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LSST Camera Visualization User's Guide

Commands and Table of Contents are available in the sidebar. Help for developers is here.

Introduction

Launch the application by pointing your browser at the appropriate URL. SLAC has a server setup for public access. For the UIUC installation go here.

Once the page is loaded, three boxes will open automatically:

• An image viewer (named ffview by default). A default Firefly image will automatically be displayed.
• An output box (named ffbox by default). Most command results will appear here.
• A "terminal" (command line interface).

Terminal Window

All terminal commands use the following syntax:

Command parameter1 parameter2 parameter3

• Parameters are separated by one or more spaces.
• Parameters may not contain spaces, except as described below. Parameters may contain numbers or letters, and are not case sensitive (e.g., "Box" is equivalent to "box").
• If a parameter requires more than one piece of data, wrap the parameter in parentheses, and separate each datum by a space (See rectangle region selection for example usage).
• While typing commands, a context-sensitive template will appear at the top of the terminal, in order to help the user with proper command syntax.
• Previous commands can be recalled via the up-arrow and edited, if desired.

Terminal window settings ("anchor", "draggable", "always on top", and "Font size") are accessible by clicking the gear icon above the top-right corner of the terminal. These settings are saved and will persist across sessions.

User Input

There are two ways to enter visualization commands:

• Via the terminal window (command line).
  During command entry, the user may tab through a parameter entry field, and the default value, if there is one, will be used. In any case, if there is only one viewer or box, tabbing will automatically select it.
  • Unless changed by the default_viewer command, the default viewer is ffview.
  • Unless changed by the default_box command, the default box is ffbox.
  • Command specific default parameter values may be added as appropriate (and documented with the command description).
• Via the Firefly tool bar.

All commands that act on image regions can be entered either way. Other commands are accessible only via the terminal.
For every command, if an invalid parameter is entered (e.g., a nonexistent image viewer or output box), an error message will be issued.

Firefly Toolbar

The Firefly toolbar is activated by clicking on the toolbar selection icon in the upper right of the viewer window.
  

The tool of interest here is the region drawing tool (See Rectangles). If one draws a region, the Firefly extended toolbar is activated.
  

The extended toolbar contains some Firefly tools (e.g., zoom to selection) and a Choose command button. Clicking this button pops up a list of the visualization commands that can operate on the drawn region, with parameter entry boxes:
  

The command that will be passed to the back end is identical to one entered on the command line.