Morpho User Guide

 

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Frequently Asked Questions


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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