Saving and Restoring Display Panel State

NRAO Home > CASA > CASA Cookbook and User Reference Manual

7.2.2 Saving and Restoring Display Panel State

It is straightforward to save a display panel’s current state (what data is on display along with data and panel settings). Select ’Save Display Panel State to File’ (seventh icon from left in Figure 7.3) and confirm the filename. It is strongly advisable (but not required) to retain the file’s ’.rstr’ extension.

Press ’Restore Display Panel State from File’ (the button to the right of ’Save Display Panel State to File’) to choose a previously-created restore file. You can also select restore files from the ’Load Data’ window.

It is possible to restore MSs or images, multiple layers such as contour-over-raster, and LEL displays. You can also the save the panel state with no data loaded, to restore preferred initial settings such as overall panel size. Animation and zoom state should likewise restore themselves.

Restore is fairly forgiving about data location, and will find files located:

in the original location recorded in the restore file
in the current working directory (where you started the viewer)
in the restore file’s directory
in the original location relative to the restore file

This means that restore files will generally work if moved together with data files. The process is less forgiving if you save the display of an LEL (image) expression, however; the files must be in the locations specified in the original LEL expression. If a data file is not found, restore will attempt to proceed but results will vary.

Restore files are in ascii (xml) format, and some obvious manual edits are possible. However, these files are longer and more complex than you might imagine. Use caution, and back up restore files you want to preserve. If you make a mistake, the viewer may not recognize the file as a restore file; other unexpected results could also occur. It is usually easier and safer to make changes on the display panel and then save the restore file again.

[next] [prev] [prev-tail] [front] [up]

More information about CASA may be found at the CASA web page

This code is available under the terms of the GNU General Public Lincense