NPIB1.6 User's Guide

by

Ronald D. Kriz*, Associate Professor
Randy T. Levensalor**, Graduate Research Assistant
* Engineering Science and Mechanics, and ** Computer Science
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, Virginia 24061


Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Installation
  3. Set up "public_html" for JWave and NPIB"
  4. "How-to" NPIB-form Tutorials:
  5. Frequently asked questions:
  6. Known bugs:


4.1 How-To-Create NPIB1.6 forms. Example: Polar Plot, module02

For NPIB1.6 modules a split web page appears with the NPIB1.6 form in the lower frame and the upper frame appears with the "how-to-use" instructions. The lower frame is created by a java form1.6 builder. This web page describes how to create the NPIB1.6 form for the polar plot module02 as an example.

The NPIB1.6 form, shown below, appears in the lower frame.

We provide a NPIB1.6 form editor ("form.jar") that creates new NPIB1.6 (*.html) files or edits existing NPIB1.6 (*.html) files. On the server spelunker.sv.vt.edu this NPIB1.6 form editor is located in one place:

/www/jwave/npib/form.jar
The file form.jar is archived in the directory shown below along with java source code.
/www/jwave/npib/form.jar_Archive/form.jar_1.6/form.jar

In this case the /www/jwave/npib/form.jar is accessed by setting both the PATH and CLASSPATH to this directory. With these two paths set any NPIB file (*.html) can be edited in any directory when you logged onto the server (i.e. spelunker.sv.vt.edu).

echo $PATH --> ... /www/jwave/npib/: ....

echo $CLASSPATH --> ... /www/jwave/npib/form.jar: ....

---------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTERNATE METHOD OF ACCESSING form.jar: is used when creating NPIB forms on remote
workstations or when using two different versions (1.5 or 1.6) of NPIB form.jar on the "NPIB-server"
(i.e. spelunker). Either of these situations can be accommodated without defining PATH or CLASSPATH
This can be done by creating a shell script for each version of form.jar.

Example of a shell script file named, form1.5:

#!/bin/sh
java -cp /usr/local/java2/lib:/www/jwave/applets98/form/form.jar:. form.FormLoader $*         

Example of a shell script file named, form1.6:

!/bin/sh
java -cp /usr/local/java2/lib:$HOME/public_html/npib/form.jar:. form.FormLoader $*

These shell scripts can be placed in the user's ~/bin directory if the user defines
their path to go to ~/bin (common practice). Of course depending on where the user
locates the different form.jar files requires changing the paths in these scripts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

For this example on the server spelunker.sv.vt.edu we can go to the directory /www/jwave/crcd/kriz/modules/module02 and edit the file npib1-6_polar.html with the following command at the UNIX prompt.

   spelunker% form1.6 -e npib1-6_polar.html

To create a new NPIB file at the UNIX prompt type...

   spelunker% form1.6 -e

You can give this file a name using the Save option when you leave the editor.


Only one "Working Window" should appear on your monitor**: (1) "NPIB Creator". The earlier 1.5 version also generated a second window: "Output Editor". IF you are logged onto the "NPIB-server" (i.e. spelunker) from a remote workstation and are using NPIB1.6 form.jar file, then you must have setup the environmental DISPLAY variable to display X-windows back to your remote workstation**. If you are creating NPIB forms on a remote workstation we recommend that you install your own NPIB1.6 form.jar file in the ~/bin directory or create shell scripts in the ~/bin directory as described in the section on ALTERNATE METHOD OF ACCESSING form.jar. !!NOTE!! If you are creating the NPIB1.6 file (*.html) on a remote machine it is not necessary to ftp transfer this file to the "NPIB-server" (i.e. spelunker) because the newer NPIB1.6 form editor-creator has a "Save Local" or "Save Ftp" feature built into NPIB1.6 form editor-creator that transfers the edited NPIB1.6 form file to a directory on the "NPIB-server" (i.e. spelunker). This will be explained by example below.


Information for working with the NPIB Creator "Working Window"

At the top of the NPIB Creator "Working Window" you can select from a number of pulldown menu options.

At the top of the NPIB Creator window under File, the choices are as expected New, Open Local, Open Ftp, Save Local, Save Ftp, and Exit. Under Edit the choices are Refresh, Remove, Properties, Passwords, and Output Editor. Properties, Passwords, and Output Editor will be discussed later. Refresh refreshes the working window, Remove removes the last entry that was created form the items under Insert shown below.

