Chapter 2. The Rocs User Interface

Main Elements of the User Interface

The user interface is divided into several logical parts as presented at the screenshot below.

GUI elements of the Rocs interface.
Graph Editor

The editor provides a whiteboard at that nodes and edges can be placed. Double-clicking at any of its elements opens a corresponding property menu. You can use the tools from the Side Bar Tabs to create and modify graphs.

Available tools:

  • Top left in the box, your found the following action icons. Clicking at an action means that your mouse pointer applies this action at the graph editor whiteboard:

    • Select and Move: To select elements, either click at unused space at the whiteboard, keep the mouse pressed and draw a rectangle that contains some data elements and/or edges to select these elements or otherwise directly click at an unselected element to select this element. If you click at a selected element or a set of selected elements, respectively, by keeping the mouse pressed and moving around you can move these elements. Moving selected elements is also possible with the arrow keys.

    • Add a Node: Click at an arbitrary position at the graph editor whiteboard to create a new data element that belongs to the currently selected data structure. By keeping the mouse pointer pressed at the button, a menu shows up at which the data type of the new created data elements can be selected (only if different data types exist).

    • Create an Edge: Click at one data element, keep the mouse pressed and draw a line to another data element to which the edge shall point. This action is only successful if the current graph allows to add this edge (e.g., in an undirected graph you are not allowed to add multiple edges between two data elements). By keeping the mouse pointer pressed at the button, a menu shows up at which the edge type of the new created edges can be selected (only if different edge types exist).

    • Delete element: Click at an element to delete it. If you delete a node, all adjacent edges are also deleted.

Side Bar

At the right, you can find the side bar that provides several tools for your workflow:

  • Element Types: This widget gives you direct access to the available edge and node types.

  • Journal: Each project has its own journal that can be used to, e.g. note tasks, results, or observations.

  • Scripting API: To get direct access to the script documentation, you can open this widget.

Script Editor

In this text editor you can write algorithms as explained in detail in Chapter 3, Scripting. You can work on several script documents simultaneously by using several tabs.

Script output:

This text area either shows debug information or the script output of your algorithm, depending on the toggled setting at the top of this widget. If the script throws an error, automatically the debug output is presented.

Controls

Here you can find the controls for executing scripts. You can execute the script that is currently open at the script editor by pressing the Run button. While the script is executed, it is possible to stop execution by pressing the Stop button.