Data format

The CurlyWhirly data format is a tab delimited text format with a header which specifies the category groups which categories are found in, as well as the axis names for the data set. The category column header should start with the prefix "categories:" and the header line for the column which contains your data point names should be "label".

A header line should resemble the following:

categories:size categories:age Label PCO1 PCO2 PCO3

Database search URL

CurlyWhirly supports a special header line in its input files that begins with a # character. You can use this line to supply a lookup URL (for example to an online database containing more information about the data) that will be called when points are clicked on. The line must be in the following format:

# cwDatabaseSearch = http://mylookup.address/info=$DATA

$DATA will be replaced at runtime by the name of the point clicked on. It can be located anywhere within the URL.

Loading data

Click "Open file" in the toolbar and select a file to load. If you would like to experiment with some example data, click on the "Open sample data" button in the toolbar or on the link on the welcome page. This will load a file supplied with the application which contains randomly generated data. You can use this to explore the functionality of the application.

Choosing data to display

On the left hand control panel, select for each axis from the drop-down menu which variable you would like displayed.

View controls

To reorient the graph, click and drag with the left mouse button. To go back to the original viewpoint, click the button labelled "Reset Viewpoint" in the toolbar.

To zoom in and out, middle-click and drag or Alt+Left-click and drag.

To spin the scene continuously, click the "Spin" button in the toolbar. Click it again to stop the rotation. You can control the rotation speed using the slider located next to the "Spin" button.

Background colour

To change the background colour of the display, click on the "Settings" button in the toolbar and select a colour from the drop-down menu in the newly opened window. Options are light grey, dark grey, black and white.

Highlighting subsets of data

You can selectively colour data from one or more categories by clicking on them in the category list panel on the bottom left (Ctrl+click (or Cmd+click on OS X) to select more than one category). This will grey out all data points except for those in the selected categories.

Double-click on a category to change its colour.

To show the original colouring again, press the button labelled "Reset Selection".

Exploring individual data points

Position the mouse over a data point and its individual label (as supplied in the data file) will be displayed in the status bar at the bottom left corner of the application. If a database search URL was supplied in the data file, then clicking on a point will link you out to that URL with the point's name as the supplied $DATA argument.

Capturing a screenshot

To create a screenshot of the current display, click on the "Capture Screenshot" button in the toolbar. Select the location and name of the image file in the newly opened window and click "Save" to create the image.

Capturing a movie

Clicking on the "Capture movie" button in the toolbar will open a new window with settings to create an animated movie of the current scene. There are two settings: one for the number of frames per second (FPS) and one for the spin speed. Both will affect the final file size of the movie. Click on "Capture movie" to select the file name and location and click on "Save" to start the process.

During the capture process, ensure you do not resize or move the window.