Source Code Introduction

The 1.0 Source release is sparesly comented and some of the ways things are done will be changes with the next release. In fact, the 1.1 release will primarily bring changes to the source code. It is recomended that anyone wanted to extend Depth Explorer wait for the 1.1 release.

If you wish to continue, the best place to start would be by studing three classes. If you understand how the Render-Tree works, you'll understand 90% of Depth Explorer. The three most important classes are DENode, PointSet and GraphicsContext.

• PointSet stores a set of points. Most importantly, PointSet instances can be appended to one another. This is how the points of child nodes are concatinated to form the points of the parent.
• GraphicsContext stores a set of visualizations. For now, it supports lines and circles. The locations of these objects are subject to the same affine transformations that data points are. That is, if you make a line between to data points, that line will move with the points though any tranformations. GraphicsContexts can also be concatinated.
• DENode is the base class for nodes. It manages the tree functionality and the XML loading.

Now that you've read these class soure files carefully, read over some classes that inherit from DENode. This should give you an idea about how to create your own nodes. Still, while the ideas won't change, the interfaces for version 1.1 will. Anything you make now will have to be updated soon. Also, this documentation will get a lot better then as well.