Summary of Changes in Data Explorer Version 4.2.0

Partial Table-of-Contents

The following are changes to OpenDX since the last commercial release of Data Explorer version 3.1.4b.

User Interface

New Type Ahead In Tools List

If you use the (All) category quite frequently, it is fairly slow to scroll through the entire list of available tools. To speed up access, place the mouse over the tools list and begin typing the name of the tool. As characters are typed, modules will be selected. Other keys other than alpha that affect this are: Up and Down arrows move the selection up or down and the space bar deselects the current selected tool.

New Mode Option in Image Window

A new Mode menu option allows direct access to the image manipulation routines without having to remember the shortcut keys or open the View Control dialog. It also adds some increased functionality internally to the code by removing the dependency on X based accelerators in the Picture widget and using the standard Motif accelerators.

Accelerator Keys Now Work in More Windows

This version adds functionality to allow accelerators to be mapped onto other windows. The Image Window accelerators now work in:

• View Control Dialog (always has, but is now handled the same as the others)
• AutoAxes Dialog (can now click apply and then use accelerators to execute--handy)
• Rendering Options Dialog (very nice to click hardware then execute once)
• Throttle Dialog (to be consistent)

All the accelerators such as Save, Print, Close all work in the sub-panels giving a more consistent feel to the ImageWindow.

To only are the Image Window accelerators mapped to its dialogs, but also the following VPE accelerators are active in configuration dialogs

• save program accelerator
• all the execute menu accelerators
• add and remove input tabs

New Accelerator Keys

A new set of accelerators key mappings has been added to follow the style of Windows, MacOS, and KDE. For example, paste is Ctrl-v instead Shift-Insert. In order to use the new keymap, OpenDX must have this enabled during compilation as a configure flag.

New Web Browser Help Functionality

The html documentation can now be accessed within OpenDX. By setting an environment variable, DX will override its older built-in help and launch a browser to display the html help. In the UN*X environment set the environment variable DX_WEB_BROWSER to your web browser or a url handler script such as the one included in the dx/bin directory. Within Windows or MacOS X just set this environment variable and the system default browser will launch. Due to bugs in Exceed XDK and MacOS X (Bug ID#2879972, #1951588) there may be some annoyances using this feature.