The QtiPlot Handbook
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# Preferences Dialog

The preference dialog is used to customize the default behavior of QtiPlot. There are six pages of options which are selected using one of icons from the column on the left hand side of the dialog. The text box at the top of the dialog shows the name of the selected page. No matter which page is selected, there are always 4 buttons along the bottom edge of the dialog: Default Options, Apply, OK, and Cancel. Changes must be confirmed using either the Apply or OK buttons. The OK button additionally closes the dialog. Upon confirmation, changes are saved and stored immediately. The Cancel button will not undo changes which have already been confirmed but provides a means of exiting the dialog without confirming any changes that are pending. Finally, the Default Options button will restore the values of all the items on the page/tab which is currently displayed to the program defaults. This is useful when you've lost track of what you may have changed.

## General Preferences

Selecting the General icon displays the General options page. The controls that control the general options are grouped onto a set of 6 tabs. Each tab references a set of related options.

Figure 5-55. The preferences dialog: general parameters for the application.

### Application Tab

Controls on the Application tab are used to set application wide defaults.

The Language combo-box lists the translations available in QtiPlot. Select a language from this list. Control names, program labels, etc., will be displayed in this language. All available translations can be downloaded from the following address: http://soft.proindependent.com/translations.html. In order to be loaded by the application, translations must be placed in the folder specified in the File Locations tab. By default, the folder is named translations and is located in the same folder as the QtiPlot executable. You can specify a different folder in the File Locations tab, if you wish.

The Style combo-box defines the style used by QtiPlot for the window decorations. These include stylistic aspects of buttons, dialog boxes, window borders and titles, etc. Available styles are those currently available in the Qt library.

The Font chooser selects the font used in the GUI (menus, dialogs, etc). It doesn't apply to plots.

The Default Scripting Language combo-box is used to set the scripting language. muParser is the default. Python will also be available if Python support has been compiled into QtiPlot.

The Matrix Undo Stack Size is the number of operations that can be undone/redone when working on a matrix. By default it is set to ten operations. A high value for this parameter can be very costly in terms of memory consumption, especially for large matrices.

The Endline character combo-box defines the end of line convention used by QtiPlot for copy/paste operations and for exporting matrices/tables to ASCII files. The end of line convention can be set to any one of the following: Line Feed (LF), Carriage Return + Line Feed (CRLF) or Carriage Return (CR) only.

The Start New Project combo-box is used to select what type of child window, if any, is created when a new project is started. The default is for new projects to contain an empty Table window.

The Save Every check box is used to turn the auto-save feature on(checked) or off(unchecked). The associated textbox/spin button is used to set the autosave interval. The interval is in minutes. The textbox only accepts positive integer numeric input. All other input is ignored.

The Backup project before saving option is used to create a backup copy of the current project before saving a changed project file. This option is enabled when checked.

When checked, the Check for new versions at startup option will look for program updates on the internet each time the program is started. The default is disabled.

When checked, the Enable Autocompletion option enables the autocompletion feature of QtiPlot. Starting with version 0.9.6, autocompletion is enabled by default in all QtiPlot editors (Notes, Script Windows, and values dialogs for matrices and tables). The autocompletion mechanism is based on a list of words provided by the qti_wordlist.txt file. This file, which is shipped with the source archive, must be placed in the same folder as the Python configuration files (see File Locations, below), and is automatically loaded by QtiPlot on start-up. You can edit this file and add your own key words, one word per line. Completion suggestions are automatically popped-up for words that have more than two characters, but you can trigger autocompletion at any time using the shortcut Ctrl+U. Autocompletion can be disabled by unchecking the Enable autocompletion option.

When checked, the Open last project at startup option enables the feature that reloads the last active project when QtiPlot is restarted. The default is enabled.

### Confirmations Tab

The General Preferences: Confirmations tab contains a set of 8 check boxes that enable/disable various warning prompts. The first six are warnings given when deleting project windows (Folders, Tables, Matrices, 2D Plots, 3D Plots, and Notes). The remaining 2 are warnings given when 1) renaming or appending windows with names that are already used in the current project, and, 2) when attempting to overwrite an existing file. All warnings are enabled by default.

### Colors Tab

In this tab, you can change the default color for the QtiPlot workspace, the panel background color and the panel text color. Panels refer specifically to the Log Window and the Project explorer.

### Numeric Format Tab

The Numeric Format tab allows customizing several aspects of numeric formatting used by QtiPlot. The Number of Decimal Digits specifies the default precision used for any calculations applied to your data in Tables and Matrices. The Decimal Separators fields allow selection of the characters used as the decimal point and the thousands separator. By default, QtiPlot uses the locale settings detected on your system. Separate fields are provided for data in tables/matrices and data copied to the clipboard. The thousands separator can be eliminated completely from tables and matrices by checking the Omit Thousands Separator option. QtiPlot will convert all the existing data in your project to the new settings when you click the Apply button.

