Dialog: Options

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Dialog: Options

Menu Tools > WRENCH Options...

 

Display

 

Formatted Text Output (Rich Text Format)

used for setting the appearance of the Docklight communication window. The two different serial data streams, "Channel 1" and "Channel 2", may be displayed using different colors and styles. The standard setting uses different colors for the two channels, but using different font styles (e.g. Italics for "Channel 2") is also possible. You may also choose the overall font size here.

 

NOTE: If you change the font size, the communication window contents will be deleted. For all other changes, Docklight will try to preserve the display contents.

 

Plain Text Output (faster display, but no colors & fonts)

The formatted text output is similar to a word processor and consumes a considerable amount of CPU time. It also requires frequent memory allocation and deallocation which might decrease your PC performance. So if you are monitoring a high-speed communication link, but still want to keep an eye on the serial data transferred, try using the "Plain Text Output" format.

 

Control Characters (ASCII 0 - 31)

For communication data containing both printing ASCII text as well as non-printing control characters, it is sometimes helpful to see the names of the occurring control characters in the ASCII mode display window. Docklight provides an optional display settings to allow this. You can also suppress the control characters (except CR and LF) for cases when this would clutter your display.

 

Display Modes

 

Communication Window Modes

By default, Docklight will display four representations of the serial data streams: ASCII, HEX, Decimal and Binary. You may deactivate some of these modes to increase Docklight's overall performance. For example, the Binary representation of the data is rarely required. Disabling Binary mode for the communication window will considerably increase processing speed. Even when turned off for the communication window, logging in all formats is still possible.

 

See also the Plain Text Output option above.

 

 

Date/Time Stamps

 

Adding a Date/Time Stamp

Docklight adds a date/time stamp to all data that is transmitted or received. You may choose to insert this date/time stamp into the communication window and the log file whenever the data flow direction changes between Channel 1 and Channel 2.

 

For applications where the data flow direction does not change very often, you may want to have additional date/time stamps at regular time intervals. For this, activate the Clock - additional date/time stamp... option then and choose a time interval.

 

On a half duplex line (e.g. 2 wire RS485), changes in data direction are difficult to detect. Still, in most applications there will be a pause on the communication bus before a new device starts sending. Use the Pause detection... option to introduce additional time stamps and make the pauses visible in your communication log.

 

Date/Time Format

Docklight offers time stamps with a resolution of up to 1/1000 seconds (1 millisecond). For compatibility to earlier Docklight versions (V1.8 and smaller), 1/100 seconds is available, too.

 

NOTE: The resulting time tagging accuracy can be considerably different, e.g. 10-20 milliseconds only. The actual accuracy depends on your serial communications equipment, your PC configuration, the Docklight Display Settings (see above) and the Docklight Expert Options. See the section How to Obtain Best Timing Accuracy for details.

 

 

Control Characters Shortcuts

 

Here you can define your own keyboard shortcuts for ASCII Control Characters (ASCII code < 32), or for any character code > 126. Keyboard shortcuts can be used within the following Docklight dialogs and functions

Dialog: Edit Send Sequence

Dialog: Edit Receive Sequence

Dialog: Find Sequence

Dialog: Send Sequence Parameter

Keyboard Console

 

For each character from decimal code 0 to 31 and from 127 to 255, you can define a keyboard combination to insert this character into a sequence (Shortcut). You may also define a letter which is used to display this control character when editing a sequence in ASCII mode (Editor).

 

Double click to change the value of a Shortcut or Editor field.

 

Predefined shortcuts are:

Ctrl+Enter for carriage return / <CR> / decimal code 13

Ctrl+Shift+Enter for line feed / <LF> / decimal code 10