Application Preferences

      Application preferences can be accessed via Setup -> Options -> CONSTELLATION -> Application.

      Application Options Panel

      User Directory

      The user directory is where Constellation stores user-specific data such as auto-save files, icons, and templates. By default the user directory is "<<HomeDirectory>/.CONSTELLATION". If you want to change your user directory, create the new directory first, copy any files you want from the current directory to the new one, then change the directory in preferences.

      You can open your user directory in your default file browser via Help -> User Directory.

      Autosave

      By default, Constellation saves a copy of the graphs you're working on every five minutes. You can change this interval, or disable autosave altogether in preferences.

      Startup

      By default, Constellation displays the Welcome page when on startup. The Welcome page can be hidden on startup either in preferences or directly on the Welcome page via the "Show on Startup" tickbox option.

      The What's New page can also be displayed on startup if the tickbox is selected.

      Internal Webserver

      Constellation has a built in Restful web service allowing you to programatically run plugins via web calls. The web service needs to be started manually from Tools -> Start REST Service and it will by default listen to port 1517 on localhost. To reduce the risk of potential security vulnerabilities the web service is limited to localhost only.

      You also have the ability make Restful calls via a file system. This can be handy if you have a shared folder that multiple VMs can access and want the ability to run commands over the network. To do this you can specify a "REST directory" and Constellation will poll that directory for plugins to run.

      Jupyter Notebooks

      The "Notebook directory" specifies the location where your Jupyter Notebooks are located and will launch the Jupyter Notebooks server from this directory. You can start the Jupyter Notebooks server from Constellation via Tools -> Start Jupyter Notebook.

      Selecting to "Download Python REST client" means that when you start the Jupyter Notebook server, Constellation will install our custom python package, constellation_client. The constellation_client package provides a convenient interface to the REST API for Python scripts in Jupyter notebooks.

      Application Font Preferences

      This is where the user is able to set their preferred default font and default font size for the Constellation application.

      Colorblind Mode

      The user is able to set a colorblind mode for constellation. When a colorblind mode is set, nodes drawn are automatically generated with colorblind-friendly colors, and existing graphs can be adjusted to the new color scheme using Tools -> Complete with Schema.