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This section describes the messages which TOPCAT can transmit to other
tools which understand the PLASTIC protocol, and how to cause them
to be sent.
In most cases you can choose two ways to transmit a PLASTIC message
within TOPCAT:
-
Broadcast
- Broadcasts the message to all other applications currently registered
with the hub which understand that message.
-
Send
- Sends the message to a single application which you select.
The suitable applications (ones which are registered with the hub
and claim to understand that message) are listed and you can choose one.
Examining the list of applications in the Send
menu gives you an indication of which ones a Broadcast
would broadcast to.
Note however that just because an application appears in this
list doesn't necessarily mean it will do
something substantial with the message, for instance some applications
register with the hub just to monitor traffic.
In general the Broadcast and Send
actions will be disabled (greyed-out) if TOPCAT is
not registered with a hub, or if there are no applications listening
which claim to support the relevant message.
Below is a list of places you can cause TOPCAT to transmit PLASTIC messages.
The PLASTIC message IDs are listed along with the descriptions;
unless you are a tool developer you can probably ignore these.
-
Transmit Table
- The Control Window's
Interop menu provides
Broadcast Table and Send Table
options which cause the currently selected table to be transmitted
to other listening applications.
They are invited to load the table in its current
("apparent") form.
Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/load
or ivo://votech.org/votable/loadFromURL
-
Transmit Subset
- The Subset Window's
Interop menu
contains Broadcast Subset and Send Subset
options.
These cause the selected subset to be sent to other listening applications
(these actions are only available when one of the subsets is currently
selected).
Applications are invited to highlight the rows corresponding to that subset.
Note this will only have an effect if the other application(s) are
displaying the table that this subset relates to. This will be
the case in one of two situations:
(1) the table has been loaded from the same URL/filename by the
other tool(s) or
(2) the other tool(s) have acquired the table because it has
already been broadcast using PLASTIC.
Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/showObjects
-
Transmit Row
- One of the
Activation Actions
you can choose is Transmit Row.
If this is chosen, then every time you activate a row
(e.g. by clicking on the corresponding point in a plot)
other applications who are looking at the same table are invited
to highlight that row in their copy of the table.
As for Transmit Subset above, this will only have an
effect if the other application(s) are displaying the same table.
Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/highlightObject
-
Transmit Coordinates
- Another
Activation Action
is Transmit Coordinates.
In this case when you activate a row (e.g. by clicking on the
corresponding point in a plot)
other applications are invited to point out the
sky position corresponding to the row which is activated,
for instance by placing a cursor over it.
The table columns which correspond to Right Ascension and Declination
must be selected for this to work.
Message ID: ivo://votech.org/sky/pointAtCoords
-
Transmit Image
- The Density Plot
produces a 2-d histogram which is actually an image.
Its Interop menu provides
Broadcast Image and Send Image options
which will send this (as a FITS image) to other applications
which can display it in some way.
This is a useful supplement to the facilities of the Density Plot
window, since it doesn't have very sophisticated image display
features (variable colour maps, contour plots etc).
Message ID: ivo://votech.org/fits/image/loadFromURL
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Next: Messages Received
Up: Tool Interoperability
Previous: PLASTIC control
TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page:
http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email:
m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk