Morpho FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. How do I get Help?
If Morpho is running, you should be able to just use the Help menu.
You can also open "docs/user" directory in the directory where Morpho was
installed and then open the file "index.html" in your browser (usually by
just double clicking on the file name). This will display the same help files
as from within Morpho using the Help menu.
2. What happened to my local data packages when I upgraded to Morpho 1.2?
If you have used a previous version of Morpho, then you may have local data packages
stored in a 'profiles' directory inside the main Morpho directory. The location where
the 'profiles' directory is created and accessed in Version 1.2 has been changed from
the Morpho install directory to a subdirectory within the users 'home' directory.
[On Windows 2000 or XP machines, the home directory is named after the user name (e.g.
'higgins') and is located inside the 'Documents and Settings' folder, usually under
C:\] A directory named '.morpho' is created inside the user's home directory and the
new profiles directory is created there when Morpho is first executed. To access previously
created data packages, copy those packages from your existing profiles directory to
the profiles directory inside the <home>/.morpho directory.
3. How can I add an image to my data package?
Images that are stored in 'gif' or 'jpeg' formats (standards for web pages) can be
added to data packages. To add such an image, either create a new package using the
"New Datapackage..." menu item (under the "File" menu) or add an image to an existing
package using the "Create New Datatable..." command under the "Data" menu. On the
wizard screen that asks for a data file to be included in the package, select the
image file that you wish to include and then click the button that says "Manually
enter data file descriptions.". Then click the "Next" button. You will then need to
fill out at least the minimal information indicated on several of the next screens.
After filling out several screens you will come to a screen labeled "Data Physical
Information" where the one required field is named "Format". You should then type
"image", "gif", "jpeg", or "jpg" in the Format text box. This tells Morpho to display
the data as an image when the package is viewed later. Then continue through the Package
Wizard as with any other data file.
4. Can I customize Morpho in any way?
Currently. there is no command within the Morpho program to set any preferences.
There are some preferences (and additional data) that are read from the
'config.xml' file that is stored in the '.morpho' directory in the user's
home directory. Only a few of these should be set by the user. These include:
<lookAndFeel></lookAndFeel> --- As shown on the
left, there is nothing between the pair of 'lookAndFeel' tags in the default
config.xml file. This causes the look of the Morpho display to mimic that
of the current operating system - e.g. Windows, Mac, etc. You can see a different
look by changing the tag set to be "<lookAndFeel>kunststoff</lookAndFeel>".
This will cause a variety of minor changes in the look of buttons, scroll
bars, etc. The 'kunststoff' is a customized look-and-feel created for Java
applications.
<log_file>false</log_file> --- Changing the value within these
tags from 'false' to 'true' will send all error messages to a log file.
This may be useful if you are having problems.
<metacat_url>http://metacat.nceas.ucsb.edu/knb/servlet/metacat</metacat_url>
--- The url of the network server where data is stored is set here. You
may need to change this if you are using a custom server.
5. How can I 'Export' a datapackage? The Export menu item doesn't seem
to work.
There may be some confusion because the Export command asks you to select
a "directory", not a file. Select a directory where you want the package
exported to. On the Mac, you may need to actually type in the name of directory
after selecting its parent directory.
6. How can I get more information on problems?
Morpho sends a number of messages about operations that are normally not
visible when you start Morpho using the icons created by the installer. On
a Windows machine, the program that normally launches Morpho is called "Morpho.exe".
An alternate method for launching Morpho (Windows only) is to execute the
batch file "morpho.bat" which is located in the directory where Morpho was
installed. When launched using the batch file, a background command window
will appear and a number messages will appear in this window while Morpho
is running. You can also see all these messages in a log file that is created
when the '<log_file>' parameter is set to 'true' in the configuration
file (see FAQ question #4).
7. What are the system requirements for running Morpho?
For reasonable performance, a fairly new computer system is recommended (i.e.
a clock speed or 700MHz or greater and 256 MB of RAM or greater). Morpho
will run on slower systems with less RAM, but some operations may be very
slow. More RAM is especially useful of there are a large number of
local data packages, since the local data is cached in RAM at startup. Some
operations will require several minutes to complete even on newer computers.
One example is the initial display of very large (10s of MB) data files.