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

#
Chapter 2: Getting Started

This chapter assumes that you have installed HDFView and, along 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 Viewing HDF Metadata
- 2.6 Command-line options

## 2.1 The Main Window

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

The main window consists of five components: Menu bar, Tool bar, File bar, Tree panel, Metadata Panel, Info panel.

The main window with a file

- Menu bar
  The Menu bar is where you choose menu commands: “File”, “Window”, “Tools”, and “Help”.
- Tool bar
  The Tool bar is located under the menu bar and displays buttons with icons that are shortcuts for commonly performed tasks, such as opening and closing a file, zooming in or out of an image, or flipping forward and backward through data pages.
- File bar
  The File bar consists of a Recent Files button which allows you to select among a list of files that you have recently opened. In addition to this is a File/URL text field in which you enter information that leads or points to a file that you want to open. Valid file names include an absolute file name, a path name, and a URL to a remote file, such as /samples/hdf5_test.h5.
  Using a path name and selecting multiple files will open all the selected files.
  Valid remote file prefix:
  - “http://”
  - “https://”
  - “ftp://”
- Tree panel
  The Tree panel is the left panel in the HDFView window. It displays the group structure of an HDF file as a tree of “folders.” Other objects, such as datasets and images, are displayed as leaf objects in the tree.
- Metadata panel
  The metadata panel is the right panel in the HDFView window where the metadata content of objects are displayed in a tabbed view. The “Object Attribute Info” tab displays a list of attributes attached to the selected object. The attribute name, type, size and a short sample of data is displayed. Double-clicking on an attribute line will open a Data window for the selected attribute. There is an “Add Attribute” button to create a new attribute attached to the currently selected object in the treeview. And a “Delete Attribute” button to remove the selected attribute.
  The “General Object Info” tab displays various object information such as names of objects, member names and types, or paths, type and version bounds for file types.
- Info panel
  The Info panel is the bottom panel that spans the width of the HDFView window. It displays status information. A status message includes file or data information, warning or error messages and the status of data processing

## Menu bar

The Menu bar is at the top of the HDFView window. You can select a menu command from menu items or press key combinations from the keyboard to invoke the menu item's action without navigating through the menu hierarchy.

File menu
The File menu contains commands to open and close files, create and save files, and exit HDFView.

File menu

Window menu
The Window menu displays a list of currently open data windows along with the close, tile, and cascade window commands. You can bring a data window to the front by choosing the data name from the Window menu. The “Cascade” and “Tile” commands cascade or tile all open windows. The “Close” command closes the active data window. The “Close All” command closes all open windows. All open data windows are listed at the bottom of the Window menu. Select one of the items on the list to bring that window to the front.

Window menu

Tools menu
The Tools menu contains a list of commands to launch tools such as image conversion and user options. The “User Options” command launches a dialog box that allows you to change user preferences: the path of the User's Guide, font size, delimiter and more. For more information, see User Options.

Tools menu

Help menu
The Help menu displays the User's Guide, the version of the HDF4, HDF5 and Java libraries, currently supported file formats and the About box.

Help menu

## 2.2 Opening a File

Select the “Open” command from the file menu or click the “Open” icon in the tool bar to invoke the local file manager, and select a file to open from the local file manager. Selecting “Open As Read-Only” opens a file with read-only permission, which means that editing functions are disabled and changes are not allowed. Selecting “Open As Read/Write” opens a file with read and write permission, hdf5 will modify the file even if no changes are saved.
Note that HDFView defaults to opening a file as read-only unless the default is changed in the “User Options/General Settings” Default File Access Mode section (see File Access).
By default, HDFView will only show files that have a file extension matching those specified in the “User Options/HDF Settings” File Extension list (see File Extensions), however, the user can click on the drop-down box in the open file dialog box and select "All Files" in order to show all files if needed.

Local file manager

## 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 Documentation and HDF4 Documentation.

The structure of the file is displayed in the Tree panel, which is the left panel in the HDFView window. Data objects are represented as icons, and groups are represented by folders. An HDF file may contain groups, datasets (arrays), committed 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 (by double clicking the object or by right clicking the object and selecting "Open" or "Open As" from the popup menu), the data is displayed appropriately in a window (usually a table or spreadsheet type.).

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

Tree view

You can also search for data objects within a file by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Find" from the Context menu. Type in the name of a data object to look for and HDFView will highlight the first occurrence of the object within the file. The wildcard '*', which specifies that any number of characters can come after the text before the '*' character, can be used to broaden your search. As an example, searching for 'dataset*' will find any objects whose name is a variation on 'dataset', i.e. 'dataset', 'dataset_int', 'dataset75', etc.

## 2.4 Viewing Status Information

Short status information and feedback messages are displayed in the information panel. Such information includes error messages and feedback from user's actions.

## 2.5 Viewing HDF Metadata

To see the metadata of a data object, left-click the data object. Then, choose the “Object Attribute Info” tab to display a list of attributes attached to the selected object. The “General Object Info” tab displays various object information such as names of objects, member names and types, or paths, type and version bounds for file types.

To view a user block in text, left-click the file node (the root group) and select the “General Object Info” tab. Click the “Show User Block” button to show the user block information in text.

User block in text

## 2.6 Command-line Options

The following command line options are available to HDFView:
`-root path`
specify the working directory to start HDFView in
`-g, -geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF`
specify the dimensions and location of the HDFView window
`-java.version`
display java version information
`<filename>`
open the specified file/s upon start

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