The MOP Graphical User Interface

Introduction

The basic commands for selecting targets, taking data, and performing other observing tasks using the photometric telescope are implemented as tcl commands, available at the command line at the execution of MOP. When using the command line interface for observations, however, the observer must maintaining the log, select the targets, and take care of other bookkeeping steps by hand. (There are command line tools to help with these tasks, but their use still requires significant human attention.)

The MOP GUI is a separate MOP process, started as a slave of the command line process, which takes care of many of the bookkeeping and logging tasks, presents graphical analogs to the most useful of the command line commands, and can automatically execute many routine observing commands. As a separate process from the command line, the GUI is available to the observer even when long, blocking tasks are being performed by the master MOP process.

To properly display the status (both of the telescope and the master MOP process) and determine appropriate and allowed actions, the GUI process maintains several pieces of information obtained from the master MOP process. These data are initialized when the GUI is started using startupGUI, and need to be updated as they are changed for the GUI to function properly. Commands which potentially alter data tracked by the GUI process are supplied with the "-updateGUI" command line option, which automatically updates the GUI's data when run. If these commands are run without the -informGUI option, the GUI's bookkeeping data will not be update, and subsequent use of the GUI may not be reliable.

Actions initiated using the GUI correspond to one or more command line commands, whose parameters are either entered directly into the GUI by the observer or derived from bookkeeping data kept in the GUI process. The command line commands issued by the GUI are echoed to the murmur log; these can be seen by grepping the murmur log for MOPGUI. Commands issued by the GUI will always include the "-informGUI" option, if necessary.

Starting and stopping the MOP GUI

The MOP GUI can be started from the MOP command line using the command startupGUI. MOP must already have established a connection to both the filter wheel box and TCS computer.

This sequence of commands will do the trick:

mt> ptConnect

establishes a connection to TCS and the FWB

mt> statupGUI

actually starts up the GUI

If you are running MOP from an X terminal which uses xhost style security, the MOP GUI (and indeed, any tcl program using the send command) will fail. If your running X from a recent linux distribution and are not using xhost or similar commands to allow display to your X session, you will probably be okay. Note that, although possible if you jump through enough hoops, the obvious way of getting the X terminals to work properly is actually a huge security problem. Talk to Craig Loomis. It's safest to stick with pt1. landru will probably also work.

The proper way to shut down the MOP GUI is with shutdownGUI:

mt> shutdownGUI

GUI Operations

PT Target Selection

The PT Target selection window provides tools to allow the user to intelligently plan observations (or, in routine observations, plan them itself) and execute the planned observations. The planned observations, whether generated automatically or by the observer, may be edited and tracked during execution.

PT log

The PT log displays an editor for keeping the night log for PT observations. Many commands add lines to this log automatically, and the controls which allow operations on the night log, such as saving it, mailing it to the appropriate mailing list.

Camera and FWB control

The camera and filter wheel box control window contains controls for lower level commands to be sent to the camera, filter wheel, or shutter. The position of the filter wheel may be changed, the shutter may be opened, closed, or opened for a timed interval. The CCD may be readout (optionally using a partial array read), with the header fields for target name and filter set by the user. Arbitrary sequences of exposures may be specified and taken.

PT telescope control

The PT telescope control window presents data gathered from TCS (the software controlling the DFM telescope) about the telescope state, and several controls for commanding the telescope. The data presented here generally duplicates that shown in the TCS display, but may not always be current: the data displayed is the state returned the last time MOP queried TCS for the telescope status. Controls here may be used to change the focus, TCS display epoch, slew or offset the telescope, or force MOP to update its data using the current TCS status.

GUI "freezes"

The MOP GUI performs many of its functions by sending instructions to the MOP command line process. It keeps track of whether the command line process is in a state where it can be sent commands, and if it is not, greys out buttons that require it. Unfortunately, it can sometimes become confused, particularly when a procedure executing in the command line process crashes and does not complete normally.

If you suspect that this has happened, type, at the command line:

puts "All done now"

Do not just hit return in the command line xterm window. If it has not crashed, and is simply being slow, a bug in Dervish can cause it to repeat the last command endlessly until MOP is killed. If the terminal returns with "All done now" and a prompt, and the GUI still has many buttons greyed out, it does mean that something has gone wrong. First, get a stack trace and include it in and PR filed:

mt> tb

Then, inform the GUI that the command line MOP is ready to receive commands:

mt> clearGUI

Last modified 6/21/2001 by E. H. Nielsen, Jr.