Vidalia is the most popular graphical user interface for the trafic analysis resistance security tool Tor (The Onion Router). It has long been able to show all the Tor routers in the world on a flat map.
Matt Edman has now added support for the QT-based Marble widget made by the KDE education project. This gives Vidalia a 3D network map with a round spinning cube.
Marble is designed to be a geography educational tool. This means that the network map looks great when you zoom in:
You can even click on the servers (indicated with yellow dots) and get all sorts of incriminating information about them:
Possible thanks to free software
Marbles technology could be integrated into Vidalia because both projects are free software licensed under the GNU GPL license. The tyrannical corporate structures who plague our beloved planet do not want you to have access to such technology without paying them a unfairly high price. Free software licenses such as the GNU GPL grants all access to study, use and modify the source. This frequently results in very cool technology such as Vidalias new Marble widget support.
Still some rought edges to be smoothed out
The widget integration still needs a few more details to be smoothed out before official Vidalia builds with the Marble technology become available for Windows and Mac OS X users. It is possible to build Vidalia with the new fancy network map on GNU/Linux systems.
The trick to building Vidalia with Marble is to check out and build a special trimmed-down version of the Marble widget.
It is available from https://svn.vidalia-project.net/svn/marble/trunk
Then get the latest vidalia from https://svn.vidalia-project.net/vidalia/trunk/
Run cmake with -DUSE_MARBLE=1 (mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DUSE_MARBLE .. && make) and make and install as usual.
If you wish to view the number of frames per second then just add SetShowFrameRate to tormapwidget.cpp:
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Index: src/vidalia/network/tormapwidget.cpp
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===================================================================
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— src/vidalia/network/tormapwidget.cpp (revision 3515)
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+++ src/vidalia/network/tormapwidget.cpp (working copy)
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-37,6 +37,7 @@
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setShowCrosshairs(false);
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setAnimationsEnabled(true);
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setCursor(Qt::OpenHandCursor);
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+ setShowFrameRate(true);
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TorMapWidgetInputHandler *handler = new TorMapWidgetInputHandler();
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TorMapWidgetPopupMenu *popupMenu = new TorMapWidgetPopupMenu(this);
When can we expect to see Windows and Mac OS X builds of Vidalia with the network map displayed using the QT Marble widget? Who knows. Probably sooner rather than in ages.
