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?
In versions 1.3 and earlier,. there is no command within the Morpho
program to set any preferences. (In Morph 1.4.0, there is a
'Preferences' menu item in the 'File' menu. That menu item makes it
unnecessary to change the configuration file as described here.) 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.
8. How can I add data to a data file?
One can simply paste data from the clipboard into a data file displayed
in Morpho. However, currently Morpho does not automatically add rows to
the data file when information is pasted. Thus, if you want to add
data, you will need to create additional rows before pasting the new
data. Select the last row and then use the Data menu, the Popup menu,
or press <Ctrl><i> to insert a new empty row. When enough
rows have been created, you can select the top empty row and paste new
data. Note that the default when copying/pasting from Excel is
tab-delimited data. All the data will end up in the first cell if the
data being pasted uses a different delimiter that the existing data
(e.g. pasting from Excel when the existing data is comma-delimited.).