The MaVi Short Write-Up

Alexei Soloviev

Version 1.2


MaVi (MAtrix VIewer) is s simple visualization program for matrix data. Data is displayed inside the main window as 2D color field and two orthogonal 1D slices can be chosen in additional windows. MaVi allows one to pick up and explore the individual elements of the matrix. It can be used for on-line or off-line analysis in the contronl or data acqusition systems.

1. Basis

MaVi is based on The Fast Light Toolkit, FLTK (pronounced "fulltick"). To compile MaVi from sources, you should install FLTK first.

MaVi uses the OpenGL library for its graphics. MaVi also uses GL2PS library included in distribution to produce output to PostScript (PS), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) or Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

2. Installation

In order to compile and install MaVi on your system, type the following in the base directory of the MaVi distribution:

% ./configure
% make
% make install

Should you run into problems please report them to the author.

3. Input

MaVi takes ASCII data file as input. The file is read line-by-line ignoring ones beginning with "#". Number of entries in the first accepted line is taken as a number of columns in a displayed matrix. Next lines are cut when they are longer or added with zeroes when are shorter (thus a table in input file can be non-rectangular). Number of rows in the displayed matrix is equal to number of accepted lines in input file.

4. Screenshot

Here is how MaVi looks like. Input file to be displayed with MaVi is the Moon image.

5. Customer

At first, MaVi was developed on the order of SMALL-ANGLE NEUTRON SCATTERING GROUP of Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. It is intended for testing new position-sensitive detector (project "Volga") in a simple data acquisition mode.