The Pilot Logbook for Grok is not stand alone software. As the name suggests, it is a designed for use with the xmbase-grok database manager written by Thomas Driemeyer. If you don't already have it, you must obtain and install the xmbase-grok software first. The latest distribution can always be obtained from the xmbase-grok home page given below.
If you want to build xmbase-grok from source code, you must have the OSF Motif widget libraries installed on your system. You may even need the shared libraries to use a pre-built binary, (unless it has been statically linked, in which case you won't). One possible alternative is Lesstif, a freely available Motif clone. I tried an older release quite awhile back with less than satisfying results, but those problems may have since been fixed. There are some links to pre-built binaries on the xmbase-grok home page.
The Pilot Logbook for Grok is distributed as a compressed Unix tar file. The distribution is available in three different compression formats, standard Unix compress, GNU gzip, and the Burrows Wheeler based bzip2, take your pick. You can download the distribution from the Pilot Logbook for Grok world wide web site at
To install the Pilot Logbook for Grok, first verify that you have xmbase-grok installed on your system as described above. Then download the compressed tar file distribution and follow the steps below to complete the installation. Root privileges are not required.
"gunzip -v logbook-0.5.tar.gz"
.
The other formats are similar.
"logbook-0.5"
.
Change to the working directory of your choice, and extract using the
tar utility, the command "tar xvf logbook-0.5.tar"
to be specific.
.db
and .gf
files associated with the version(s)
you want to use to your personal grok directory, which by default is
~/.grok/
.
logbook.db
and logbook.gf
respectively.
However, you will need to edit the .gf
file and modify the lines
that begin with name
and dbase
respectively to reflect your
new filenames.
Like many other Unix software packages, xmbase-grok can be customized
to an almost infinite extent (much to the chagrin of users who are
happy with anything as long as it doesn't require configuration).
The -d
option is worth mentioning here, it will print out all of
the default X11 resources in a format that you can modify and insert
into your ~/.Xdefaults
personal resource file. My only
little gripe with the default configuration is the choice of colors
(I don't care for the red background). As an example, here are
the resource values I use;
!
! Grok
!
grok*foreground: #000000
grok*background: #cccccc
grok*colTextBack: #ccccff