Coat

Programming with Coat

Start your Eclipse and make sure git in the form of EGit is installed, then clone https://git.code.sf.net/p/coat/coat (no passwd required). Then go looking at the coat.DemoFactory class.

Just kidding. (Except for the "checkout" part). In my Eclipse workspace, the project structure looks like this:

There is the src directory, then docs (UML, launchers, a bit of text), lib for JOGL jars and libraries, res for resources such as images, a build.xml for Ant and a jlayercheck.xml for package dependency control.

Creating Graphs and a Pane

Consider the screenshot to the right. To reproduce this, we take the following steps:

• Creating a pane.
• Creating the graphs that reside in it.

Have a look at the internal processes with the following UML sequence diagram.

You are the client, and create some graphs. Then, you create e.g. a SwingPane. This triggers the creation of a SwingCanvas and a GraphEventQueue (in case of Swing, this queue is asynchronous; in case of JOGL, an FPSAnimator triggers the queue).

Then, you register the graphs with the pane. In the demos, a user controller is added to the pane (using standard MouseListener and KeyboardListener). This is outside the scope of the Coat functionality and you are expected to do it by yourself in your application.

Adding Elements

After you have the graphs set up, start adding the elements (such as line legends, axis, points, bars and lines). The method for it is always the same: Graph.addData(). Let's go into more detail with the next sequence diagram.

Whenever you add new data to a graph, the graph event queue is notified (normally with RENDER_PART, but screen-changing additions such as an axis may trigger RENDER_FULL). Whenever you modify something radically (e.g. by calling Graph.scale() or by simple setting a new text on a point), you are expected to call addGraphEvent(GraphEventQueue.RENDER_FULL) on the pane.

The graph event queue only acts if there is a request for action. If so, it calls the graphs with either a full render() or in the case of additions with renderDelayedData(), which is much faster. Note that taking away something must result in a full render, as I cannot just overwrite the area: What if something else overlapped with the removed element?

Adding elements is thread safe; the HeartBeatProducer and SpiralProducer inner classes of the DemoFactory are trying to prove it. Note: If you added new data to a line, call Graph.addDataUpdate() afterwards, because the line was already added normally to the graph.

Finetuning the Graphs

The default layout of the graphs is "stacked". To get to the overlay distribution of the screen shot to the right, use setLayerModus(Graph.OVERLAY) on the pane.

And if you want to scale the user space, call e.g. setXScaleModus(Graph.SCALE_HEART_BEAT) on the graph. Note that you must still call Graph.scale() after each scale-worthy addition of elements; doing it automatically was just too performance consuming.

I have left out a discussion of the actual elements (Point2D, Bar2D, Line2D, Axis and LineLegend) because their getters and setters seemed pretty self-explanatory to me. Have a look at the javadoc for details.

Any question left? Contact me (see menu bar) and I will see what I can do.