The User Interface
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The implementation of Analyze takes full advantage of the Tcl/Tk command language and interface paradigm. Building the user interface from standard Tcl/Tk tools provides compliance with these standards across multi-vendor systems and facilitates immediate user familiarity for ease of interaction with the interface components.
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Programs are implemented with full access to the power and flexibility of this interpreted language paradigm via extensions to Tcl developed for the AVW software system and via Analyze-specific interface extensions for Tk. These Tcl/Tk extensions provide powerful script building capability for additions to and enhancements of the Analyze software system. The Tcl/Tk-based interface takes on the native look-and-feel of the system-inherent window manager, allowing Analyze programs to operate with the look-and-feel of the native window manager without modification. With the growing popularity of Tcl/Tk, Analyze users and developers can readily integrate their own functions or those of others by simple Tcl/Tk extensions to Analyze.
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- Native look and feel across supported platforms
- Share data across multiple processes
- Multi-processing of multiple data sets
- Ready integration of externally developed modules
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The interface to each program is fully configurable, including image sizes, font styles, colors, automatic iconification of subwindows, powerbar configuration, etc. All configurable interface features are established on a user-specific basis and can be set interactively or through standard app-defaults (X-windows) resource mechanisms. A summary of features includes:
- Standardized, common interface widgets.
- Integration with standard tool (i.e., file box).
- Individual interface windows for specific parameter sets.
- Reconfigurable window sizes.
- Iconification for all window types.
- User-configurable powerbar with icons.
- Separate image display canvases for each program-specific display.
- Configurable image matrix.
- Resizable with automatic scroll bar placement.
- Automatic color resource allocation for best image display.
- Configurable program resources (e.g., fonts, colors) via standard resource definition files.
Multiple Volume Sharing
Analyze will allow loading of and access to multiple volume images, object maps, text files, and other related file structures as independent entities that can be selected and used simultaneously within a given tool or with multiple tools. Image memory management in Analyze is based on efficient memory mapping of copies of volume image files, allowing a configurable location for memory mapped files which facilitates user specification of the amount of image data that can be loaded and provides flexibility for running multiple Analyze sessions associated with different loaded volume image sets. Volume images are represented as icons in the Analyze windows. The main Analyze canvas displays iconic representations of all loaded volume images, and each individual program window shows an iconic representation of the volume image currently assigned to that program. Volume image icons can be used to "drag-and-drop" between all Analyze modules, permitting full sharing of volume images amongst several processes and allowing the output of a given process to be shared as the input to another. Available features include:
- Memory-mapped volume images for efficient image data access.
- Individually selectable icons representing data elements.
- Drag-and-drop to/from individual Analyze modules.
- Dynamic update of volume image assignment during active processing.
- Sharing of volume images between multiple processes.
- Automatic generation of globally shared output volumes
- Groups of data elements selected as appropriate for input to a given tool.
- Hideable I/O ports indicating current assignment of input and output volume images.
Multi-processing of Multiple Volumes
Analyze will permit simultaneous use of multiple imaging tools assigned to any particular volume image or groups of volume images and other data elements, i.e., multi-processing of multiple image data sets. Some features:
- Tools assigned to specific volume images via selection of volume image icons.
- Any given volume image can have multiple tools accessing and altering the image data simultaneously.
- Multiple tools executing with multiple volume images, each of which has its own set of parameters and image display canvas, facilitates direct comparison of multiple volume images (e.g., multimodal data).
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