Navigate the plot

Everything happens on the plot itself; there are no axis dialogs. The full list is in Gestures and keys.

Choose a time range

The pill in the bar holds the presets 1h, 8h, 1d and 1w. A preset shows that span ending now, following the current time.

The ⋯ segment opens a small popover for anything else. Its Last field has the keyboard, with the current span selected: type a span such as 90m, 2 days, 3w or 1 hour 30 min and press Enter to show it ending now, following the current time. The units are s, m (minutes), h, d, w, mo (30 days) and y (365 days), or their names (min, hour, week, month, year, ...). The chips beside the label, 2h, 12h, 3d, 4w and 1y, show those spans in one click.

For a fixed range, fill in From and To as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (local time, seconds optional) and press Enter in either. Tab moves from From to To. An empty To, or now, means now, and the range then follows the current time.

If a field can't be read, the error appears under it and the popover stays open to try again. Esc, or a click anywhere else, closes the popover without changing the range.

When you have zoomed or panned away from a preset, no segment is lit and the pill shows the span you are looking at, such as 3h 20m.

Pan and zoom time

  • Drag the plot left or right to pan. Let go while moving and it glides to a stop.
  • Scroll, or pinch on a trackpad, to zoom about the pointer.
  • A horizontal trackpad swipe pans.
  • ← and → pan by a tenth of the span; + and - zoom about the middle.

Zoom to a box

Right-drag, or shift-drag, a box over the part you want. Both the time and value axes zoom to it.

Zoom values

Each value axis scales itself to its traces' visible data, including the min/max bands. Traces with different units, or values of very different sizes, get axes of their own; see Work with value axes.

  • Drag up or down on an axis (its labels), or shift- or ctrl-scroll over it, to zoom that axis alone.
  • Shift- or ctrl-scroll over the data zooms every axis about the pointer, and dragging the plot pans the values of any axis that is zoomed.
  • Zooming an axis turns its autoscale off. The ⤢ button, or A, turns it back on for all of them.

Follow now, or look at the past

While the plot follows the current time, the ● Live pill shows a red dot and new values appear at the right edge. Panning or zooming into the past stops following. Click the pill, press L, or drag back to the right edge and let go to follow again.

Read values

Hover over the plot. A vertical hairline follows the pointer, with a card showing the time and each visible trace's value there, with its units, coloured by alarm severity when it is in alarm. Where the archiver has thinned the data into bins, the card also shows the bin's min and max.

Start again

Double-click the plot, press Home, or click ⌂: the time range returns to the last preset and autoscale turns on.

Zoom the interface

To make the text and controls bigger or smaller (not the data: that is zooming time or values), use the Zoom − 100% + row at the top of the ≡ menu, or Ctrl+= (or Ctrl++), Ctrl+− and Ctrl+0, as in a browser. They work even while you type in the search box. Clicking the percentage, or Ctrl+0, goes back to 100%. The steps run from 50% to 300%, and each change shows "Zoom 125%" briefly.

The zoom is remembered for the next start (ui_zoom in settings.json). --ui-scale 1.25 or ARCHIVEVIEW_UI_SCALE=1.25 starts at 125% whatever was saved.

Undo and redo

Explore freely: zoom in to look at something, then step back. ↶ and ↷ in the bar undo and redo, as do Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y), and the mouse's back and forward buttons, which suit stepping through a zoom history. Each button's tooltip names the step, such as "Undo zoom" or "Redo move SR-DI-DCCT-01:LIFETIME to Time (h)". In a narrow window they are in the ≡ menu.

What can be undone is everything that changes what the plot shows:

  • the time range: zooming and panning however done, presets, a custom range, and leaving or returning to Live (undo returns to Live if that is where the step started);
  • each value axis: its zoom and pan, autoscale, log scale and a fixed range;
  • a reset, as one step, so an accidental double-click can be undone;
  • traces: adding PVs, removing one (it comes back with its colour, its axis, its place in the legend and its history, without fetching it again), hiding or showing one, moving one to another axis, and renaming an axis;
  • opening a view, Start empty, and the restored session (the view's name in the ≡ menu comes back too; the archiver does not, so switch it back in the archiver pill if the view changed it).

One gesture is one step: a drag from press to release, or a run of scrolls or key presses with no pause longer than about half a second, or an arrow key held down. Time moving on while Live is not a step. A new change after undoing clears what could be redone. About 100 steps are kept, for the session only: they are not saved with views.

Settings and files are not undone: the search text and recent searches, the theme and UI zoom, the archiver, saving or deleting a view, the window's size and position, and an axis picked out by a click.