X11 resources for WAVE

You can control many aspects of WAVE 's appearance and behavior by setting its resources. If you are not familiar with this concept, refer to an introductory book on using the X Window System, such as Quercia and O'Reilly's X Window System User's Guide. Since WAVE is built using the XView toolkit, all of the resources listed in the man page for xview can be used with WAVE (type `man xview' for details). If your system doesn't have an XView man page, refer to the copy provided with the WAVE distribution (xview.7). In addition, the WAVE -specific resources listed below may also be set.

The standard way to change default values of X11 resources is to define them in a file named .Xdefaults (note the initial `.') in your home directory. WAVE does this when you use \ovalbox{\rule[-.3mm]{0cm}{2.5mm}\small\sf ~Save as new defaults~} in the View panel.

If you use WAVE on workstations with different display capabilities, you can create custom resource settings for each one by moving these resource definitions from .Xdefaults to .Xdefaults-hostname (where hostname specifies the system to which the display is attached).

Wave.AllowDottedLines
This resource specifies if WAVE is allowed to render dotted lines. WAVE normally draws annotation marker bars as dotted lines, and may use dotted lines for other display elements on black-and-white displays for clarity. Some X servers do not properly render dotted lines, however; if you observe irregular or missing annotation marker bars, change the value of this resource from `True' to `False' (by editing .Xdefaults).

Wave.Anntab
This resource specifies the name of a file that contains a table of annotation definitions. The environment variable ANNTAB can also be used to specify this filename; the resource overrides the environment variable if both are set. The file contains one-line entries of the form
    15 % Funny looking beat
in which the first field specifies the (numeric) annotation code in the range between 1 and ACMAX inclusive (see /usr/include/wfdb/ecgcodes.h for a list of predefined codes and for the definition of ACMAX); the second field (`%' in the example) is a mnemonic (used in annotation display and entry), and the remainder of the entry is a description of the intended use of the annotation code (which appears next to the mnemonic in the Type field and menu of the Annotation Template window). Lines in the annotation table that begin with `#' are treated as comments and ignored. It is not necessary to specify an annotation table when editing an existing annotation file unless previously undefined annotation types are to be added to it during the editing process, although it is generally harmless to do so.

Wave.Dpi
This resource specifies the display resolution in dots per inch in the form mmxnn, where mm is the horizontal resolution and nn is the vertical resolution. Normally, the resolution is known to the X server, and it is unnecessary to specify this resource. If your X server is misinformed, WAVE 's calibrated display scales will be incorrect; the best solution is to specify the resolution using a server option such as the -dpi option supported by MIT's X11 servers, since this will solve problems common to any other applications that require calibrated scales as well. Not all X11 servers support such an option, however, so this option is available as a work-around. The command-line option -dpi overrides the resource if both are specified.

Wave.GraphicsMode
This resource specifies the graphics mode used by WAVE ; it can be overridden using the -g, -m, -O, or -S options. The legal values are 1 (monochrome mode), 2 (overlay greyscale mode), 4 (shared color mode), 6 (shared grey mode), and 8 (overlay color mode).

Wave.SignalWindow.{Grey|Color}.element
These resources specify the colors to be used on greyscale or color displays. The Color.* resources are used only if the display is color-capable and neither greyscale nor monochrome mode has been specified. element is one of Background, Grid, Cursor, Annotation, or Signal. The defaults are:

  Grey Color
Background white white
Grid grey75 grey90
Cursor grey50 orange red
Annotation grey25 yellow green
Signal black blue

Wave.SignalWindow.Mono.Background
In monochrome mode, the background is normally white, and all other elements are normally black. The reverse can be obtained by setting this resource to `black'. (There is at least one X server for which this fails.)

Wave.Scope.{Grey|Color}.{Foreground|Background}

These resources specify the colors to be used in the Scope window on greyscale or color displays. The Foreground color is used for the waveform and the time display; by default, it matches the color used for signals in the signal window (see the previous item). Some X servers do not allow the background color of the Scope window to be set, because of the color map animation and stippled erasing techniques used.

Wave.Scope.Mono.Background
This resource can be used to invert the foreground and background of the Scope window when WAVE is running in monochrome mode. This does not work for all X servers.

Wave.SignalWindow.{Height_mm|Width_mm}
These resources specify the preferred dimensions (in millimeters) for the signal window. The defaults are 120 and 250 respectively.

Wave.SignalWindow.Font
This resource specifies the font used to display annotations and time marks in the signal window. The default is `fixed'.

Wave.TextEditor
This resource specifies the name of the text editor invoked by WAVE to permit you to edit WAVE 's log and analysis menu files. The default is textedit (the OpenLook visual editor). You may override this resource by using the environment variable EDITOR, which is also used by many other UNIX applications that invoke editors.

Wave.View.showoption
These resources specify which of the Show: options at the top of the View window are enabled by default. showoption is one of Subtype, Chan, Num, Aux, Markers, SignalNames, Baselines, or Level. The values of these resources are `True' or `False'.

Wave.View.menuname
These resources specify the positions of the initial choices in the corresponding View menus, where the top item on each menu is in position 0, the one below it is in position 1, etc. menuname is one of TimeScale, AmplitudeScale, SignalMode, AnnotationMode, AnnotationOverlap, TimeMode, or GridMode. For example, to set the initial time scale to 50 mm/sec (the item at position 13 in the Time Scale:  \Ovalbox{\small\sf \ensuremath{\nabla}} menu), set Wave.View.TimeScale to 13.

Wave.View.CoarseGridMode
This resource specifies the initial grid display mode to be used at highly compressed time scales (125 mm/minute or less). The possible values are the same as those for Wave.View.GridMode. The default is 0 (no grid); recommended alternatives are 5 (1 m x 0.5 mV) or 6 (1 m x 0.1 mV).

Wave.View.CoarseTimeScale
This resource specifies the initial time scale to be used for low-rate records (those sampled at 10 Hz per signal or less). The possible values are the same as those for Wave.View.TimeScale. The default is 5 (corresponding to 5 mm per minute).

In addition to the usual ways of setting X resources, it is possible to set any of those listed above, as well as any of the generic XView resources, by using the -xrm or -default options on the command line when starting WAVE . For example, you can set the background color of the signal window using a command such as

   wave -r 100s -xrm Wave.SignalWindow.Color.Background:lightblue

George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)
2019-03-08