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What's in a Name?
(Romeo & Juliet, Wm Shakespeare)
The program works with images*.bmp or *.jpg)
of real buds. In order that the bud images
can be recognised by the Workshop, and remembered by it,
they need to be "properly named".
A "proper name" has a prefix,
followed by a mandatory underscore ('_'),
followed by the "epoch" (civil
date and time), followed by a period and the extension.
For example
beech1_231206112325.jpg,
would refer to a JPEG image
of the single bud we choose
to call beech1,
obtained on 23
December
2006 at 23 minutes and 25 seconds
past 11 o'clock in the morning. Note the contiguous, two-digit fields.
The time is on the 24 hour clock,
and will usually be local. If it isn't, the conventional 'Z' will
(should) be appended to signify GMT.
The date is required, but the time
is optional. If the time is included, it
must include both the hour and the minute, but need not have
the seconds. British conventions are followed. - DDMMYYhhmmss
If the time is "silly", or not given,
the Workshop assumes 12:00 noon. So,
oak3_120103.bmp
( bud
oak3 on 12th Jan 2003, time-of-day defaults to 12:00 noon local time)
birch5_0102071231z.jpg
( bud birch5 on 1st Feb 2007 12:31
GMT )
bud1a_1201071020.jpg
( bud bud1a on 12th Jan 2007 10:20 local
time)
b3_100999142032.jpg
( bud b3 on 10th
Sep 1999 14:20:32 local time)
are all valid names, whereas, bch-121299.jpg,
or, graham_mugshot.bmp are not.
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If you are
opening the bud image ("an instance")
for work for the first time ever,
then use the "Load
Inst" button. You will be asked to
select a "suite" from a drop-down list.
If, after a search has been performed, properly-named images that are known to be on the system are not displayed by the Archivist,
- Click the Open button, or
- Click on File in the menu, then on Open a bud file in the drop-down list.
This will open a standard Open File dialogue box, in which you may navigate to the image file you wish to open for work.
If, however, you are re-opening
an instance, then a list of "ini"
paths will be available, and the suite
names form the 'tails' of these path-strings. Click
on the ini-path item that contains the name of the suite from which you
wish to review results. This actually does two things:
- It displays a
precis (taken from the ini
file on the selected path)
of the results obtained so far on the instance,
in the drop-down combo box between the top two trees.
- It enables
the, "use
\<suite-name>\", button , which
carries the text of the selected <suite-name>.
Click
on this “use” button to re-load, and review and/or re-work, the instance.
Clicking this button will also give you access to all the instances in the selected suite—
- Either Click on the little arrow icons under the Open File button, selecting–
- the left arrow to load the earlier instance
- the right arrow to load the later instance
- Or Click on File in the menu, then select from
- Open Next in Current Sequence
- Open Prev. in Current Sequence.
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Once
selected, the image opens in two windows, one on the
left for interactive working, the other on the right for
showing results. If some work has been done on that image in previous
sessions, you will see the results of that work when the image opens.
Otherwise, you can begin that work on the left image, and results will
appear on the right image as they come.
The basic idea
is to measure the bud at several
heights between two "poles",
which the user must place where he or she thinks they should be.
When all this has been done,
the Workshop immediately and automatically finds
the path curve between the
given poles most nearly matching the measurements obtained, shows the
curve, reports parameters,
quality-of-fit numbers and so on, and records them in the working Archive
for later recall and the use of various operations.
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There
are several result-files
per bud per epoch.
These are ordered per prefix
(bud-name) into series
by epoch
(this being the second of the main purposes of the Workshop:
we want to see how things vary with time).
Suites
But there can be more than one result-set per series (perhaps arising from differing pole settings, for example), so the Workshop records these as "Suites",
and - each suite has a name, and
- every bud has at least one suite.
When
the Workshop encounters a bud for the first time, it automatically assigns
a suite to it, and, most imaginatively, appends "default" to the bud's
prefix as the suite name.
But because a bud can have several suites,
when the workshop is asked to open a particular bud for work, it must
under some circumstances ask for the suite, too. The choices are
presented in a combo box, and the user may select from them.
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Place the Poles
At this point,
if an unworked bud image is
up, the Poles should be placed first
(in any order).
- Left click on either "Hi Pole", or "Lo
Pole" to get a rotating cursor,
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Use the mouse to steer this cursor to where you think
the pole should go, and
-
Left click to leave the pole there. (You may re-do
it as often as you feel you must to get it right.)
Do this for both poles.
The Pole buttons flash, "Not Set", if the poles have
not been placed, and bear yellow ticks (check marks) if they have.
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There are then two
ways to take or adjust measurements.
Method (1) Manual Measurement.
This is initiated by a Left Click on the "Scan" button.
Once the poles are both placed, buttons
automatically appear down the
left side of the measurement image, one per measurement height (default
number of these is 7). Click
on one to begin measuring at its height. Each button has two
"lights", one for the left bud edge, one for the right. They "light
up" when the corresponding measurements have been taken. The Workshop
assists by holding the cursor on the level ("level-locking"), and it
detects which side is being measured, so all the user need do is
point at the bud's edges and left-click.
However, you will notice that
the Workshop changes the cursor to
a "star-burst" with the word, "hit",
below it, when it thinks the cursor
is sitting on an edge. There's some chance it's the wrong
edge, so it's advisory only, but if you and the Workshop agree here,
it's a good idea to accept the Workshop's estimate: it will likely be
more accurate than yours! In case of dispute, or uncertainty,
or when the Workshop is stumped, reference can be made to a little window
travelling above the cursor which displays a magnified version of the
region of interest.
 
There is also a button marked, "Graphs",
at the top of the measurement window. If you click on it while
in measurement mode, a window appears on the right which shows two
graphs: the uppermost, in
blue, is of the actual luminances in the line currently being scanned in the image. The lower, in
red, is the absolute
differential (rate of change) of
the same data. There is a hair-cursor on both traces matching
the horizontal position of the mouse cursor on the image. The
differential goes to a peak when the scan traverses an edge, so when
the hair-cursor is in such a peak, the mouse cursor is very likely on
an edge. It is an additional check on accuracy.
Incidentally, the left/right
arrow-keys can be used to move the cursor, too, (faster if CTRL is held
down, too) which is sometimes easier than using the mouse, and you may
press the SPACE BAR, or ENTER, to accept a measurement,
instead of clicking.
This is all a little laborious,
and, for speed, it is preferable to use
Method (2) Profile Tracking—
—if it works. Sometimes it doesn't, or works poorly, depending on the quality of the image.
The Workshop traces the profiles,
either semi- or fully-automatically (depending on which mouse button
is held down).
One selects a profile by button, places the tracking-cursor
at the bottom of it so as to catch it between the little arrows. One
then may press and hold down either the left or the right mouse button.
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If one presses the right, the Workshop moves the mouse and attempts
to trace the profile by itself.
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If one presses the left the
user must push the mouse. The Workshop assists by holding
the cursor to the profile, if it can.
Sometimes the cursor loses the
profile, and cannot be made to refind it. The only resort in such
a case is method (1), manual measurement.
When the traces, or tracks,
are available, the Workshop automatically measures the bud using these
traces. There is a bunch of buttons at the top of of the measurement
window to control all this.
A measurement session can combine both methods. New users would probably do best to
begin with manual measurement, just to get a feeling for what is involved
in it, and to see what problems arise. When measurements are completed,
the bud is automatically and immediately analysed, as mentioned above.
Appropriate entries also appear in the Archivist's trees. |
