Usage:

Upon starting RtPlot without options, the welcome dialog is displayed. To continue loading a new plot make sure that the Start a new plot button is checked. Click OK. The New Plot Information dialog comes up with default values. The user needs either to choose the file containing the data or check the Use configuration file button and then select an existing XML configuration file. The data columns to be plotted are selected in x-col and y-col boxes. These are 0-based indices. If x-col is 0 and y-col is 1, the X-axis is the first column in the file, and the second column is the Y-axis. If the the real-time x-axis box is checked, the X-axis will display the relative time any data item in the Y column is collected.

In the X,Y range and precision selection boxes the user can choose the range for the X & Y axes and the precision of the X & Y numbers along the axes. If Auto x-range or Auto y-range are selected, RtPlot will select such ranges which include the entire data when it first reads the file. If the Add only box is checked, RtPlot assumes that the data file always increases and older rows are not changed. This enables to skip the parsing of the data in order to save some CPU time on large files. In the line Curve title the user can enter a short description of the curve. This description is used in the legend.

At the buttom of the New Plot Information dialog there are 3 checkboxes: Checking open maximized will open a maximized plot window. If Enable datatips is checked the datatips feature is selected in the plot window. For very large data sets the datatip feature may consume too much CPU time and the user may want to turn it off. Checking Display data points only will cause only data points to be displayed with no connecting lines.

After clicking the OK button, a color selection menu is opened, followed by the style selection dialog. Finally, the new window with the plot is opened. Note: All the initial parameters can later be changed when the plot is displayed.

By default, the program checks for file updates about every second. It would not read the file unless it notices a changed. To change the frequency of checking for updates, select the Timer in the main menu. The timer menu dialog comes up and in the top part of this menu the user may change the interval between updates checks in units of 1/10 second. Selecting 0 stops checking for updates.

The bottom part of the Timer menu is intended for cases when the Operating System does not update write time of the file frequently enough and therefore RtPlot does not update the display (see also section Cooporating with RtPlot). This menu lets the user to set the maximum number of times RtPlot tries to check if the write-time of the file has changed. If the write-time did not change in within that maximum number of times, RtPlot reads the file anyway.

By default the maximum number of tries is Unlimited, which means that RtPlot reads the file only when its write-time has changed. To force an update, for example, every 10 seconds, the user can choose an interval of updates of 1 second (10/10) in the top part of the timer menu and then select 10 in the bottom menu. RtPlot then checks the write-time of the file every second and forces an update after 10 tries if the write-time has not changed.

Several items can be configured by clicking on the Plot menu:.

Context menu - Right clicking anywhere on the window will open a pop-up menu with several items:

Clicking File on the main menu opens a submenu with the following items:

History- It is possible to display in a window several recent updates to a data file. Use Plot->History and select the history size for the appropriate curve. Recent updates will be displayed in fading shades.

Dragging- A useful feature is the ability to drag the plotted data in the plot window and to examine various portions of the plot. This is done by clicking the left mouse button and dragging the mouse while the button is pressed.

Data tips-If the mouse cursor stays near a data point for about 1/5 of a second, a small window (datatip) opens at the cursor point with the x & y values at the point. Can be turned on/off through the context menu.