### File Locations Tab

The File Locations tab allows you to define custom locations for the folders containing the translation files, the manual files and the Python configuration files (qtiplotrc.py and qtiUtil.py) if QtiPlot was built with Python scripting support. Default folder entries are also provided for the LaTex Compiler and for scripts that are to be loaded at program startup. The LaTex Compiler folder only has meaning if QtiPlot was compiled with LaTex support.

Figure 5-56.

### Internet Connections Tab

Settings on the Internet Connection tab are only needed if you connect to the internet via a proxy server. If you don't now how to set these options, contact your Network Administrator or other suitably knowledgeable person.

Figure 5-57.

## Tables Preferences

Selecting the Tables icon opens the second page of the preferences dialog which allows customizing default aspects of tables: background, text colors, and fonts for tables and labels. By checking the Display Comments in Header option, column comments will also be displayed in the table header, below the column names. If the Automatically Recalculate Column Values option is checked, all modifications in the values of a column trigger a recalculation of all columns with formulas depending on the modified column.

Figure 5-58. The preferences dialog: table options.

## 2D Plot Preferences

Selecting the 2D Plots Icon opens the third page of the preferences dialog. This set of options is used to customize default aspects of 2D plots.

### Options Tab

The Options tab is used to modify some general options. Most of the changes made to these options will be applied only to newly created plots. Changing a few of these options, such as plot axis Autoscaling, Antialiasing of curves and the behavior on resize events will affect extant plots.

Figure 5-59. The preferences dialog: 2D plot options.

### Curves Tab

The Curves tab contains a large number of controls that define the default style used when creating a new plot. The operation of these controls should be self evident.

### Axes Tab

The Axes tab allows specification of which plot axes will be displayed in a new layer and the dominant stylistic aspects of the axes.

### Ticks Tab

The Ticks tab defines the default style for axis ticks drawn on newly created plots.

### Grid Tab

The Grid tab defines the default aspect of plot layer grids.

### Geometry Tab

The Geometry tab defines the default size for the drawing area of a plot layer When the Keep aspect ratio option is checked, changing either the width or height will change proportionally change the other.

### Speed Tab

The Speed tab lets the user enable/disable antialiasing when drawing/redrawing 2D plots. Antialiasing is a major source of slow-down when rendering 2D plots. Unchecking the Antialiasing checkbox disables antialiasing for all curves, which probably will only be needed in extreme circumstances. Checking the Disable for curves with more than checkbox will disable antialiasing only for curves having data sets larger than the threshold set with the textbox to the right of the Disable for curves with more than checkbox. Disabling this option is probably not a good idea. The default is for both of these options to be enabled, with a threshold of 1000 data points. Proper setting of these options is essential to keeping the application responsive.

### Fonts Tab

The Fonts tab defines the default fonts used when creating new plots. Options are provided for the plot Title, plot Legend, Axes Labels, and Axes Numbers.

### Print Tab

The Print tab allows you to control a few default options that are used when printing 2D plots. If you want layers to be printed with their original dimensions, you must be sure to uncheck the Scale layers to paper size option. Checking the Print Cropmarks option ensures that some visible marks will be drawn around the borders of the plot.

## 3D Plot Preferences

Selecting the 3D Plots Icon opens the fourth page of the preferences dialog. This set of options is used to customize default aspects of three dimensional plots. Most of the options are self-explanatory. However, the Resolution option needs clarification. This option is more or less akin to a speed drawing mode, which can be very useful when working with large data sets. Larger values of the Resolution option result in fewer data points being drawn on 3D plots, and therefore a higher drawing speed. When Resolution is set to 1, all data points are drawn.

Figure 5-60. The preferences dialog: 3D plot options.

## Notes Preferences

Selecting the Notes Icon opens the fifth page of the preferences dialog. This set of options is used to customize some of the default characteristics of the text editors, such as the length of the TAB character and the font. The user can also specify whether or not line numbers should be displayed. Displaying the line numbers can be particularly helpful when debugging Python scripts.

Figure 5-61. The preferences dialog: note options.

## Fitting Preferences

Selecting the Fitting Icon opens the sixth page of the preferences dialog. This page is used to set default fitting options. Most of the options are standard and straightforward. The Generated Fit Curve options may be confusing at first glance. While it may be typical to plot a fit curve as y=f(x) using the original X data that was used in the fitting operation, QtiPlot provides the alternative (by selecting the Uniform X Function option) of plotting the curve using a user specified number of X data points (default=100) uniformly spaced over the X range of the fit. Since linear fits are completely defined by 2 points, you can also have QtiPlot default to simply plotting linear fits using 2 data points by checking the 2 points for linear fits option.

Figure 5-62. The preferences dialog: fitting options.

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