Graphical interface

Menu and plots

The window of fityk program consists of (from the top): menu bar, toolbar, main plot, auxiliary plot, output window, input field and status bar. The input field allows to type and execute commands in similar way as it is done in CLI version. The output windows shows results. Click the right mouse button on it to see its configuration options.

Most of menu commands correspond to commands described in Chapter 3, Command reference . Some of them are simply translated to text strings and executed - you can see it in output window. I hope that menu commands are self-explaining (especially after reading the rest of this manual) - just try them.

The main plot can display data points, functions, phases and/or the sum of all functions. Use pop-up menu (click right button on the plot) to configure it. Phase is a sum of related functions. The word comes from the crystallographic module, where a phase of investigated powder is represented by a set of peaks.

The auxiliary plot can display a difference of data and the sum of functions, the difference divided by standard deviation of data or another plot. It can be controlled by its pop-up menu. I hope having a look at this menu and a minute of experiments will explain possibilities of the auxiliary plot.

Sometimes it is useful to print effects of our fitting work. Hard copy will contain plots visible on the screen, scaled to fit the page. The only difference is that backgrounds of plots will be white (to not waste toner/ink). So it may be necessary to change color of axis or data to darker one.

Configuration of GUI (everything that can be changed using pop-up menus and size of the window) can be saved using GUI->Save current config. Two different configurations can be saved, what allows easy changing of colors for printing. On Unix platform, these configurations are stored in file in user's home directory. On Windows - they are stored in registry (perhaps in future they will be also stored in file).

Mouse, Modes and Toolbars

Now it is a time to explain quite complicated mouse usage. The usage of the mouse on menu, dialog windows, input field and output window is intuitive, so the only topic described here will be: how to effectively operate mouse on plots.

Let us start with the auxiliary plot. Right button displays mentioned earlier pop-up menu, with left button you can select range to be displayed - range on x axis. Clicking with middle button (or with left button and pressed Shift) on auxiliary plot will zoom it out and display all data.

On the main plot, meaning of the left and right mouse button depends on current mode, that can be changed using toolbar or menu. You will see hints on status bar. In normal mode, left button is used for zooming and right invokes pop-up menu. The same behaviour can be obtained in any mode by pressing Ctrl (or Alt or Shift). Middle button can be used to select a rectangle, that you want to zoom in. If an operation has two steps, like rectangle zooming (first you press button to select first corner, then you move mouse and release button to select second corner of rectangle), you can cancel it by pressing another button when first one is pressed.