Over the last week-end, I have delved into the wonders of the Graphical User Interface (GUI in short). As an exercise, and a means to vent some of my ideas, I have programmed a sample database in Matlab.
The sample database originally started as a sample chooser for the “saxsgui”, an analysis program mainly written by Karsten Joensen, of whom I spoke before. As such, it still functions, but in its functionality, it has enough flexibility to be able to serve as a sample database.
It contains preview images of the scattering patterns, a user editable note field, and other fields that help manage data for use by the “saxsgui”. Keeping in line with the user interface guidelines of simple programs, I have eliminated the need for a “save” button. Whenever something is edited, a save is made.
There are still a few issues to figure out though, amongst others, the interface to the “saxsgui” is not completely functional, the preview images are a little on the dark side, backwards compatibility is untested, and there might be some sample naming issues (i.e. it only accepts unique filenames of the scattering patterns as input).
But all in all, I’m pretty content about it, and I hope it will be included in the next “saxsgui” release. You will be notified of this release as soon as it appears on the web.
As this is an open source program, any help is greatly appreciated. Why not contribute to the database or the saxsgui?
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