Plotter Options
The Options dialog box is used to set various defaults and options for Plotter.
These settings are saved using the Choices system - this is a standard used by
all ROX applications, and you can read more about it here.
Display and Colour Options
Like many GTK+ programs, Plotter has a status bar at the bottom of the main
window. Normally this shows the x and y co-ordinates of the current mouse
cursor position. When you pan the graph by clicking and dragging with the pan
button (by default the left button), the status bar changes to show how much
the graph is being panned by. When you zoom to a region, the status bar shows
the region that you are zooming to. You can turn the status bar on and off
using the Show status bar option. Similarily, the Show tool
bar controls whether the toolbar at the top of the Plotter window is
shown.
Plotter has an optional grid which is shown as dashed lines on the graph. The
Show Grid lines option is used to turn on and off the grid.
The Label Font option specifies the font used for the labels on
both the x and y axis. Changes made to this font will not take effect on plot
windows that are currently open. Options are also provided to change the line
width used to draw the axes, and the size of border left around the edge of the
graph.
The Colours tab in the options dialog box allows you to choose
which colours should be used for the grid lines, the zoom-box and for graphing
functions.
Axes Options
The X Axis and Y Axis tabs in the options dialog box
allow you to set the plot range and display options for the x and y
axes respectivly.
Plot Range
The plot range for each axis is specified in terms of the minimum
(i.e. starting value for the axis), maximum (i.e. ending value) and
pitch (the distance between succesive grid ticks or labels on the axis).
You should type a decimal number into each box.
Display Options
There are three display options for each axis:
- Show Axis - controls whether to draw the axis or not.
- Show tick marks - controls whether tick marks are
drawn at intervals along the axis.
- Show Labels - controls whether text labels are drawn at
intervals along the axis.
Parametric and Polar Options
Parametric and Polar graphs use the variable t. The
Parametric/Polar tab lets you change the maximum and minimum
values of t used for these graphs, as well as the number of points
to be plotted on each graph. Increasing the number of points increases the
resolution of the graph produced.
Mouse and Key Bindings
The Mouse Bindings tab lets you choose which mouse button you want
to use for each of three functions:
- Panning the graph (default is left button)
- Zooming to a region (default is middle button)
- Popping up the menu (default is right button)
As with most GTK+ programs, you can set shortcut keys for menu items by
pressing the desired key combination with the mouse over the menu item you
want. These key bindings will be saved with your Plotter options, but this has
not been implemented yet!
Plotter 0.2.1 Documentation
James Kermode, August 2001