The GNOME panel Odometer applet, shown in Figure 1 is an applet which tracks and measures the movements of your mouse pointer across the desktop. It is part of the gnome-applets package. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose Panel->Add to panel->Applet->Amusements->Odometer.
Once it is present, you don't need to do anything to the odometer. It just sits quietly in your panel and keeps track of all your mouse movements. In addition, moving the mouse pointer over the odometer produces a tooltip telling you the distance you have travelled.
Right-clicking on the applet brings up a menu containing the following items:
Reset — This resets the odometer applet to zero again.
Properties… — opens the Properties dialog.
Help — displays this document.
About… — shows basic information about odometer Applet, inluding the applet's version and the author's name.
You can customize odometer applet by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties…. This will open the Properties dialog(shown in Figure 2), which allows you to change various settings.
The properties dialog box (which calls itself "Odometer setting" rather than properties) is divided into two sections, one for general options, and one for themes.
The general preferences tab, shown in Figure 2, has four options:
If the use metric checkbox is checked, mouse pointer distance travelled is shown in metres. If it is not checked, the distance travelled is shown in feet. By moving the pointer over the odometer you can produce a tooltip which shows you whether it is currently displaying metres or feet.
If the auto_reset checkbox is checked, the odometer numbers return to zero.
If the enabled checkbox is checked, then the odometer will keep counting how far you have moved your pointer. If not, it will return the numbers to zero until you re-enable it.
The digits number field determines how many digits the odometer will display. The default is four, and the range is from 1 to 10.
The theme preferences tab, shown in Figure 3, has a variety of themes you can choose from. They are found by default in $PREFIX/odometer/.
After you have made all the changes you want, click on OK to apply the changes and close the Properties dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Cancel button.
This applet has no known bugs.
The odometer applet was written by Fabrice Bellet (<Fabrice.Bellet@creatis.insa-lyon.fr>), and based on the Mousepedometa for KDE by Armen Nakashian, which in turn was based on the Motif-based Xodometer by Mark H. Granoff. Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can be found on-line. If you are using GNOME 1.1 or later, you can also use Bug Report Tool (bug-buddy), available in the Utilities submenu of Main Menu, for submitting bug reports.
This manual was written by Arjan Scherpenisse (<acscherp@wins.uva.nl>). Please send all comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the GNOME Documentation Project by sending an email to <docs@gnome.org>. You can also submit comments online by using the GNOME Documentation Status Table.
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.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to
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