HippoDraw canvas window
HippoDraw canvas window
HippoDraw has highly interactive controls on the data representations via a dialog window called the Inspector. For example, one can change the width of the bins of a histogram via a slider and see the histogram plot re-display itself many times a second. See Inspector Controls for a description of the available controls.
A data source for HippoDraw is typically a NTuple. A number of visual Data representations can be made with this data. They are typically placed in Canvas Window.
Doing easy data analysis tasks should be easy and they are with with HippoDraw's Inspector. Doing more difficult tasks should be possible. Here, one would expect to find a command line and/or scripting interface to HippoDraw. But HippoDraw does not have either. Instead one of HippoDraw's Python extension modules is used. The Interactive Python Extension Module allows user manipulation of the data representations as if they were Python objects. This can be done either interactively, or via scripts written in Python. Changes made via Python are reflected in the Inspector and vice versa.
One can use HippoDraw's C++ library for Building custom applications in either C++ or Python. It consists of over 100 classes with about 50K lines of source code. However, the compiled library is relatively small being less than 2 MB without debugger symbols and a little over 12 MB with them and compiles and links in less than 20 minutes with gcc 3.4.0 on a 850 Mhz Pentium 3 mobile machine. A descriptive of the library begins with HippoDraw Library Overview.
Source code is available from ftp://ftp.slac.stanford.edu/users/pfkeb/hippodraw/. For Microsoft Windows users, a pre-built binary is available as a Microsoft installer file at the ftp site mentioned above. See Installation for installation instructions for Windows and Unix like systems. See HippoDraw Release Notes for changes, new features and bug fixes.
1.3.9.1