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Catacomb

Click on the image for a live example

This is usually the window you will first see on starting Catacomb. It contains menus for loading and saving files, accessing the models the current version has pre-loaded, making new instances of top level objects and a few other functions. The display shows the current object hierarchy. Clicking on a box brings up a window to examine that part of the model, and possibly other windows to display the results of any calculations it defines.

The top row menus are the same for all windows. Under util are a few utilities that are mainly shortcuts to convenient operations. In particular, the first one, model browser lets you retrieve this window from any Catacomb window in case you lose it.

The ? button opens the help browser, with any available information about the current window or its contents, and the X button shuts the window in case the normal window manager operation doesn't work.

The second row of menus is specific to the object browser. The file menu contains four different saving options: save just saves the structure and parameters of the current model. save with config also records the current layout of windows on the screen. On restoring a file saved this way Catacomb will try to recreate the screen configuration. save and write applet html saves the structure and parameters to the chosen file but also writes html files to reload the model and any applets it includes from a web browser. If the model includes a recorded session, that is also written. The session file name is derived from the model name by appending sess before the extension. The save as java option is experimental, and writes models as as static array declarations in Java source code. The code has to be compiled before it can be reloaded but has the advantage that the resulting class file can be packaged up with Catacomb for distribution as a single archive file. For example, the built in examples are packaged this way.

The models menu allows access to any pre-loaded models packaged with Catacomb. The objects menu contains a list of all the top-level objects currently available. Selecting one of them makes a new instance of that object which appears in the model browser.

The display shows the structure of the current model with a colored box for each object and possibly each field. There is always a CcmbSystem object present, which contains a variety of standard components which may be used with any mode. To change the detail of the display, click the right button on a box to bring up a menu. The hide option prevents any of the descendents of an object being shown. show children shows lists, pointers and objects, and show fields shows all the public fields of an object. You can pan and zoom the display but unlike other displays, it acts like a fish-eye lens: things bunch up at the edges but never actually get lost.

All the boxes are color-coded according to type: objects are orange, fields are grey, and lists are green. There are also blue, pink and purple for objects defining calculations, pointers which select elements of a list defined elsewhere, and arbitrary pointers. See the main Catacomb page for details of catacomb's data structure.

The menu that appears on clicking the right mouse button on a box contains a copy option. This is for connecting objects between different components as used for example by the DiffMeasureEditor.