General Settings Dialog Window

This dialog window can be used for controlling some general settings of daVinci. The first set of dialog items deals with the scrolling management. For example, after opening a survey view from a detail view with menu View/Open Survey View, daVinci will automatically scroll to a particular node in the detail view if the same node is selected in the survey view. This scrolling is animated by moving the visible area of the base window towards the selected node (the navigator and find operation use animation, too). The animation's moving speed can be set with slider Speed of Animation or turned off with check button No Animation. Further, the behaviour that selection in a survey view will automatically scroll in the detail view can be switched off with check button On Selection in Survey View. Another check button No Pixmap Caching is used to turn off the cache for already drawn parts of a graph visualization (read about drawing technology in the concept document). This should be done when you get memory problems on computers with an insufficent amount of RAM for the size of graph you intend to visualize (daVinci will crash with a X Error: BadAlloc message as soon as no more memory is available). Switching off the pixmap cache slows down the scrolling performance, but has no effect on the results a user will get.

The online help system has two options to specify the filename of the Netscape Navigator application on your computer and the location of the HTML online documentation. daVinci constructs the Netscape call from these two options when the user activates the help system, e.g. by pressing a Help button in some dialog window. The Online Documentation field is an URL, specifying a directory containing the documentation. The requested HTML page, depending on the kind of help the user wants to get, is added behind this URL. Usually, the documentation can be found in the docs directory of the daVinci package. This is the default place where daVinci looks if the Online Documentation field is empty. The Netscape Application field must specify the valid command to start Netscape Navigator 1.1 or higher on your computer. If you have problems to start the online documentation from daVinci, then check this condition by typing the content of this field in a UNIX shell to see if Netscape will be launched.

The last set of dialog items deal with the printing management which can be accessed by using the File/Print... dialog window. The Print Command is the UNIX command (probably with printer options) to print a PostScript file on your computer. Of course, the name of the PostScript file is not entered here, it is a temporary file created when the graph is actually printed. The Measures radio button specifies the measure unit (cm or inch) used to display page and graph size in the print dialog window.

The general settings dialog window can also be used mouseless with keyboard operations.

Dialog Items of the General Settings Window

• On Selection in Survey View
  Used to switch the auto-selection behaviour. If auto-selection is on and the user selects a node in a survey view, then daVinci automatically scrolls to the same node in the corresponding detail view (details about multi-view can be found in the concept document).

• Speed of Animation
  With this slider, the scrolling animation speed can be set. Animation is used for node selections in a survey view (see above), for the navigator and the find operation to move the visible part of a base window towards a particular node.

• No Animation
  Use this check button to turn off the scrolling animation. Animation is used for node selections in a survey view (see above), for the navigator and the find operation to move the visible part of a base window towards a particular node.

• No Pixmap Caching
  Select this check button to turn off the cache used for storing already drawn parts of a graph visualization. This should be done when daVinci crashes in situations where no more memory is available to draw a hugh graph (i.e. when you get error messages like X Error: BadAlloc).

• Netscape Application
  UNIX Command to start Netscape Navigator V1.1 or higher on your computer.

• Online Documentation
  Directory where the daVinci online documentation is located. This is usually the docs directory of the daVinci distribution (i.e. $DAVINCIHOME/docs, but do not type shell variables such as $DAVINCIHOME in the dialog, because Netscape does not understand this). The directory entered here is an URL, so for a daVinci documentation on the local file system, the URL has to start with 'file:/'.

• Print Command
  UNIX Command to print a PostScript file on your computer, probably with printer options, but without using a filename.

• Measures
  Use these radio buttons to switch between cm and inch measure units in the File/Print... dialog window.

• Apply
  Push button to accept the current settings of this dialog window. Without pressing Apply, modifications to these options are not considered by daVinci.

• Cancel
  Push button to close the general settings dialog without performing any action.

• Reset
  Push button to undo any modification to these options unless Apply is not pressed. So Reset goes back to the current settings.

• Help
  Push button to start the online help system with this page.