Index


RISC World

Locus

Another exclusive Foundation RISCWorld application

Menus

The icon bar menu.

This is a simple menu with four items.
  • Info. A standard RISC OS info box.
  • Save Choices. This will save all the currently selected preferences to file. These settings will then become the default setup the next time the program is used.
  • Quit. This will quit the application. Any data and graphs not saved will be lost

The Main Window menu.

This contains nine items which fall into three basic categories.

There are three which have an arrow to the right of them. These lead either to sub-menus or to dialogue boxes. Three others are 'greyed out' so you cannot select them.

  • Save leads to the Save sub-menu
  • Print leads to the Print dialogue box
  • Edit leads to the Edit sub-menu
  • Transform, Matrix and Statistics become active when a Data Set is loaded.
  • Clicking on Transform leads to the Transform dialogue box
  • Clicking on Matrix leads to the Matrix dialogue box
  • Clicking on Statistics leads to the Statistics dialogue box
  • Clicking on Settings leads to the Settings dialogue box
  • Clicking on Effects leads to the Effect dialogue box

The sub-menus will now be described.

The Save sub-menu

Locus can save data in five different formats. The format you use depends upon what you intend to do with the data.

LocFile format is Locus' native format and saves settings and graphs so that you can load these back into Locus at a later date. It is particularly useful for lesson preparation so that when you want to demonstrate something quickly you do not need to do all the settings manually taking up valuable lesson time. You can save whole families of curves in this way.

DrawFile format is the standard RISC OS graphic format and is useful for putting graphs into other documents (eg. Projects, Exam papers, Tests etc..) All currently drawn graphs will be included in the graph. The saving process may take a few seconds because the data must be converted into the Drawfile format.

Text, CSV and SID formats are slightly less standard. Locus will calculate values of the current function between the 'Start' and 'End' values and save them in two variable comma separated value (CSV) format using the interval specified by the 'Step' field.

The Edit sub-menu

This has six items, each of which opens a dialogue box.

  • Functions opens the Edit Function dialogue box.
  • Families opens the Families dialogue box.
  • Constants opens the Constants dialogue box.
  • Formulae opens the Edit Formulae dialogue box.
  • Coordinates opens the Coordinates dialogue box.
  • Title opens the Title dialogue box.

These are all described in the next section.

Foundation RISCWorld

Index