Graphical User Interface
OpenDX is based on the Motif widget toolkit on top of the X Window System. Its graphical user interface has a wide variety of interactors, both direct and indirect. Direct interactors allow the user to directly manipulate images (e.g. rotate or zoom). Indirect interactors (dials, switches, buttons, sliders) enable the user to control various aspects of her visualization. Interactors are smarter because they are data-driven. Interactors are auto-ranging and self-limiting. They examine the data and, depending on its type, will determine the minimum and maximum of the data, or create a list for an option menu based on the data. The user can even set the label of the interactor based on some aspect of the data (e.g., metadata).
The data-driven concept is not simply for sliders, dials and option menus. It also applies to vector interactors. These will reconfigure themselves based on the dimensionality of the data. They will also auto-range themselves based on the maximum and minimum of each vector component.
Read more about this topic: IBM OpenDX
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“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)