Info GUI: Tools Panel

This panel provides you with additional tools such as reading and writing metafiles (files containing information about measurements/datasets in a format that is both machine and human readable).

Please note: Currently, most of the panel is just a technical preview without any functionality. As soon as time allows, fuctions will be added. That may well lead to a complete restructuring of the panel.

Below is just a short explanation of what functions are planned.

All the information contained in the “display” structure of a dataset that was loaded into the main GUI.

File

Name of the metafile to read. The button on the right, marked “…”, will fire up a file selection dialogue that let's the user choose a file interactively.

Format

Format of the metafile to be read.

Show

Show the metafile selected above in the “Info file display” below.

Apply

Apply the values of the (recognised, see below under “Metafile display”) parameters read from the metafile to the currently active dataset.

Note: This is the only functional part of this panel so far.

Same as above, but for writing metafiles rather than reading them.

The idea behind writing metafiles is to have a nice and handy way of summing up all necessary information for one dataset that could be even printed out and put into a lab book.

Used to display both the metafile read via the “Metafile read” panel or the file generated via the “Metafile write” panel above. In case you display a metafile that has been read, the lines that got recognised will be marked left to the line numbers, thus helping the user to immediately recognise which of the parameters of a given metafile have been recognised by the system and can be applied straight away to the parameters of the currently selected dataset.

Some may remember from earlier versions of the toolbox that there was such thing as a report generator that created PDF files (via LaTeX) giving both a summary of all parameters of a dataset and display the dataset via a series of figures showing different of its aspects.

This panel will provide the user with all necessary controls to create such reports.

Try to find out what “LIS” may stand for, if you don't already know. Plans are that this panel will give you - at some point in the far future - access to such a system (that beforehand has to be layed out, implemented, and installed), and therefore provide you with all functionality necessary to have a structured, accessible and useful storage of both data and information.