Under Insert the choices are Text Field, Label, and Button, and Grid. The majority of the time you will select a Text Field box with a Label above the box. Grid inserts an m-rows x n-columns of Text Fields because such a grid is often needed and this saves time. A Button is used to select or initiate a task.

When and item is selected under Insert an Insert-window appears prompting you to enter a unique name for this item: Text-Field, Label, Button. This name will be used again in the Output Editor "Working Window".

After you have entered a unique name followed by OK, the item should appear just after the last item entered in the NPIB Creator window. To move and reposition the button, label, or text-field items, simply select the item to be moved by holding down the left mouse button over the item on the NPIB Creator "Working Window" and drag (hold down mouse button while moving the mouse) the item by moving the mouse to the desired location. When you let go of the mouse button the item will appear in the new location. NOTE: you will not see the item "move" but rather the item will re-appear in the new position of the NPIB form near the location where the left mouse button was released. You may have to reposition the selected item a second time and "fine-tune" the the exact location. This is not intuative and takes some practice. In this way all of the items (Text Field, Label, Button) of a working NPIB form can be created and positioned as desired.

HELPFUL HINT: unless you have an excellent memory you may want to maintain a hand written sketch on a seperate piece of paper as you build your NPIB form where the "unique name" is written next to the item as you build the form. You will need to access some of these "unique names" again when building the file data format in the Output Editor "Working Window".

Next you will want to assign more information to your button, label or text-field. When a text field, label, or button is selected with the left mouse button a "Properties" window appears that requires you enter specific infomation for that item. For example the figures below show Property windows for each of the items: Text Field, Label, and Button.

Common to all these windows are endOfRow, foreground, background, and font. If the item is the last in a row you must specify this by changing the endOfRow to be True. Experiment with and change foreground, background, and font as needed.

Text Field Property Window options not already mentioned: selectionEnd, columns, text, selectionStart, editable, caretPosition, and name:

The Text Field properties window, shown at the left, is the tallest and has the most options: sectionStart, selectionEnd define the beginning and end of the text-field displayed in the text entry window. The possiblilities here are too numerous to spell out in detail so the best way to learn about these options is to experiment and see how each of them effect the NPIB form format.

The editable: True/False button at the bottom can be selected so that the form user can not edit the displayed text if False is selected.

Label Property Window options,: alignment

Options for the labels are the same as for Text Field except for the alignment option which left justifies the text if set to 0 and centers the text if set to 1.

Only the Label Property Window initially sets the name and text equal. Typically the Label_name and text have different entries. "Text" is what the users sees on the final NPIB form and "name" is the unique Label_name assigned at the time the item is created with Insert and is hidden except if viewed in this property window.

Button Property Window options: actionCommand

There is only one unique option for the Button Properties, that is the actionCommand. In our case there is only one button which is the submit button. The actionCommand only makes sense within the shell script. This feature has only been used for the submit button.


Information for working with the Edite - Output Editor "Working Window"

This "Working Window" describes how the data that is displayed in the NPIB form will be formatted in the file submitted to the shell script.

For comparison the resulting file polar.dat shown below corresponds to the syntax shown above.

GRAPHITE-EPOXY
EPOXY ELASTIC PROPERTIES ( N/M**2 )
   EPOXY YOUNGS MODULUS,   EM=+5.280E+09
   EPOXY POISSONS RATIO,  NUM=0.354
FIBER ELASTIC PROPERTIES ( N/M**2 )
 FIBER LONGITUDINAL YOUNGS MODULUS, EFL=+2.320E+11
 FIBER TRANSVERSE YOUNGS MODULUS,   EFT=+1.500e+10
 FIBER SHEAR MODULUS L-T PLANE,    GFLT=+2.400e+10
 FIBER SHEAR MODULUS  T  PLANE,    GFTT=+5.020E+09
 FIBER PLANE STRAIN BULK MODULUS,  KFTT=+1.500E+10
FIBER VOLUME FRACTIONS: 0.00 0.60 1.00

TIME SAVING FEATURE: At the top of the "Working Window" there is a window that lists "names" associated with components: Text Fields, Labels, Buttons. These "names" are listed in the window when "refresh" is selected. Double clicking on any of these names transfers this entry into the format window below with the correct syntax. This feature can save alot of time constructing the required syntax.

