Webace with enhanced display and manipulation of fmap displays ============================================================== Tim Hubbard, Sanger Centre, 27/7/97 (th@sanger.ac.uk) An enhanced version of Webace, the WWW interface from National Agricultural Library (http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/acedocs/webace.html) originally written by JD Barnett, is now available. The enhancements have largely been made possible by the incorporation of gif creation code into the aceserver (to create a gifaceserver) by Richard Durbin and Jean Thierry-Mieg. The front end changes: --------------------- The fmap display now has a bar of pop-ups and buttons directly above the image allowing you to select the click mode; select the image size; toggle rev-comp and/or DNA and run genefind. A new image is generated based on the current settings either as a result of any scale operation (zoom buttons or virtual zoom area down left hand side); a single click on any object on the image or by clicking the redraw button. The state of the rev-comp and DNA settings are saved between images; the others (mode, size, genefind) return to default positions. By default clicking on an object simulates what would be a doubleclick in the standalone acedb and causes text information about that object to be displayed in a separate window (which persists and is used repeatedly). Holding the mouse over the object shows in the status bar the information about that object that would normally result from a singleclick. Since a singleclick also causes highlighting of that and related objects, which can be visually very useful, the mode popup allows the user to switch to this mode when required. Since the default display can be too narrow, particularly when DNA and GeneFind are used, another popup allows display size to be selected. The back end changes: --------------------- 1. The aceserver has been replaced by a gifaceserver (direct substitution, only difference is the availability of some new commands). All acedb transactions, including gif creation, are now via perl-aceclient library calls. The special version of giface is no longer required. This results in major performance improvements since there is no longer the delay associated with starting the heavyweight giface application for each WWW transaction. 2. Gif commands now create 'box' files as well as 'gif' files. The box files specify the coordinate information of any object on the image. The display cgi script parses this file and passes it to the web page where javascript is used to create a clientside map using the onMouseOver command to cause information about the object to be displayed in the status bar when the mouse is held over it. Javascript routines intercept any mouseclick and create the command appropriate for the popup menu and button settings. The routines also create a serious of virtual zoom bars along the left size of the image allowing rapid selection of various magnifications. 2. Pages of standard size with or without reverse complement and with or without DNA are cached and can be pre-generated. Pages resulting from a singleclick on an object (highlighting) are not cached. Several routines have been modified to allow a giface-cache directory to be defined for each database being served by webace. Relevant locations: ------------------ A demo version of webace serving an old version of humace can be accessed via: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Teams/Informatics/Humana/Humace/ Documentation is at: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Teams/Informatics/Humana/Webace/ A gzip'd tar file of all the files you need and installation instructions is at: ftp://ftp.sanger.ac.uk/pub/th/webace/webace.970727.tar.gzip Please send comments, bug reports, suggestions for interface enhancements etc. to mailto:th@sanger.ac.uk