PAVE User Guide

7. Configuring plots

Configuring PAVE Time Series Line Plots

Many aspects of PAVE time series line plots can be configured by the user. To access the main configure menu, click on the configure button at the bottom of the time series line plot. Many users like to edit the minimum and maximum of the axes, and the spacing between and labeling of the ticks. To configure these attributes, first click on the Axis button on the configure menu. An Axis Configuration window will appear, and at the top are buttons that let you choose the axis to edit - select one of these. To set the maximum and minimum values displayed for the axis, enter the desired values in the -max and -min fields. To set the frequency of the tick labels, enter a value for the stepsize. There are also a number of other features that can be configured.

Configuring PAVE Tile Plots

Many aspects of PAVE tile plots can be configured by the user. Configuration settings can also be saved to a file for use in later PAVE plots.

"Control..Configure...Tile..." menu item on a tile plot is used to adjust the configuration of a tile plot. You will see a window similar to the following:

configure

Note that with any of the typein widgets on this window, changes only take effect when you press the enter key in that widget.

The Color Map Type radio buttons allow you to choose from three different color maps.
The Edit Color # box allows you to individually edit any of the colors in that tile plot's legend. The arrows enable you to scroll through the legend's colors until you find the one you wish to change. You can then modify that color by clicking on one of the Color Choices color squares to the right. Alternatively, you can modify that color by clicking on the small color square in the Edit Color # box, that will then bring up a window that allows you to specify the individual RGB values for that color.
The Legend Range box allows you to specify the minimum and maximum cutoffs for the color legend used by the tile plot. Note that any cells with values higher than the maximum are plotted with the same color as the maximum, and cells with values lower than the minimum are plotted with the same color as the minimum.
The Format typein specifies a C language sprintf format that is used to print the labels on the legend. "%4.3f" causes the numbers to print like "0.128". There are many ways of printing floating point numbers using sprintf(). Please check your local sprintf() man pages or your favorite C language text if you need further information on format characters.
The Invert Colormap toggle reverses the order of the colors in the given color legend.

The Keep MPEG Input toggle allows the the user to save the parameter file and the screen capture (.xwd) files used by mpeg_encode to create an MPEG animation. When this button is selected, files with the following names will remain in the same directory as any MPEGs saved from that tile plot:

        [MPEG FILE NAME].param
        [MPEG FILE NAME].mpg.0000.xwd
        [MPEG FILE NAME].mpg.0001.xwd
                :
        [MPEG FILE NAME].mpg.N.xwd [where there are N+1 frames in the MPEG]

Note that the MPEG animation will be generated, regardless of the setting of the "Keep MPEG Input" button.

Parameter files are used by mpeg_encode to generate the MPEG files from a stream of XWD images saved by PAVE. If you want to edit a parameter file and then generate an MPEG "manually" using mpeg_encode, the command line format is:

        mpeg_encode <parameter file name>

Using the parameter file below, /home/thorpe/UWINDa2.mpg would be generated from /home/thorpe/UWINDa2.mpg.[0000-0005].xwd.

IQSCALE                 6
PQSCALE                 6
BQSCALE                 6
PSEARCH_ALG             LOGARITHMIC
BSEARCH_ALG             CROSS2
GOP_SIZE                10
SLICES_PER_FRAME        1
PIXEL                   HALF
RANGE                   10
PATTERN                 IBBPBBPBBPBBPBB
FORCE_ENCODE_LAST_FRAME
BASE_FILE_FORMAT        PPM
OUTPUT                  /home/thorpe/UWINDa2.mpg
INPUT_CONVERT           /pub/storage/edss/framework/EDSSv0.x/IRIX5_mips/bin/OPTIMIZE/publi
c_domain/xwdtopnm * | /pub/storage/edss/framework/EDSSv0.x/IRIX5_mips/bin/OPTIMIZE/public_
domain/pnmdepth 255
INPUT_DIR               /home/thorpe
INPUT
UWINDa2.mpg.*.xwd                [0000-0005]
END_INPUT
REFERENCE_FRAME ORIGINAL
FORCE_ENCODE_LAST_FRAME

