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.