Scenarios

To make the process of setting up the visualisation environment and the laying out of viewers and viewlets quicker, the Java VC provides a record and playback feature whereby all user visible changes and actions that are performed following the creation of a viewable are recorded in a visualisation scenario. This action sequence can then be optionally re-played the next time a viewable of the same name is created.

The common use case is as follows.

1.

Start Java VC.

2.

Run program which creates viewable ``foo'' for the first time.

3.

Select viewers for ``foo''.

4.

Arrange viewer windows on screen, resize and scale to taste. Optionally insert and layout viewlets on a Desktop viewer.

5.

Press Resume button to continue running program.

6.

Watch visualisation of program run until viewable is destroyed (ie. is backtracked over).

7.

Re-run program, after having made some changes.

8.

Answer yes to the prompt to reinstate visualisation preferences for viewable ``foo''.

9.

Watch as things magically re-arrange themselves into the configuration you previously had.

10.

Make some more layout changes.

11.

Press Resume again.

12.

Repeat.

To make long running visualisation projects easier and also to assist in running demonstrations, these visualisation preferences can be saved to disk and loaded back into memory at any time. The loading and saving of scenarios is achieved by using the Load and Save options of the File menu. The most common point at which a scenario is saved is just after laying out all the viewers a just before passing control back to ECLiPSe.