The final entry is the window where the format is set with links to each of the textfield_names. The very first line in this window defines the filename where data is stored according to the format specified in the lines below. Here spaces are important if the program reading this file as data input requires accurate spacing which seperates the numbers associated with textfield_name. Notice that all numbers associated with textfield_names use the syntax, <link="textfield_name"\> . Recall that the textfield_names were assigned when the textfield was first created. This is why the HELPFUL HINT recommended that you keep a sketch of textfiled_names associated with the numbers in the boxes on the NPIB form. You can always verify the textfield_name associated with the texfield_item on the NPIB Creator "Working Window" but it is quicker if you use a sketch.

NOTE: after building many NPIB forms this portion is where the most errors occur and hence the most time is spent. Getting the format just right, is a task that is inherent to organizing data in a file that is to be read by legacy code. Although we provided some helpful time saving features in this editor, attention to detail is an unavoidable task that must be realized in constructing this file

A useful feature built into the format window is a conditional test, that can be used to include textfield_names in the final data file depending on a numerical value assigned to a previous textfield, i.e. if the following entry is a conditional test that is placed just before other entries on the same line in the format window. If the condition is true then the entries following this conditional test are included in the final file. This allows for more flexibility in construction of the final data file generated by the NPIB form.


Information for working with the Edit - Form Properties "Working Window"

This "Working Window" describes properties associates with the NPIB form.

Codebase: form.jar location, given as a path after the Web server-URL
                      (i.e. /npib is equivalent to http://www.jave.vt.edu/npib)
Name:directory names appended after the output directory where files are archived
Title: HTML title (arbitrary - "foobar") for the NPIB form
CGI location: location of the npib.cgi file which can be different from server/cgi-bin
Height - Width: Height and Width of NPIB form in pixels as it appears on a Web browser.


Information for working with theEdit - Passwords "Working Window"

This "Working Window" describes information needed to submit a job to remote site computers. The three images below show the progression of setting up this information.

Password information is stored in the lower area of the Passwords "Working Window". Each line corresponds to providing information unique to each remote site computer. Different password information can be set up for submitting multiple jobs to different computers.

The first entry on each line is the password name, i.e. polar_remote. Double clicking on this entry opens this name in a "Remove password" window which is shown below.

Selecting OK removes this line from the list below and places this information in the editable portion of the Passwords "Working Window".

!!! CAUTION !!! Blank lines in this list will generate an error and are obviously hard to see !!!!.

When edits are complete select the "Add" button at the bottom to add this information back to the line-list at the bottom of thw "Working Window". These entries should be obvious except the "Description" entry appears in the NPIB form as text just above the remote site: User Name, Password, and Host Name. We recommend to leave the Password blank or have some descriptive message for the user other than profanity.


Save your results

Save your results locally if you are logged onto the the Web server**
[or]
Save your results by FTP if you are creating the NPIB form on a remote workstation.


YOUR NPIB FORM IS NOW COMPLETE

Direct Editing NPIB1.6 Files Using a Text Editor: It is possible to directly edit the syntax of the NPIB1.6 (*.html) file because it is a text file and the syntax is simple enough to understand. We only recommend that in some instances this may be an option to consider when the forms are particularly large where you may want to copy and paste large blocks. In this case again the item_name is key to finding the portion to edit.


**NOTE: If you are logged onto the server (i.e. spelunker.sv.vt.edu from a remote workstation make sure you either use ssh or setup xhost "server-name" and setenv DISPLAY "remote-workstation.IP.name:0.0" so that X-Windows are sent back to your remote-workstation monitor. YOU MAY NEED TO REPOSITION THE WINDOWS USING ALT-F7

"How-to" Create NPIB form interface to the Polar Plot (module02)

The NPIB form interface to the Polar Plot (module02) has be organized on the Web at ~rkriz/public_html/crcd/modules/module02 with sufficient documentation ("README" files and comments embedded in code) in each directory so that the reader can study "how-to" setup similar modules. Below we outline how to create a module and interface to the NPIB form.

  1. Download and archive your legacy code and sample data sets for module02 at
    cd ~rkriz/public_html/crcd/modules/module02/ARCHIVE/ORIG_NIST/

  2. Copy legacy code and sample data sets into cd ../MOD_F77 and make the necessay changes so that the lecacy code compiles and executes correctly in this directory.

  3. Copy modified F77 code and sample data sets into cd ../MOD_PVWAVE and further modify the code to generate output that can be used by PV-Wave to generate Polar Plots. In this directory everything is tested first before it is moved into the "Working" directories that will interface with the NPIB form. The README file in this directory fully describes the remaining steps needed to create the interface between the NPIB form and module02. This README file in this directory is listed below FYI.
---- This is the README file for ../module02/ARCHIVE/MOD_PVWAVE ----

This is a working archive directory where all results are confirmed
prior to making this into an interactive NPIB interactive module by
creating results in this directory. Instructions for creating results
are outlined below.