The Disable Map toggle allows you to show the data for that plot without a map.
The Smooth Plot toggle can be used to do bilinear interpolation on that tile plot, which provides a smoothed out look at your data. This slows down the drawing of the plot because PAVE then needs to do calculations for each pixel of the plot rather than for each grid cell.
The Draw Grid Lines toggle can be used to turn on grid lines for your plot, in case this makes it easier for you to see your data's grid cell size and locations.
Scale Vectors toggle is only active when the tile plot has vectors on it. Otherwise, this option is greyed out. By default, the vectors shown are all the same length. If you want them to be scaled by vector magnitude, turn on this toggle. If you want to lengthen the vectors, use a scale greater than one. If you want to shorten them, use a scale less than one. A future development would be to have a new pull down window to configure vector tile plots ..Control ..Configure ..ScaleVectors.
The rest of the items on this window are pretty much self explanatory.

"Control..Configure...Obs..." menu item on the tile plot is used to adjust the configuration of the Observation data points on a tile plot. This is only active when the tile plot has vectors on it. Otherwise, this option is greyed out. You will see a window that will allow you to specify the size and the thickness of the symbols used for the observational data:

configure

"Control..Configure...Contour..." menu item on the tile plot is used to adjust the configuration of the Contour plots. This option is only active when the tile plot has contours on it. Otherwise, this option is greyed out. Need an image showing what this window looks like

"Control..Configure...VectObs..." menu item on the tile plot is used to adjust the configuration of the Vectors overlayed with Observational data. This option is only active when the tile plot has vectors and observational data on it. Otherwise, this option is greyed out. Need an image showing what this window looks like

"Control..Configure...Title/Subtitle Font..." menu item on the tile plot is used to adjust the font size of Titles and Subtitles of the tile plot. Need an image showing what this window looks like

Saving configuration settings for later use

Tile plot configuration settings can be saved to an ASCII file, edited if desired, and reused in future PAVE sessions. Using a tile plot's a "File...Save Configuration Settings" menu item brings up a file browser that allows you to save the current configuration of the tile plot to an ASCII file suitable for editing. The information saved includes the legend range, the format of the legend labels, the number of labels on the legend, the number of tiles/colors used, the colors themselves, and all of the individual toggle and radio buttons on the Configure.. window. In subsequent PAVE sessions, these configuration settings can be retrieved to affect future tile plots.

An example of the file format used is as follows:

ColorMapType    NEWTON_COLORMAP
Legend_Max      0.128
Legend_Min      0.000
Legend_Format   %4.3f
Number_Labels   5
Invert_Colormap 0
Number_Tiles    8
255     0       0       ColorNumber8
255     147     0       ColorNumber7
218     255     0       ColorNumber6
70      255     0       ColorNumber5
0       255     221     ColorNumber4
0       143     255     ColorNumber3
0       95      255     ColorNumber2
223     223     223     ColorNumber1
Save_MPEG_Files 0
Disable_Map     0
Smooth_Plot     1
Draw_Grid_Lines 1
Scale_Vectors   0

Note the following about the format of the configuration file:

Any of the entries can be deleted from the configuration file. PAVE uses its default setting for any entry not supplied.

ColorMapType should be one of the following:

        NEWTON_COLORMAP         [for Newton RGB (AVS)]
        JET_COLORMAP            [for Newton RGB (InkJet)]
        GREY_COLORMAP           [for Grey Scale (AVS)]

The colors are denoted by values for the red, green, and blue components of each color, respectively, in a 0..255 (inclusive) scale. The fourth entry in each color line should be of the form "ColorNumberI", where I is the number of the color (1..Number_Tiles) being described on that line.
The Number_Tiles value should exactly match the number of colors supplied.
The Legend_Format line expects its argument to be that usable by the C language's printf() routine for formatting a float for output.
Invert_Colormap, Save_MPEG_Files, Disable_Map, Smooth_Plot, Draw_Grid_Lines, and Scale_Vectors are boolean values - they should be set to either 0 or 1.

Configuration files can be loaded into PAVE sessions in two ways - using the user interface or from the command line. PAVE's main window now has a "File... Choose Configuration File For New Tile Plots" menu item, which can be used to select the file. Alternatively, PAVE's command line arguments or standard input stream can accept input of the form "-configFile ". Once PAVE loads a configuration file, that information will be used as the default for all subsequent PAVE plots, until another configuration file is specified to PAVE.

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