1. How do I get help?
If Morpho is running, you should be able to use the "Help"
menu located at the top of each window. You can also open the
"docs/user" directory in the directory where Morpho was installed and
then open the file "index.html" in your browser (usually by double
clicking on the file name). This will display the same help files as
you would see when using Morpho's Help menu. The Morpho User Guide,
found under the "Help" menu, contains information on a variety of
topics and uses of Morpho. Examine the index to determine where to get
help.
2. Where are my local data packages stored? And what happens to
my local data packages when I upgrade to a newer version of Morpho?
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 data directory. The location where the
"profiles" directory is created and accessed is in a subdirectory
within the user's "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"
subdirectory is created there when Morpho is first
executed. There is a subdirectory under "profiles" with the profile
name and another subdirectory under that with the name "data" where local data for
that profile is actually stored . Note that this is (usually) not
the same directory as the one where the Morpho executable is installed.
You should thus be able to uninstall Morpho and update it to newer
versions without fear of losing any locally stored data packages.
3. How can I add an image to my data
package?
Complex, geospatially indexed images can be included and described in
eml 2.0 using the "spatialRaster" or "spatialVector" entitiy
modules. However, Morpho currently has no features directly
supporting these modules. Nevertheless, images that are stored in .gif
or .jpeg formats (standards for web
pages) can be added to data packages as "dataTable" elements (even
though they are not really 'dataTables'). To add such an image to an
existing package using the
"Create/Import New Datatable..." command under the "Data" menu. Choose
the "Import" and then "Manual" radio buttons Then select
the image file that you wish to include. Then click the "Next"
button. Select the "Non-text or proprietary formatted file" radio
button and then select "other". You should then type
"image", ".gif", ".jpeg", or ".jpg" in the text box below the "other"
button. This tells
Morpho to display the data as an image when the package is viewed
later. Then continue through the Wizard as with any other data file.
You will need to fill out at least the minimal information
indicated on several of the next screens.
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 "Set
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. Note that in version 1.5,
the default setting for this parameter has been set to "true". Messages
are thus automatically written to the log file (which is written to the
Morpho startup directory and called "stderr.log"). If problems occur,
this log file can be examined (or sent to the Morpho developers) to
help determine the cause of the problem. Note that the log file is
rewritten every time Morpho starts up, so you will need to rename
it if you want to save the results.
<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 of 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 if 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
you get when you right-click on the data table, 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.).
9. What happens with network
data packages created with older versions of Morpho?
Previous versions of Morpho worked with a now obsolete version of EML
called "Beta 6". Morpho 1.5 will still read these older packages,
but it will automatically convert them to the newer EML 2.0 format for
display. These older data packages will not be converted to EML
2.0 until the owner saves them, at which time a new ID will also be
assigned.
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