All programs in this directory work so that the viewer can download, 
compile and run this programs on their computers.  This section is 
divided into five sections:

1. Compile polar.f and create the executable polar.x 

 - $FC $FFLAGS polar.f -o polar.x $LINK_FNL (If IMSL libs are used)
 - f77 polar.f -o polar.x (If subroutine inv(a,n,b) is used) 

     NOTE: polar.x is spawned in the PV-WAVE procedure files

3) Plot results using existing PV-Wave procedure files

 - % wave create_e3
 - % wave create_g23
 - % wave create_nu32

4) View results in polar.html

5) Cleanup files in this directory

 - % remove_excess_files.sh

---------------------------------------------------------------------
     CREATION OF INTERACTIVE NPIB1.5 INTERFACE FOR THIS MODULE

Once verified, these working programs are copied to the NPIB directory 
/www/jwave/applets98/Receiver/commands/polar_.d except for *.jpg, 
*.byt *.out, *.DAT, *.sh such that the only remaining files in the 
polar_.d directory are: *.pro, *.f, *.x, and polar.html. 

DO NOT COPY README file from the MOD_PVWAVE directory to polar_.d.
DO NOT DELETED *.sh files FROM the MOD_PVWAVE directory.
The remove_excess_files.sh shell script file will remove the
appropriate files from MOD_PVWAVE for archiving.  

A shell script file named "polar_" recreates results in a unique 
directory located in http://www.jwave.vt.edu/output/"app_date-time"

  /www/jwave/applets98/Receiver/commands/polar_:
  -------------------------------------------------------------------
  #!/bin/csh
  cp /www/jwave/applets98/Receiver/commands/polar_.d/* $1
  cd $1
  source /usr/local/vni/CTT3.0/ctt/bin/cttsetup.csh
  source /usr/local/vni/wave/bin/wvsetup
  wave create_e3 > & e3_foobar 
  wave create_g23 > & g23_foobar 
  wave create_nu32 > & nu32_foobar
  rm e3_foobar g23_foobar nu32_foobar 
  rm *.x
  rm *.byt
  rm *legend.jpg
  rm *.SAVE
  exit 0

  ----------------------------------------------------------------
     CREATION* OF INTERACTIVE NPIB1.6 INTERFACE FOR THIS MODULE

Is the same as creating NPIB1.5 interface except the "polar_" shell
script file is replaced with the npib-script file "polar.npib" and
both the polar_.d directory and polar.npib file are located within 
the users public_html directory at ~USER_NAME/public_html/npib/polar/. 
The polar.npib file uses ssh commands and unique "npib-commands" to
transfer files to the remote computer and coordinate execution at 
remote and local(npib-server) computers. For NPIB1.6 the polar_.d 
directory contains the same files except remote and local shell script 
files are included in the NPIB1.6 polar_.d directory that are used to 
execute program and procedures at remote and local computers. A more
complete description of the npib-commands is given in the NPIB1.6 
Users-Guide. 

   ~rkriz/public_html/npib/polar/polar.npib
   -----------------------------------------------------------
   lrun /export/home/rkriz/public_html/npib/polar/copypolar.sh
   sput $polar_remote
   srun $polar_remote ./remotepolar.sh
   sget $polar_remote 
   lrun ./localpolar.sh

   shell script files in ~rkriz/public_html/npib/polar/polar_.d
   ------------------------------------------------------------
   #!/bin/csh
   #------------------ remotepolar.sh --------------------
   polar.x
   exit 0

   #!/bin/csh
   #-------------------- localpolar.sh  -------------------
   source /usr/local/vni/wave/bin/wvsetup
   wave create_e3 > & e3_foobar
   wave create_g23 > & g23_foobar
   wave create_nu32 > & nu32_foobar
   rm e3_foobar g23_foobar nu32_foobar
   rm *.x
   rm *.byt
   rm *legend.jpg
   exit 0 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
* Motivation for creating NPIB1.6: With NPIB1.6 all files are located
  within the users home directory. NPIB1.5 required that the user copy
  and access files in a variety of different locations on the server. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronald D. Kriz, Virginia Tech, 06-20-01   


Contact: Dr Ron Kriz
Revised 6/26/01
http://www.jwave.vt.edu/crcd/archives/npib1.6/usersguide/how-to-create1.6.html