Nebula

A nebula is a loosely related collection of graphs that can be opened, saved, and closed together.

Creating and Opening a Nebula

To create a nebula, save or copy some .star files into a directory of your choice. Then select the menu item Experimental -> Tools -> New Nebula, which will ask you for a directory and name for a nebula file, and a color to represent the nebula. The nebula will automatically be added to the File -> Open Recent list. Alternatively, you can manually create a text file called "name.nebula" in that directory, where "name" can be any name you like.

You can open the nebula in the same way that you open a .star file. When opened, Constellation will look for .star files in the same directory as the nebula file, and open them.

If a nebula does not have a color assigned, it will be assigned a random color. This color will appear next to the graph icon in the tab at the top of the graph window for each graph that is a member of the nebula. This serves to distinguish the members of multiple nebulae from each other. Each graph's tab tooltip will also be prepended with the name of the nebula file: the graph "MyGraph" that is in the "shiny" nebula will have the tooltip "shiny - <PATH>/MyGraph".

Functionality

If you right-click on the tab of any graph in the nebula, there are a few options for nebulas in the resulting popup menu that may be available:

• "Save nebula" will be available if any graphs in the nebula have been modified. Selecting this will save each modified graph.
• "Close nebula" will be available if all graphs in the nebula have been saved. Selecting this will close all of the graphs in the nebula.
• "Discard nebula" will always be available. Selecting this will close all graphs in the nebula, whether they have been saved or not.

After a nebula has been opened, the individual graphs in that nebula remain individual graphs; there is no connection between them other than belonging to the same nebula. Any of the actions above could be done by individually acting on each graph; a nebula just makes these actions more efficient. Any of the .star files can still be opened individually without opening the nebula file.

Color Assignment

You can assign your own color to the nebula. Edit the nebula file using your favourite text editor and add a "color = <COLOR>" line (or change the existing line). <COLOR> can be a color name (e.g. red or teal), a HTML color (e.g. #ff0000 or #008080), or an RGB color with each element having a value between 0 and 1 (e.g. 1,0,0 or 0,0.5,0.5).