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4.4 Image processing window

Figure 4.9 show's nip's main image processing window.

Figure 4.9: nip's main image processing window
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Workspace
This area displays the objects (images, numbers and so on) which are currently loaded into nip. The workspace is divided into columns of objects which each behave rather like windows: they can be moved around, folded away, loaded, saved and deleted.

You can have many workspaces open at the same time. Switch between workspaces by clicking on the tabs along the bottom of the main window. Right-click on a tab for a useful context menu.

Current column
One column is distinguished as the current column. This is the column to which all new objects are added. Single-left-clicking on the title bar of a column makes that the current column.

File, Edit and Insert menus
These are nip's standard File, Edit and Insert menus. These are the only menus which are built into nip. All the other menus represent functions which have been defined in nip's macro language.

Use the File menu to create, load or save workspaces, to recover after crashes (load last automatically saved workspace) and to pop up the programming window (see §4.5). The Reload start stuff menu item flushes all of the things nip loaded when it started up, and reloads them again from scratch. It is handy if you've changed one of nip's system files behind it's back.

Use the Edit menu to select, group, delete and clone sets of objects. See the examples below.

Use the Insert menu to create new columns or to add images, matricies or other workspaces into your current workspace. See the examples below.

Image processing menus
These menus contain all of the image processing functions which are currently loaded into nip. They are generally grouped by category: all of the statistical operations are under the Statistics menu, for example.

If you select one of these image processing operations, nip will apply that operation to the bottom items in the current column (however many are necessary -- two items for Math=>Arithmetic=>Add, for example, many more for some other operations), or alternatively, if you have selected some objects explicitly, it will try to apply the operation to the selected objects. See §4.4.3. As you move the mouse pointer over menu items nip tries to display some helpful information about the operation, including the number and type of arguments the operation expects.

Free space
This displays the amount of disc space you have left in your temporary file area. See §[*] if you want to change the directory nip uses to store temporary files.

If you left-click on the label, it changes to display the space nip has free internally for performing calculations. You can change this limit in the Preferences workspace. Click again to switch back to disc free.

If you have objects selected, this area changes to show the names of the selected objects.

Status bar
As you move the mouse pointer about the window, this bar tries to display useful information about the thing you are pointing at. When nip is calculating, it changes to display a progress bar and a cancel button.

Error indicator
This button is usually green. If there is an error somewhere in your workspace (for example, if nip is unable to open one of the image you are working with), then it changes colour to red. If you click on the button when it is red it will jump you to the part of the workspace containing the error. See §4.4.4.



Subsections
next up previous contents
Next: 4.4.1 Columns Up: 4. Reference Previous: 4.3 File select dialogs   Contents
John Cupitt 2003-07-21