Summary of Capabilities
Following is a terse list of the most significant NeXtMidas capabilities
with references to where more detailed information can be found:
Session Continuity
NeXtMidas infrastructure provides much of
the "glue" that holds a session together. The most visible component
of this infrastructure is the shell. See Shell for a
complete description of how to take advantage of the NeXtMidas shell.
Expandable Command Libraries
NeXtMidas' ever increasing set of
commands to perform signal acquisition, processing, and display are organized
into options trees. See Option Trees for a
general description of the option tree concept. Information about the commands
contained in a specific option tree can be found at $NMROOT/htdocs/help/index.html
Flexible Data I/O
Most signal data manipulated by NeXtMidas is
stored in the portable BLUE file format (see Signal
Files), but there's also provision for saving small, transient datasets in
memory as result parameters (see Results
Parameters).
Versatile Command Interpreter
The NeXtMidas command language
defines verbs, parameters, and switches, which can be entered in a variety of
convenient ways. See System Operation to
learn how to minimize the amount of typing and memorization you must do.
Macro Programmability
Casual users can easily create new
NeXtMidas commands using the built-in macro programming language. See
Macros for a complete description of NeXtMidas macro
programming.
Graphics
The primary purpose of NeXtMidas is to create
graphical displays with embedded controls, as described in
Graphics.
Interoperability
NeXtMidas is interoperable with X-Midas (see
Interoperability with X-Midas) and
gets along well with certain commercial applications (see
Compatibility with Third-Party
Software).
Help
In addition to this online help, other information is
available in NeXtMidas User's Guide, NeXtMidas Installation Guide,
NeXtMidas Software Technical Manual, and the software release notes.