About SPLASH ============ SPLASH is a software tool for the display and analysis of data, principally used for the display time series data. SPLASH runs on PC's that run Windows (95 or higher). This software was developed at the UCLA Institute of Geophysics and Space Physics (IGPP) for internal use only. The developers of this code have made this version of Splash publicly available, and distributable by the Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node of the Planetary Data System (PDS). The software is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California and should not be distributed by individuals. Please read the license agreement that appears at installation. Splash can read ASCII or binary tabular data described by detached PDS labels; IGPP flatfiles; and ASCII data stored in comma separated value (CSV) format where the first line consists of column headings. Splash allows the user to produce publication-quality data plots quickly using a simple and intuitive user interface. Installation ============ An InstallShield file is provided in this directory, with the file name SPLASH.EXE. A double click on this file will invoke the installation wizard. Just answer the questions regarding where the software should be installed (or accept the defaults by clicking "Next"). Users are required to accept the terms of the license agreement during the installation process. Mapping .SPH files to Splash ============================ Once Splash is installed, a new user should map the Splash file extension (.SPH) to the Splash software. In Windows Explorer, highlight (left click on) one of the .SPH files in the EXTRAS/SPLASH directory (or subdirectory). The press Shift while right clicking. Select "Open with..." and click the "Always use this program..." button, and then select "Other." Browse the system until you find the Splash executable (C:\Program Files\igpp\Splash is the default location). Once this is done, Splash should start up and load the Splash document selected. This procedure should only need to be done once, after the initial installation. Using Splash ============ The following discussion is not meant to provide a complete guide to using Splash. Some of the basic elements are described here, just to get new users started. The interface is pretty intuitive so most people will be up and running in short order. Click on the page title This brings up the "page" menu. You can select fonts and font sizes for labels, display headers and footers, etc. Clicking the layout tab allows you to set page margins, set the space between plot panels, set the page orientation, etc. Gutter widths can be set to facilitate the preparation of plot books, where an additional margin is needed for binding. Clicking the "Data" tab allows the user to tell the software how large a data gap to span before picking up the "pen," force all panels to have common Y-axis scales, and skip or view blank pages in a multi-page plot. Click on a Y-axis This invokes the Y-axis editor. The Y-axis can be autoscaled, have a fixed range with a floating center, or have a fixed range. Scales can be linear, log10, or natural log. If autorange is selected, there are several options that a user can set to help the software decide on how best to scale the plot. The range margin can be adjusted up or down to relax (up) or tighten (down) how closely the min/max values fit the data. Very tight matches can force the code to choose odd tick intervals. A user can also force an autoscale to ignore values out of range. This can be helpful if the data contain spikes that would otherwise force the Y-axis scale to be much larger than required by "good" data. Y-axis parameters can be applied to a single panel (OK) or to all panels (Set all panels). Tick intervals are set in the "Ticks" tab. Tick annotations are set using the options on the "Annotations" tab. Labels are set using the Labels tab. Axis labels can contain formatting (subscript, superscript, underline, bold, italics, and symbol fonts for Greek and other special characters). Click on an X-axis Same as Y-axis. If the X-axis is time, the user can select from a variety of time axis labeling formats using the "Anotation Style" button on the annotation tab. Additional Variables In some instances, rather than plotting a variable, a user would prefer to simply annotate the X-axis with the variable's value every so often (at the major tick mark interval). You can invoke the additional variables menu by clicking below the X-axis. Variables can be added or removed in this menu. Panel Options You can invoke the "Panel Options" menu by right clicking in the main plot area. This menu allows you to add or remove traces to a given panel, and to edit trace properties (color, symbol, background). Panels can be overlaid as an option under the layout tab. Overlaying panels is useful when the scales of the variables plotted are quite different. Typically, when you overlay two panels, you place the Y-axis labels for the panels on opposite sides of the page (left vs right). Grids can be added to panels (major and minor tick grids) using the options under the "Grids" tab. Layout Options You can invoke the "Layout Options" menu by right clicking in the main plot area. This menu allows you to add or remove panels from the plot. In the top "box" new panels can be added, and the order of panels can be changed. The bottom box allows additional traces to be added to panels, and the "Variables" tab allows additional variables to be added to the page. Adding Markers to the Page or Panels Sometimes a user wants to highlight or shade a particular part of a plot to call out a special region of interest. You can add markers to the plot by holding the CTRL key and left clicking (event marker) or by holding down the CTRL key and left clicking and dragging (interval marker). Once markers are set, double left clicking in or near the marker will invoke the marker editor. In this editor, the marker color, start/stop times, labels, etc. can be set or modified. Mouse Tracking By default, the mouse is tracked in all the panels, and the data values nearest the mouse location are displayed on the right side of the screen. When the X-axis is time, the tracker is a vertical bar and the values displayed are the data values where the bar crosses the data. If the X-axis is not time, then the mouse tracker is a cross-hair and the value displayed are the values at the cross-hair location. Mouse tracking options are set at the top of the page under "Graph" options. File options Under the "File" menu at the top of the page, the user can find most of the common file operations (Save, Save As, Close, Print, Print Preview, Print Setup). In particular, the user can open an existing Splash document (.SPH file) or create a new document by reading a data file. When creating a new Splash document, select the type of data file that you want to read (Flatfiles, Lower Flatfiles, PDS labeled files, ASCII files, etc.) and then use the browser to locate the data file. Once a data file is opened, the user is prompted to create the basic plot layout in a plot wizard. If a simple plot with one trace per panel is desired, just click the "Next" button at the first page in the wizard. If a multi-trace plot is needed, select "Advanced Mode." Just answer the questions and you'll get a reasonable plot in short order. Using .SPH files from a CD and from the Web =========================================== The .SPH files on this CD are set up to display the data on the CD in a useful format. The easiest way to use a .SPH file from this CD is to open the file on the CD, without copying the file to your hard disk first. If you have a .SPH file on your computer's hard disk instead of on the CD (for example, if you downloaded a file from the Web), then you will need to observe the following procedure to get the same plot that you would have gotten by using the file on the CD. 1. Be sure that you have the .TAB and .LBL files that correspond to your .SPH file. (For example: along with the file EBF00170.SPH, you will need files EBF00170.TAB and EBF00170.LBL.) Download these from the Web if necessary; they're under the DATA directory of the CD. 2. Create a directory somewhere on your hard disk. We'll call this directory NEAR, although the name doesn't really matter. 3. Within this new directory NEAR, create the following directories: (a) two subdirectories of NEAR called DATA and EXTRAS (b) a subdirectory of EXTRAS named SPLASH (c) a subdirectory of SPLASH named X (You could use other names besides EXTRAS, SPLASH and X, but these names will be convenient.) 4. Next, create a subdirectory of DATA. To get the name for this subdirectory, open your .SPH file in a text editor. Look at the seventh line from the top of the file. It will look something like this: DataRelative = ..\..\..\DATA\2000_170\EBF00170.LBL Copy down the part of this line that lies between 'DATA\' and the next '\' character. (In this example, that part will be '2000_170'.) This is the name you want. Create a subdirectory of DATA with this name. 5. Now copy your .TAB and .LBL files into the subdirectory that you just created under DATA. 6. Copy your .SPH file into the subdirectory X that you created in step 3. Now you should be able to open the .SPH file with Splash and get the same result that you would get by opening it directly on the CD.