RTG: Real Time Graphing Utility

Synopsis

  rtg [ -f filename ]
       -f  Read in the specified configuration file.

FUNCTION

Where to get rtg

Once your node is configured, you can obtain the latest release of rtg by running osupdate. (If your node is configured to run windows off of the server, you will always have the latest release!)

If your system adminstrators have done their job, you should be able to bring up rtg using the Programs menu item.

Basics

The basic objects of rtg are windows, channels, axes and graphs. As a rule, you can create, delete or edit the properties of any of these objects. If you bring up the pane menu (press "menu" with the cursor in the pane, remember?) you will see items for Graph, Channel and Window. (For now, you access the axes through the graph properties.) Each of these items has a submenu containing Properties, Create, amd Delete. Some of the selections will be dim, meaning you cannot select them, usually for obvious reasons; you can't delete a graph if there are no graphs to delete, for example.

Windows

Select "Window Create" from the pane menu. Another window will appear titled "RTG2". If you select "Window Delete", the window will disappear, along with any graphs defined in it. If you delete the last window, rtg will terminate. You can reposition a window on the screen by pressing the select button anywhere on the frame and dragging the window to the desired location. You can change the size of a window by pressing select on any of the corners of the frame and dragging the corner until the window is the desired size. It is possible you may want to make some windows quite small in order to fit more information onto a screen.

You can modify other properties of a window by selecting "Window Properties..." from the pane menu. This brings up another menu asking you which window's properties you wish to edit, followed by a dialog window displaying the selected window's properties. Using this dialog, you can change the title of the window, specify that the title not be displayed or that the window should always be kept at the "front" of the display, on top of any other windows. When you have specified the properties you want, select the "Apply" button, and the changes will take effect. If you decide not to make any changes, you can select "Reset".

Channels

Before you can create a graph, you must define a "channel". A channel is the basic unit of data that rtg recognizes. Each channel is a sequence of data pairs. For real time data, this is usually a data channel paired with the time the data was collected. For SNAFU spreadsheets, this is a column of data paired with the data in column 0.

To create a channel from a spreadsheet, select "Channel Create Spreadsheet" from the pane menu. This brings up a file menu from which you can select an appropriate spreadsheet. If you don't have one handy, There is a sample in the rtg distribution. Select the "Path" button and enter /windows/apps/rtg and press "Enter". You should now see the file scan.sps in the menu. Select that file and then select "Open" and you will have succeeded in defining five channels, one for each of columns 1 through 5 in scan.sps.

Channels for realtime data are defined by the extraction programs which send the data to rtg. These are usually generated with the TMG preprocessor. When the extraction program is running, all the extracted channels will be defined automatically.

You can manipulate a channel's properties just like a window's properties via the "Channel Properties..." menu item. At the moment, a channel's properties consist of the name of the units for the channel's X and Y components. The units are important for determining whether graphs should share axes or not. By default, two graphs will share an axis if they have the same units. Also by default, most channels are created with their units defined to be the same as the name of the channel, so most channels therefore do not share units with other channels. Hence, if you want two channels to be plotted on the same axis, you will have to edit their properties so they have the same units.

Graphs

Now that you have some channels, you can create some graphs. Select "Graph Create" from the pane menu, then select the channel you wish to graph. With any luck, you will see a graph of the data in question. Now create another graph. You will see that the graphs "stack up" inside the window. This is the default behaviour, but it is by no means the only option. By default, the axes are scaled to include all the data in the channel, but this can also be changed by editing the graph's properties. That's right, select "Graph Properties..." from the pane menu. To adjust the options of a graph's axes, select "X Axis" or "Y Axis" from the graph properties dialog.

From the graph properties dialog, you can change the graph's name, the line color and thickness, the symbol and the symbol's color. The axis properties present numerous options pertaining to the axes, include the name, units, min and max limits, auto scaling, axis positioning and triggering modes.

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