## Basic Concepts

NeXtMidas is the newest member of the 20+ year old Midas family of software applications. It is a command-driven, open-architecture system for manipulating digitized signals and other data associated with signal collection and processing systems. "Command driven" means its primary mode of operation is responding to text commands entered at a keyboard or passed among software agents. "Open architecture" means it is a system whose command set is designed never to be completed.

Programmed primarily in Java, NeXtMidas' primary purpose is to provide a graphical front end for distributed signal processing systems. It is not intended to be a functionally complete replacement for other Midas systems. Its design enables the creation of applications that combine a highly portable, NeXtMidas-defined graphical user interface (GUI) with a high-performance computational back end implemented in X-Midas or other third-party software. A NeXtMidas GUI runs without customization on any Java-enabled platform.

This section summarizes NeXtMidas software capabilities, and it describes the organization and other more-or-less static characteristics of the NeXtMidas system. It comprises the following subsections:

- Summary of Capabilities
- System Overview
- Shell
- Option Trees
- Commands