Raw Data Display

Creation and Usage

Along with Basic Command, the Raw Data display is one of the two types of displays that VisualCommander will create automatically when a point is dropped onto a page from the Data Tree. Each Raw Data display can manage one and only one input at a time. Each time a new value arrives for the data point, the display is updated to reflect the new data. The Raw Data display supports string, integer, double, and matrix data types.

The content of a Raw Data is embedded within a scrolling view. Whenever the size of the display is large enough to show the chosen label and current value, the scrollbars will remain hidden; if the display is sized to be too small of the data, or if the size of the data (such as a matrix) changes so as to be too large for the current size of the display, scrollbars will be displayed to allow the user to access all of the data. As with any display, since the scrollbars are part of the display they will appear but cannot be used while VisualCommander is in Edit mode.

Configuration

The Raw Data display provides only a few configuration options, all of which are related to formatting and appearance of the display. The options and their meanings are listed below. As the appearance values are changed for the display, the display will recalculate the size necessary to display its contents.

• Text Color - Choose a color for all text within the display.
• Font - Choose the font from among those available on the system. Be cautious when choosing a non-standard font if the interface is to be used on multiple systems; if the selected font is not available, a default font will be used which may affect the sizing of the display.
• Font Size - Next to the font selection is a small control for selecting font size, which can range from 5 to 50 pixels.
• Label - The label field provides control over the label displayed next to the current value. If the field is empty, no label will be displayed and the value will be drawn flush against the left side of the display. If the field is non-empty, the label will be displayed left-justified against the left side of the display, with the value to the label's right after a small space.
• Label Width - The label width specifies the number of pixels of space to reserve for the label on the left of the display, rather than having the label width be automatically calculated. By setting this directly, a column of raw data displays can be given a consistent label width to ensure that their data items line up neatly, even when the actual lengths of the label strings differ.
• Precision - The precision controls the number of digits of values displayed to the right of the decimal.
• Field Width - The field width controls the total number of characters (digits and decimal point) in each value shown in the display.