Description
The text fields show the numerical values of some variables. By default
truncation is enabled (Menu: Options->Truncation) meaning that not all
digits of the variables are shown but only those that are necessary to
reproduce the current reflection pattern. If the truncation option is
switched off then all digits of the mentioned variables are displayed.
All values that are entered into a field are assumed to have the applications
current precision (Menu: Settings->Precision).
This behavior can only be changed for the height field by adding an & character
to the last digit before pressing enter. The & character sets the number of
digits as the precision of the height number as can be seen by looking at the
message field at the bottom. The effect is that the internal error estimation
is now initialized with an higher value and therefore will faster reach the
calculation terminating error of 10e-8.
Main Tab
A new reflection computation is started when you press enter in one of the
first four variable fields.
- Height:
- The y-value of the light source position.
- Distance:
- The x-value of the light source position.
- Angle:
- Amount of rotation of the circles.
- Radius:
- The radius of the circles. To set a percent value p open the
high precision calculator and copy and paste the result
of the expression p*2/(2*grid_size*100) into the radius field.
- Reflections:
- The number of reflections of the visible reflection pattern.
- Length:
- The length of the visible reflection path intersected with
the box containing the imaginary grid (see help of main
window) divided by the side length of the grid.
- Loops:
- The number of loops of the visible reflection path. The loop
counter algorithm is very simple: Starting from the
beginning it checks for the first intersection point. If the
check is positive then the loop counter is increased and the
loop will be replaced by the intersection point. This is
repeated until the final ray is reached.
Scanner Tab
The Scanner tab only becomes selectable when the scanner has been opened
before. The first four fields define the scan frame.
Pressing enter in one of the first four fields in the scanner tab starts a new scan.
- Min Angle, Max Angle:
- The min and max values of the x-axis of the scanner canvas.
- Min Height, Max Height:
- The min and max values of the y-axis of the scanner canvas.
- Observable Max:
- The maximum of all values that have been
computed for the selected observable during
the scan.
- Precision Low Errors:
- If a reflection pattern computation can't be
finished because the selected precision is not
high enough than this counter is incremented by one.