Using The ISAP GUI

General Layout:

The GUI (Graphical User Interface) is a large interactive window consisting of a series of buttons, placed at the top of the GUI and along the lefthand side. The main plot window appears in the middle and there is a message window at the bottom. The sizes of all ISAP windows can be made fit to the user's screen by resizing them.

To save space many of the buttons on the GUI are "pull-down" menus this means that when you click on them using the left mouse button you will reveal a set of additional buttons. Some of the applications e.g Average generate a secondary plot window - the use of these windows is given with the description of the applications.

Note some of the button labels are in black and some are in grey. A grey button means that the button cannot be used at present e.g "Replot Max" - you have not yet plotted any data so you cannot rescale and replot it! However as soon as you do plot some data the button changes colour and becomes black.
The GUI is simple to use and it is driven by the use of a mouse.

• Buttons:to activate just click on the button using the left mouse button.
• Zooming: if you hold down the left mouse button and draw a box around some data i.e "Click and Drag" then the selected data will be replotted.
• Selecting Data: if you hold down the right mouse button and draw a box around some data i.e "click and Drag" then a pop-up menu will appear that will allow you choose an application to be applied to the data you have selected. For example averaging the data.

Working Your way through the buttons (Assume you want to average the selected input data) :
 
• Decide what you want to do with BAD DATA. The default is to ignore it while reading. If you want to keep it then click on BAD DATA REMOVAL button and change the default.

• Click on  READ DATA .
• Your first data set should now be loaded into the GUI. and the three labels at the top left corner should now be black and filled in,

Prime: L05100628.FITS - tells you the file name of your primary data set
AOT:LO2 - tells you the AOT type in this case the data file is an LWS line mode observation.
OBJ:DR21 - the name of the object
• Header - if you click on this button the FITS header will be displayed in a pop-up window. When you have finished reading it then click on the QUIT button at the top of the display window.
• The button Special Fns...  is also black now. It is a pull down menu  giving you options to pre process data before using it  for application.
• Now select some data to plot using DATA TAG BUTTONS and click on PLOT
• click on the SET PLOT STYLE button to change the way the data is displayed. For example one scan may be drifting more than the rest - so select the colour preference to be SCANS. Note, that plotting of large data sets in plot modes other than the default  dot cloud  mode can take a long time.
• If you want to interrupt a plotting process, and if you are running UNIX, type ``Ctrl-c''in the command line of your IDL window, and then type ``return''. You should now be able to reset the plot style and to plot again.
• Plot a single scan and a few detectors. Now select some BUT not all of the data currently displayed with the right mouse button. Click on average in the pop-up applications window. Now read the description of how to use AVERAGE . Do a simple average including average across detectors - a simple unweighted mean will be suitable for this example. Click on exit from the average window to save your result.
• You will notice that on returning from average you have lost a lot of the data tags - the GUI does not build any DATA TAG buttons . If you click on plot your average data appears merged with the rest of your original data - it is a mess! This demonstrates a key aspect of how the GUI handles data...
• Merging and loss of tags: Whenever you select some data using the right mouse click and drag this data is extracted as a subset A from your current working data set (prime aar). The remaining data in your current working data set forms subset B. After operating on A e.g. average or rebin, the new resulting A is merged back with B. If you ONLY want to look at A then you have to first discard the remaining data B by opting for MAKEAAR . Now A is the whole AAR and you can select it and average etc. If at a later time you wish to create a full spectrum from various mini-spectra you simply use MERGE WITH PRIMARY
• Your results are NOT automatically saved Data is loaded from disk using the READ DATA Button and loaded into memory in IDL. At any given time the GUI operates only on the current PRIME AAR i.e the working data set. This data set can be selected from Stored Data Sets ... or read directly from disk when it is automatically made prime. The working data set is also known as the PRIME AAR. Any result you wish to keep has to be explicitly written to disk.

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