.

SYNOPSIS
gnubik [window_system_options] [-hvs] [-z n] [-a m]

DESCRIPTION
This is a program which displays a 3 dimensional image of a magic cube, as introduced to the world by its Hungarian inventor, Erno Rubik. The user rotates the blocks of the cube, and attempts to solve the puzzle, by moving all the blocks to their correct positions and orientations, resulting in a cube with a single colour on each face.

OPERATION

The user interacts with the program in the following ways:

  Viewing the Cube

The viewing position may be altered using the arrow keys or by using the mouse. The left and right arrow keys rotate the cube about the vertical axis. The up and down keys rotate the cube about the horizontal axis. Holding down the shift key whilst pressing the left and right arrow keys rotates the cube about the z axis. To rotate the cube using the mouse, hold down button 1 and move the mouse anywhere on the window. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use this to rotate the cube about the z axis.

  Performing Rotations

Rotations are performed using the mouse. To manipulate the cube, place the mouse cursor on a square in the cube, against the edge facing the direction you want to move, and click button 1.

The mouse cursor will indicate the direction of rotation.

OPTIONS
The following options may be specified on the command line at invocation.

-z n
    Draws a cube of dimension n, where n is positive. The default value of n is 3.

-a m
    When rotating parts of the cube, show m intermediate positions. The default for this value is 2. Setting to a higher value, will give smoother animations, but will slow down the whole program.

-s  Starts with the cube already solved. By default, it starts in a random position.

-h  Display a help message and exit.

-v  Display version number and then exit.

IMPLEMENTATION
The code for gnubik was written in ANSI compliant C, using the Mesa graphics library, and the Gtk+ library. As such, it should be easy to generate a version for any system complying with these standards. The program was developed on a GNU/Linux platform running XFree86.

BUGS

The rendering process is slow - especially over a network, since display lists aren't currently used. The entire image is re-rendered, during each refresh, regardless of which components have changed their appearance.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 1998 John Darrington.

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 2 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, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA