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!GraphDraw, © Chris Johnson, 1990 These user notes refer to version 1.07 (March 1992) ********************************************************* ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THIS PROGRAM WAS COMPILED USING THE DABS PRESS ARCHIMEDES BASIC COMPILER (ABC) THE CC STYLE BORDERED ICONS ARE ACHIEVED USING THE INTERFACE MODULE BY SIMON HUNTINGDON THE FONT MENU MODULE IS BY JORIS ROLING ********************************************************* What this software does ======================= It allows the entry of the x and y values for a number of data, and the data may then be fit to a. best straight line b. best parabola c. a cubic spline curve d. a polynomial of order up to 6 A number of options for obtaining various forms of hard copy exist (saving as a sprite file, saving as a !Draw file, or printing via any standard RISC-OS printer driver). Use of !GraphDraw ================= Running the application ----------------------- This software is fully RISC-OS compatible, and is multi-tasking. It can be run from the desktop in all the standard ways. NB. The display of the graph uses outline fonts to annotate the axes etc.. It is therefore necessary for the operating system to have "seen" the !fonts directory before the program is run. Otherwise an error message may be generated. The default font used is Trinity.Medium, since this comes on the RISC-OS applications disc, and both old and new version font managers can deal with it (the new outline font manager will work with the old bitmapped fonts). Double clicking on the !GraphDraw icon in a directory viewer will install its icon on the icon bar. Clicking 'menu' on this icon will lead to a menu providing Info .... a standard information window with version number Preferences... .............. Selecting this brings up a dialogue box that allows a range of options to be changed, and these changes may be made permanent so that they become the new defaults when the application is subsequently started. The choices should be self explanatory. The font name and size can be changed. To change the font, simply click on the name field, when a menu will open with all the installed fonts shown, from which a choice can be made. Clicking on either of the size icon fields will place the caret ready to enter the new size. The type of point symbol (size and whether filled) used for the graph can be changed by clicking on the appropriate buttons. The changes will not come into operation until the OK button is pressed. If the cancel button (or the window close icon) is pressed, the dialogue box is removed from the screen, and the original defaults remain in effect. The selection can be made the new default by clicking on the save icon. (This option is NOT available when the application is running over econet). Note that the default file is saved within the !GraphDraw application, therefore, if the application is being run from a floppy disc, the filer may request the disc containing the !GraphDraw application to be inserted in the disc drive. File format ........... Graphdraw by default assumes that data files to be loaded are essentially in CSV format. It is possible to change the data field separator that graphdraw looks for in input files to TAB, space or any other ASCII character. When graphdraw saves a data file it always uses the COMMA as a separator. Quit .... the opportunity to quit the application. Clicking SELECT on the iconbar icon will open an empty edit window, into which the pairs of x,y data may be entered. This version allows a maximum of 200 data point pairs. Full scrolling and editing facilities are available during data entry, by means of the arrow keys, either alone or in conjunction with SHIFT or CTRL. Page up/down are the same as SHIFT+arrow. One useful key combination is CTRL+SHIFT+COPY, which will delete the data point at the cursor and close up the rest of the data. The function key f3 will bring up the standard save as dialogue box (as provided also as a menu choice). The application can also be started by double clicking on a data file of the correct format. In this case, besides the icon appearing on the icon bar, the edit window will be opened with the contents of the data file displayed, for further editing if necessary. A data file may also be dragged, either into the edit window, or to the iconbar icon. The data will be loaded, overwriting any data that had previously been entered. Data can also be passed in either direction between the GraphDraw edit window and a !edit window. Thus editing can be carried out using the !edit application if preferred. Data can be entered 'from scratch' using !edit, and then transferred to the !GraphDraw application (by dragging a save icon to its edit window or its iconbar icon), as long as the !GraphDraw application can recognise a valid data file. This version of !GraphDraw takes the easy way out and uses the <wimp$scrap> file passing protocol with a temporary disc file. Users of single floppy disc machines may be prompted for the disc on which the <wimp$scrap> file is to be saved (by default in the !system directory). [HINT: It is possible to redirect the <wimp$scrap> file to the RAM disc, for example. This will prevent disc swapping, and is very fast. It requires that a RAM disc is always configured.] It is intended that the next version will use direct memory transfer for these operations. As the graphdraw application will deal with files of comma separated ASCII data it is possible to set up other applications to produce data files of the correct form. The !GraphDraw edit window menu =============================== All of the data processing and data display facilities are accessed from the edit window menu. Clicking the 'menu' button in the edit window brings up the following choices. Info ---- The standard information window. Clear data ---------- This will irretrievably clear the current data prior to the entry of new data. Save file --------- Data files may be saved by dragging the save icon to a directory viewer. If the full path name is set up, then you can also click on the OK icon to save the data. The function key F3 can be used as a short cut for this option (unless the graph window is open, when F3 will bring up the "save drawfile" dialogue box). It is also possible to drag the save icon to a !Edit window, or to the !Edit icon on the iconbar. The data is then transferred into !Edit. Plot points ----------- This will simply plot a scaled graph of the data. Additional sub-menu choices allow you to plot the data as is, as semi-log x, semi-log y or as a log-log plot. Join points ----------- This plots the points and joins each point to the next with a straight line. The log plotting options are available as above. Best line --------- This will carry out a standard linear regression by the least squares method to calculate the best fit straight line through the data. A window will open displaying the slope, intercept on y axis, correlation coefficient and the standard errors of the slope and intercept. Clicking 'menu' in this window allows the following choices. Graph ----- This will display a graph of the data points with the calculated best line superimposed. Clicking 'menu' in the graph window leads to a further set of options (see below under cubic spline). Print data ---------- This will send the results of the calculation to any printer connected to the computer. The individual errors calculated for each data point are also printed. Parabola -------- This will carry out a least squares fit of the data to the equation of a parabola y = u + vX + wX^2. This is a useful technique for fitting data to a simple curve. A window will open showing the calculated values of the coefficients u, v and w. Clicking 'menu' in this window will bring up the same two options as described above, i.e. graph and Print data. Polynomial ---------- This will carry out a standard polynomial fit for orders 3 to 6. Some of the higher order options may be greyed out if there are not enough data points. Selecting a particular order will force the program to calculate that specific order polynomial, whereas if 'All' is selected, the program will try all possible orders (3 to 6) and report the one which gives the smallest deviation. A window will open showing the results of the calculation, and clicking 'menu' on this window leads to the same options as above. Cubic spline ------------ This option leads to a small dialogue box, which at present simply requests the 'fit factor' to be specified. This value must lie BETWEEN 0 and 1. In theory, a value of 0 will plot a straight line through the points, while a value of 1 will force the curve through every point. In practice these values cannot be used, since a divide by zero error is generated during certain matrix inversion operations. Little is lost since a value of 0.9999 or 0.0001 will give essentially the same result as 1 or 0. Curve fitting is always very subjective, and it is up to the user to decide what degree of smoothing is acceptable for any particular set of data. A value of 0.5 is an obvious starting point for any data known to have scatter or experimental error. Once <return> is pressed, the spline plot will be displayed. For this plot, it requires all the data to be sorted in order. The program automatically sorts the data in ascending order of x values before carrying out the spline routine. Note that this sorting occurs whenever any of the plotting routines are used. Transform X ----------- Allows the x data to be transformed in a number of standard ways, e.g. LOG, reciprocal. These operations are cumulative, but it is up to the user to remember the sequence of transformations. Transform Y ----------- As for transform X but on the y data. Swap X and Y ------------ Simply interchanges the x and y data pairs. Graph window menus ================== Whenever a graph is being displayed, clicking 'menu' will lead to a further range of options. Some of these are common to all the graph types, others are specific to cubic spline. Rather than repeat the same thing several times over, all the common options are dealt with here. The common options ------------------ Screensave ---------- This saves either the graph window or the whole screen as a sprite, which can then be loaded into !Paint, or !Draw for example. The screen can be printed from either of these utilities using the RISC-OS printer drivers. There is no choice in filename - it saves in the current directory using grafwinN, where N is a decimal number which increments with each save. It defaults to 1 each time the program is run, thus any existing files from a previous session will be overwritten if there are any in the current directory Legend ------ This opens a window which allows you to enter text to label the graph axes, and a title string for the graph. Clicking on display will place the labels on the graph, while delete will remove labels from the graph (the text remains in memory and can be reinstated by reselecting label and clicking on display). Simply closing the menu will leave the state of the labels as they were. The labels are dragable icons and can thus be dragged to anywhere on the graph if you dont like the default positions. The same labels will appear on any graph, with the previous position being remembered. The y-axis label may be plotted either horizontally or vertically, reading downwards. The latter is something I am not too sure about as far as the aesthetics of display are concerned. I have not yet worked included routines to rotate outline font text through 90 degrees so that it reads up the axis! [HINT: If you have FontFX, then you can use this to convert the outline font to draw files that can be rotated. Save the graph as a draw file, and then import the y-axis legend from FontFX. Another alternative is !DrawPlus - Use a horizontal label, and then convert to a path once in Drawplus and rotate 90 degrees.] If data is saved after legends have been entered, then the text is also saved, and is reloaded when the data is reloaded. Layout ------ This leads to a dialogue window in which various aspects of the way the graph is laid out may be changed, e.g. whether the axis pips are inside, outside or straddle the axis lines, the size of the pips, whether the graph is boxed in, and the type of symbol used for the data points. It is now possible to over-ride certain of the automatic plotting features (e.g. the axis range). These aspects are under continuous development, and will be enhanced in future releases. Make Drawfile ------------- A standard 'save as' dialogue box will be opened. The file icon may be dragged to a directory viewer, or if