The right side of the PaPCo main window is the actual panel composer where you can custom make your plot product. Each time a plot is chosen with its corresponding panel editor a panel entry is made into the compose area: An entry is made into the panel list, and a schematic representing the position of the panerl is drawn into the graphics area to the left of the list (think of it as the graphics output window in small, rotated by 90 degrees anti-clockwise).
Up to thirty panels can be entered, the whole list is scrollable. Initial positioning of the panels is from the bottom up, all panels equal size. The edit buttons provided here allow the user to edit existing entries, delete them, change the positioning and or size, put plots over each other and selecting one of the panels to be an ``overplot'' (plots into same panel as previous plot adopting the previous axis scaling).
The next section 4.3.1 explains the functions of the composer in more detail. However, the best way to learn how to use it is to add a few panels and then just to play around with the white positioning and sizing buttons.
Once you have ``composed'' a plot, this can be draw by clicking on the ``Draw'' action button, this opens up a draw window and the panels are processed and drawn by PaPCo in the order from top to bottom in the panel list, overplots last.
The entries in the panel composer corresponding to a plot are called a ``product'' in PaPCo terminology. These products can be saved and restored for later use using the Action Buttons ``Load'' and ``Save'' (see Section 4.5 for an explanation of the action buttons). These product files then also serve as input to batch processing, and the product name can be used as part of the printfile template (see Section 4.2.6).
Once you have drawn a product, you might want to change the appearance of some of the panels, the size and positioning, or overall plot appearance. To change a given panel you can edit that panel's settings using the panel editor for that panel. To call up the panel editor,you can
We have made an attempt to do ``clever re-draws''. Once a product has been drawn and you press the action button ``Draw'' again, only those panels that have been edited will be redrawn. This speeds up the design of a product considerably! (NB. To force a complete redraw, simply re-enter the current time settings for the plot).
The panel compose area of the main widget is where the main ``work'' gets done, this is what it's all about. As you select plots from the various modules an entry is made in the compose window. Entry in the compose window is from the top down in the order that you add panels, and this order is adhered to when plotting, regardless of which actual position that panel eventually has.
In addition to the text entry, a schematic black bar entry is made to the small graphics (grey) area at the left side of the compose area. This shows you the relative position of your panels as they will be plotted. Reading this might take a bit of practice: the position of the bar relates to the actual position of your panel once you plot it in the following way: far left is at the bottom, and far right is at the top. The bar is normally blue, if you overlap any panels both affected panels turn red, and if one is an overplot (see Section 4.3.6), a red outline bar only is drawn. Again, the best way to learn is to play around with the positioning arrows and see what happens.
NOTE: Drawing of all panels in the graphics area, however, is from the bottom up. The top entry in the composer ends up as the bottom panel. Since we can give no explanation for this, we just say that this is due to historical reasons!
(Remember that the panel which end up at the bottom of the plot also draws the time axis plus any additional x-axis labels. This might explain why it is at the top of the list, as it is sort of important!)
This entry describes the panel, the entry string is made up out of default information plus a user-defined string that the user sets in his user-written module. For example:
2: CRRES-Spec-Plot: [ 2, 7, 2], auto-yscl
elec, diff, pa range 10
The first line contains the number of the plot in the order in which they were chosen (which is also the order in which they'll get plotted), a description string of the plot type, the panel vector, which has the following meaning (by index):
So [ 2, 7, 2] means plot at position 2 of 7 panels with a height of 2 panels. Next is auto-yscl that means that the plot uses its own built-in user-supplied scaling. The user can select manual scaling in the panel editor for that plot type to override the automatic scaling.
The next line is the user-defined part, this string is meant to be a very brief identifier for the plot. Here we plot differential electrons of pitch angle index 10, which for CRRES is 90 degrees.
The white arrow buttons allow the user to manipulate the position and size of the chosen panel entry (highlighted in black). Any combination of panels can be achieved in this way, but the use of these arrows requires some practice. Watch the panel vector values change with each action, as does the schematic representation of the panels in the small left side plot window. Play around with these buttons to become familiar. If you get totally lost with your product, you can always start again from scratch by hitting the REFORM button (see Section Reformat under 4.3.5). The action of the buttons is interlinked in a logical way, and each set of buttons roughly perform the following (from top to bottom):
Note: Overplots are taken into account by these actions. Any
panels that exactly overlie each other are treated together. Warnings are
issued if there is a conflict in the panel composer, e.g. more than one panel
at the same position, only overplots at the same position, etc.
The only correct combination of plots at the same position is that all but one
must be overplots!
To aid you in your panel design the graphic schematic display changes to red whenever plots start overlapping.
The graphic schematic display to the left of the panel entry list has been designed to guide and help the user in composing a panel plot. The color and fill-style of the box representing the panel is used to infrom the user of possible conflicts:
Once a product has been defined it can not only be manipulated as described above, but also edited. This is done by highlighting either of the two lines of text in the compose window associated with a given panel. To bring up that panel's panel editor window, the user can double click on the highlighted text. The other way of editing is by means of the buttons below the positioning buttons:
The remaining OVERPLOT button allows for an advanced use of PaPCo. When the highlighted panel is marked with this button the schematic representation changes to an outlined box, indicating that this plot will overplot an existing plot at the same position. Normally, when you add a panel to the composer, it is added as a new plot at the top of all the existing ones. So if you want that plot to overplot one of the previous ones already in the composer, user the arrow buttons to move that panel until it is at the required position. Panels that overlay are indicated by the color in the schematic changing to red.
An overplot adops the y-axis scaling from the plot BELOW it that isn't an overplot. Overplotting line plots onto color spectrograms is O.K, the other way around makes no sense as the plot below will be hidden. PaPCo does no checking here!
The module must be written to support overplotting, and this should be stated in the module's panel editor help file (if it doesn't support it the plots will simply be plotted one on top of another, which won't look very good...). Again, here PaPCo provides the functionality, but it is up to the user to provide the required support in his plot routines.