[Index] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Chapter 2: Getting Started

This chapter assumes that you have installed HDFView and, with Chapter 3, The HDF Object Model, is designed to help you get to the point where you are actually looking at HDF datasets.

2.1 The Main Window
2.2 Opening a File
2.3 Tree View of File Hierarchy
2.4 Status Information
2.5 Metadata/Attributes
2.6 Select GUI modules


2.1 The Main Window

When you first open HDFView, the HDFView window appears with an empty tree and data panel. After you open an HDF file, the structure of the file is displayed in the Tree Panel. The content of a data object is displayed in the Data panel by openning the data object.

The main window consists of five components:
Menubar
Tool bar
File bar
Tree panel
Data Panel
Info panel.


The Main Window

menubar
The menubar is where you choose menu commands.

Tool bar
The tool bar displays buttons that are shortcuts for commonly performed tasks. such as opening and closing a file; zooming in/out of an image; flipping forward and backward through data pages.

File bar
The file bar is used to enter file/file path to open. Valid file names include absolute file name, file path, and url to remote file such as,
/hdf-java-html/hdf5_test.h5

Tree panel
The tree panel displays the group structure of an HDF file as a tree of "folders". Other objects such as dataset and image are displayed as leaf object in the tree.

Data panel
The data panel is where the content of data object is displayed at. All the data windows are laid out in the data panel. You can display more one documents in the data panel.

Info panel
The Info panel is used to displays status informaton or metadata. Click tab "Log Info" or "Metadata" to status information or metadata respectively. Status message includes file or data information, warning or error message and status of data processing. Info panel is also used for quick view metadata of the selected object in the tree view when "Metadata" tab is selected.

Menubar


The menubar is at the top of the main window. You can select a menu command from menu items or press key combination from keyboard to invoke the menu item's action without navigating the menu hierarchy. For example, to exit the HDFView, you can either press "Ctrl+Q" from the keyboard or select Exit item from the File menu.

File menu File menu contains commands to open/close files, create and save files, and exit the HDFView. It also displays a list of most recent files for quick reopen.


File Menu

Tools menu
Tools menu containts a list of commands to lauch tools such as HDF4 to HDF5 conversiont, JPEG/TIFF/PNG to HDF4/5, and user options. The current version has only one item: user options. The user option command launch dialog to change user preferences: the path of the user's guide, font size, and delimiter. When you lanuch the user's guide command from the "Help" menu, the help tool opens the user's guide specified by the path of the user's guide. The font size will be used to specify the display font size of the tree view and others. The data delimiter determines the seperator used when you save data values into text files or paste data values from other application to HDFView spreadsheet.


Tools menu

Window menu
Window menu displays a list of data windows along with close, tile, and cascade window commands. You can bring a data window to front by choosing the data name from the window menu. The "Cascade" and "Tile" commands will cascade or tile current open windows. The "Close" command closes the current active data window. The "Close All" closes all the open windows. At the bottom of the windows menu is a list of current open data windows. Select one of the items in the list will bring the window to the front.


Window Menu

Help menu
Help menu displays this User's guide, the version of the HDF4 and HDF5 libraries and the About box.


Help Menu

2.2 Opening a File

You can either select the "open" command from file menu or click "open" icon in the tool bar to invoke the local file manager and select a file to open from the local file manager. "Open Read-only" opens file with read only permission and editing functions are disabled. Changes are not allowed when a file is open with read only.


Local file manager (Windows)

2.3 Tree View of File Hierarchy

An HDF file contains one or more objects, optionally grouped in a hierarchy. For general information about the structure and contents of HDF files, see the HDF documentation at /HDF5/doc/ and /doc.html.

The structure of the file is displayed in the Tree panel on the left. Data objects are represented as icons, groups are represented by folders. An HDF file may contain groups, dataset (arrays), named datatypes and links.

The hierarchy of the file can be navigated by selecting folders to "open" a group, which displays the objects contained by the group. When an object is selected, the data is displayed appropriately in the data panel on the right.

You can open multiple files at one time. Files are listed as root objects in the tree. The following figure illustrates that an HDF4 file, annras.hdf, and an HDF5 file, hdf5_test.h5, are currently open.


Tree view

2.4 Status Information

Short status information and feedback messages are displayed in the Status Bar. The information and message show the result of user actions.

2.5 HDF Metadata

To see the metadata of a data object, you click the right button of the mouse on the data object. The metadata dialog pops up with metadata information such as name, type, attributes, data type, data space, and members.


General Properties of Dataset

To view user block in text, right-click the file node (the root group) to popup the metadata dialog. Click the "User Block" tab in the metadata dialog to show the user block information in text.


General Properties of Dataset

2.6 Select GUI modules

HDFView displays data with default GUI module when openning dataset by default. You can set default modules from "Tools" --> "User Options" --> "Default Module". Change of default TreeView will take effect only after you restart the HDFView.


Set Default Modules

By default, data or attribute is displayed with default modules. You can also select specific module for display. To select a module, use "Open As" option from the popup menu to choose opotional TableView or ImageView. Use "Show Property As" to choose a MetadataView.


Select an ImageView