the full filename path is set up it is possible to click on OK. The file saved is a Drawfile of the graph being displayed. This file can then be loaded into !Draw for further enhancement. It is also permissible to drag the file icon into a !draw window to add the graph to an existing draw document, or drag the icon to the !draw icon on the iconbar, when a new draw window will be opened. These latter operations make use of the wimp$scrap protocol in the present version - direct memory to memory transfer is to come! The production of !Draw format files means that the graphs can be loaded into !Draw for enhancement, and can also be loaded into the various DTP packages now available (it certainly works for Acorn DTP and Beebug's Ovation packages). When it is first loaded into !draw, the whole graph appears as one object, and may be scaled, moved, etc. as a whole. The line thickness may be changed, etc. The objects making up the graph may be ungrouped in the normal way. This allows adjustment of individual parts of the graph, or annotation. It needs care when dealing with the individual parts of the graph, otherwise you may inadvertantly move parts of the axis for example, or even the graph itself, and have great trouble getting it back to the correct place. If you are familiar with using !draw, then it should be easy to play around with the draw files output by !graphdraw. If the graphdraw edit window has input focus, then the function key F3 may be used as a short cut for this option. Make plotfile ------------- This will output a data file of the points AND the current fitted line in a form suitable for loading into the MultiPlot application. (If only the points have been plotted, then only the points will appear in the multiplot file). This has the same look and feel of graphdraw, but allows the combining of up to 6 sets of line and point data onto the set of axes. Multiplot deals only with the graphical display, it has no data entry or processing facilities. It will accept plotfiles from a number of applications besides graphdraw. Contact the author for information. Print Graph ----------- Choosing this option gives a printout of the complete graph via whichever printer driver application is installed. A printer driver must be installed, otherwise !Graphdraw will complain. This allows a much higher quality hard copy to be obtained compared to a simple screen dump, up to the best available resolution of the printer used. The "Print" key may be used as a short cut if the edit window has input focus. Cubic Spline option only ------------------------ Interpolate ----------- This option is available ONLY from the cubic spline graph, and allows the interpolation of single values, or the dumping of a range of values to the printer. Note that it is not possible to extrapolate the spline curve beyond either of the end points. ************************************************************* For anyone who registers, and is interested, I also have an application very similar in format and operation to !GraphDraw, but which does a parameterised least squares fit of the data to any function which can be entered in BASIC format. It makes use of BASIC's EVAL function to do all the hard work. The function can contain up to TEN parameters. This allows you to fit data to logarithmic, exponential, or trigonometric functions. All graph plotting, printing and draw file production uses the same routines as !Graphdraw. However, as it contains the EVAL function it cannot be compiled, and so runs a little slower. ************************************************************* The software referred to in these notes is NOT placed into the public domain, but remains the copyright of the author, Chris Johnson. It is released for distribution by Norwich Computer Services under their Shareware/Careware scheme only, and should not be posted on bulletin boards or circulated on any public domain software discs, except by prior and express agreement with the author, or with Norwich Computer Services. Anyone obtaining this software by any means other than by direct purchase from Norwich Computer Services, or from the author, and making use of the software other than for trial purposes, is requested to register with the author by sending £3 (most of which will find its way to an approved charity), or to send a donation to charity directly to NCS. All users registering directly with the author will be informed from time to time of any significant improvements or 'bug' fixes and will be entitled to upgraded versions of the software free of charge at any time by sending a blank disc. The software is supplied as is, and no warranty, either express or implied, is given as to the suitability of the software for any purpose. Notwithstanding the above, the author would, of course, be interested in hearing of any 'bugs' or any other unexpected features, and will endeavour to correct any such 'bugs' so reported in any future issues of this software. Suggestions for improved features are also most welcome. Implementation of suggestions depends of course on practicability and more importantly, the authors spare time (I do have a full time job!). If you have any comments on this program, or would like to suggest ways in which it could be improved then the author can be contacted directly. Chris Johnson 7 Lovedale Grove Balerno Edinburgh EH14 7DR If you have access to the JANET e-mail system then you can try checaj@uk.ac.hw.clust If you wish to enter into the 'shareware' concept in the full sense then registrations (>=£3) will be gratefully received by the author. If, in any communication, you make specific reference to the program code, then please (a) quote the version number and date (b) refer only to the program as issued. (c) supply as many details as possible about the problem, and indicate the hardware configuration of the machine being used. PLEASE SEND A STAMPED AND SELF ADDRESSED ENVELOPE IF YOU REQUIRE A REPLY. I hope you find the program of some use. CafJ 10/03/1992 Note: If you are using an A5000, you will find some of the writable icons look a little odd. This appears to be an interaction between RISC-OS 3 and the version of the Interface module that I use. If you have this problem then I can supply a version with slightly modified templates with standard writable icons to remove the odd bordering effect.