Annotation

Figure annotation is often necessary to direct a reader/viewer's eye, especially in static media such as paper. SEP's main graphics package, vplot Cole and Dellinger (1989); Dellinger (1989), lacks all but rudimentary interactive ability. Rather than invest the time required to rewrite what is generally a bug-free, effective package, I decided to add some basic annotative ability to Ricksep. Figure 3 shows an example of the different types of objects that can be used for annotation. To do annotation the Annotate button must be selected from the menu. Many of the zoom and picking functions are then replaced with annotation functions. The table below shows the various options.

Keystroke/Mouse Function

Left-button, drag Draw an oval

Center-button,drag Draw a rectangle

Center-button, click Add text

a+Right click Add point for polyline

f+Right click Finish polyline object

 

annotate
Figure 3 A view of Ricksep of a 2-D slice annotated with a box, text, an oval, and two polylines.

Ricksep is designed to be an interactive viewer. It generally can't compete with vplot for static displays. In order to take advantage of the abilities of both packages I added the ability to output the SEPlib commands to make an equivalent vplot figure. Figure 4 shows the result of running the commands outputed with the section->display->output commands menu option.

 

ano-v
Figure 4 A 2-D slice annotated with a box, text, an oval, and two polylines, produced using the output commands option of Ricksep.