Additional ACON GUI Functionality

Application Menu

The menu bar contains 13 items. The image below shows Acon GUI Menu bar when an Editor window is highlighted. When the Graphics window has focus, the Format and Insert menu options are replaced with Draw and Object menu options.

The File menu allows the user to open, save, close, print...a file

The Edit menu has familiar text editing items such as Select, Cut, Copy, Paste, Find, Replace, etc. It also has extended Find functionalities and Object items.

The View menu allows the user to show/hide the editor ruler, status bar and additional toolbars. It also has a Preferences option that allows the user to set Text, Object, and Browser settings.

The Use menu allows the user to execute selected text or scripts file, and select the graphical output device. However, selecting Illustrator, PNG, JPEG or PDF graphical output device through the menu does not present the user with a mechanism to input additonal input parameters for the command such as size.

The Data menu has the following menu options: Data Presentation, Data Input, Data Modification, Data Contouring, Data Volume and Data Polygons. The menu items within each, correspond to commands. See the command's documentation for details of its use.

The Plot menu contains the following menu options: Axes, Contours, Data sets, Overlays, Symbols, Text, Graph and Dialogs. The menu items within each option, correspond to commands. Plot menu items: Draw Line and Plot Status also correspond to commands. See the command's documentation for details of its use.

The Graphics menu contains the following menu options: Line, Character, Marker, Colours and Movie. The menu items within each option, correspond to commands. The Graphics menu item Locator, displays a dialog box with the same functionality as the text Locator command. However, the Locator dialog box addtionally allows continuous sampling of points which the text Locator command doesn't. See the command's documentation for details of its use.

The Models menu has one item Qeos, which corresponds to the Qeos command. The dialog box that it displays is shown below.

The Utilities menu contains the following menu items: Save Data, List Functions, List Variables, Print Width, Print Precision and Break Point Editor which correspond to commands, and Convert Files menu option. The Convert Files items allow the user to convert different file formats such as XYP to Overlays, Commas to Tabs, Dos to Mac, etc.

TheBreak Point Editor item displays the following dialog window:

The Break Point Editor is a mini-debugger that allows the user to set break points within a user defined function that has been loaded into memory. Output displays include list of break points, list of functions, list of local variables, call stack, code and variable.
Click the function name in the list of functions to display its code. Double click a line in the function code to set a break point on that line. Click the variable name in the list of variables to display its value.

The Window menu allows the user to select and arrange the Editor and Graphics windows. Additionally, when an editor window has focus, the New Window menu item will create a new editor window.

The Format menu allows the user to select formatting items such as font, bullet style, paragraph settings, tabs, keyword colouring, auto indenting and Convert CR/LF.

The Insert menu allows the user to insert the date, or an object. The Object menu item displays the following dialog box and allows the user to select from several Object types , or to create a new one from an existing file:

The Draw menu allows the user to draw shapes and lines to the Graphics window using a mouse. It also allows you to insert text objects directly to the Graphics window as well.

The Object menu allows the user to move an object in the Graphics window to the front or behind, relative to the other objects.

The Help menu has the following items: Help Topics, Display Object and About Acon.

Executing commands and ACON scripts
When the ACON application is launched, there are 3 child windows by default: Editor 1, Editor 2 and Graph1. Generally the user will type command lines in Editor 1, with any resulting text output to Editor 2. Graph1 is considered as Screen Output and is the default graphics device.
To execute one command line, place the cursor at the end of the line and press CTRL + ENTER.
To execute one or more command lines select/highlight the lines, and press CTRL + U or select Use|Selected Text from the Menu Bar.
To execute an existing script file select Use|Script File from the menu. An Open File Dialog Box is displayed. Browse to the desired script file and click the OPEN button to execute.
To display an existing script file in its own editor window, selecting File|Open from the Menu Bar.

Drawing model
The GUI version has a different drawing model from most programs. The user has to open an output device before drawing.
The graphics window can't be saved as (converted to) other output formats (except metafile)

Copy as Metafile
When Edit|Copy As Metafile is selected from the application menu bar, the graphics in the Graphics window is copied to the clipboard as a WMF object. This menu option is enabled when the graphics window in Acon has focus.

Save as Metafile
When File|Save As Metafile is selected from the application menu bar, a File Save As dialog box is displayed to allow the user to name and save the graphics in the Graphics window as a WMF file. This menu option is enabled when the graphics window in Acon has focus.

Right click on commands:
When used on a command, this event opens this command documentation from the user guide in a browser window.

Right click on predefined scripts (pre-defined functions)
When used on user defined functions which have been loaded into memory, this event opens the script in an editor window.

Right click on variables
When used on variables, this event brings a dialog window displaying the data that has been read into memory in a spreadsheet style editor window to permit examination of the individual observations. The user may edit the data point values, but may not delete or add data point records.