Intro

O N - L I N E M A N U A L
Copyright  1982 - 1999 by ERDAS, Inc. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

ERDAS Proprietary - Delivered under license agreement.

Copying and disclosure prohibited without express written permission from ERDAS, Inc.

ERDAS, Inc.
2801 Buford Highway, N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia 30329-2137 USA
Phone: 404/248-9000
Fax: 404/248-9400
User Support: 404/248-9777

Warning
All information in this document, as well as the software to which it pertains, is proprietary material of ERDAS, Inc., and is
subject to an ERDAS license and non-disclosure agreement. Neither the software nor the documentation may be reproduced in
any manner without the prior written permission of ERDAS, Inc.

Specifications are subject to change without notice.

Trademarks
ERDAS is a trade name of ERDAS, Inc. ERDAS and ERDAS IMAGINE are registered trademarks of ERDAS, Inc. Model
Maker, CellArray, ERDAS Field Guide, and ERDAS Tour Guides are trademarks of ERDAS, Inc. Other brands and product
names are trademarks of their respective owners.
 Intro On-Line Manual

Copyrights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Introduction to On-Line Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

What’s New in IMAGINE V8.4 On-Line Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
What is in On-Line Help? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
On-Line Help Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Selected Menu Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Windows 98 and Windows NT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Directory Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
System Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Default Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Credits for IMAGINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Software Development: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Documentation and On-Line Manuals: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Consultant: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Quality Assurance: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

iii
 Copyrights

Copyrights

Copyright © 1982 - 1999 by ERDAS, Inc. All rights reserved.

ERDAS IMAGINE software and On-Line Help developed and written in the United States of
America by ERDAS, Inc.

ERDAS, Inc.
2801 Buford Highway, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30329-2137 USA
Phone: 404/248-9000
Fax: 404/248-9400
User Support: 404/248-9777

Trademarks
ERDAS and ERDAS IMAGINE are registered trademarks of ERDAS, Inc. IMAGINE, Model
Maker, CellArray, ERDAS Field Guide, and ERDAS IMAGINE Tour Guides are trademarks of
ERDAS, Inc.

SPOT is a copyright of CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales).

ARC/INFO is a registered trademark of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.

HyperHelp and Xprinter are trademarks of Bristol Technology Incorporated.

FrameMaker and Acrobat are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

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 Introduction to On-Line Help

Introduction to On-Line Help

ERDAS IMAGINE uses the WinHelp under Windows operating systems and HyperHelp™ under
UNIX. These systems provide many features that make using help easy. This section briefly
explains the basics of the help viewers and highlights some of the features that are of particular
interest to IMAGINE users.

Under UNIX, HyperHelp comes with a “Help-on-Help” file that you can access by selecting Help
| How to Use Help in the HyperHelp menu bar. You may want to refer to this document for more
detailed information about using HyperHelp.

What’s New in IMAGINE V8.4 On-Line Help

For the first time, IMAGINE on-line documentation includes Adobe® Acrobat® versions of the
printed guides. Additionally, if the Acrobat reader is installed on your system and in your path
(UNIX) or in the Registry (Windows), hyperlinks in the On-Line Help will start the reader and open
the referenced guide. The hyperlinked list below provides easy access to these guides.

What’s New ERDAS IMAGINE V8.4

ERDAS Field Guide

ERDAS IMAGINE Tour Guides

ERDAS IMAGINE Installation Guide

ERDAS IMAGINE Expert Classifier User’s Guide

Optimizing IMAGINE VirtualGIS Performance

IMAGINE VirtualGIS Tour Guide

IMAGINE OrthoBASE User’s Guide

IMAGINE OrthoBASE Tour Guide

IMAGINE Radar Mapping Suite Tour Guide

What is in On-Line Help?

The ERDAS IMAGINE On-Line Help system provides information about every dialog in ERDAS
IMAGINE that has a Help button. Each button and menu is explained and links to other topics
are included so that you can read more about a particular subject simply by clicking on the link.
Links are displayed in green and underlined text. When the mouse cursor passes over a link, its
shape changes to a pointing finger. When the pointing finger cursor is displayed, simply click the
left mouse button to jump to the indicated topic.

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 Introduction to On-Line Help

In most cases you will access On-Line Help by clicking the Help button in the dialog you are
using. The Help for that dialog is displayed in the On-Line Help window. You can return to a
previous section by using the Back button or the History dialog. These will be explained in more
detail below.

On-Line Help Organization

On-Line Help is arranged in several manuals. Each manual includes all of the help about a
particular component of the software. For example, there is an Image Interpreter manual that
includes all of the dialogs that are accessed through Image Interpreter. The Image Catalog
manual includes all of the dialogs in the Image Catalog module. The name of the manual you are
currently reading is displayed in the help viewer title bar. For example, this manual is the ERDAS
IMAGINE Intro On-Line Help.
To view the contents of a manual, click the Contents button on the help viewer menu bar. The
Help Topics dialog is opened and displays a book icon for each manual. Double -click the book
icon to view the topics contained in that manual. Select a topic and click the Display button to
open the selected topic in the help viewer. When you use the Browse(>> <<) buttons on the help
viewer menu bar, you move from topic to topic in the order listed on the contents page.

In many cases, the information about a single topic or dialog will not fit in just one window. To
view the rest of the information, use the slider bar or the scroll buttons on the right side of the
window. Remember that the help viewer may be resized by grabbing and dragging one of its
corners.

Under UNIX this slider bar also gives you a clue about the length of the topic you are reading. If
the slider bar is large, the topic is relatively short. If the slider bar is very small, the topic is several
pages long. The slider bar graphically represents the size of the display window relative to the
size of the entire topic.

Selected Menu Features

♦ Annotation - You can add notes to a particular topic by selecting Edit | Annotate... from the
help viewer menu. The Annotate dialog is opened in which you may enter notes and
comments. When you click OK, the dialog is closed and a green paperclip is displayed next
to the topic title at the top of the scrollable area. SImply click this paperclip to view or edit
these comments.

Under UNIX, this annotation is stored in the home directory of the person who created it. To
make your annotation accessible to other users, store it in a common directory. (See the
Help-on-Help for information about how to do this.)

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 Introduction to On-Line Help

♦ Bookmarks - You can place bookmarks throughout the On-Line Help to make it easier to go
directly to a topic of interest. Each bookmark you create is listed in the Bookmark menu.
Simply select a bookmark to move to that location. To add bookmarks, select Bookmark |
Define... from the help viewer menu.

NOTE: Bookmarks are visible only within the help file in which they are created.

♦ History - Each jump you make is recorded in the History dialog. This dialog is opened from
the menu bar Options | Display History Window... option. You can quickly go back to a
previous topic by selecting it from this list.

Buttons
♦ Contents - The contents page for each manual lists every topic in that manual. Double-click
on a book icon to see a list of all of the help topics in that manual. Double-click on a page icon
to open that help topic.

♦ Index - The Index button displays keywords contained in the current manual under UNIX, or
the entire help system under Windows. You can select a keyword to go to that topic. This is
similar to an index in printed manuals.

♦ Back - Click to display the last topic you viewed. Click repeatedly to go back several topics.
♦ Browse - The <<Browse and Browse>> buttons allow you to browse forward and backward
from topic to topic in a manual.

♦ Find - This function enables you to enter text for which to search. The topics that contain that
text will be listed and you can go directly to them. It may take several seconds to read or
create the .fts file if the On-Line Manual is large. If there is no Find button, click on the
Contents button and select the Find tab.

♦ Packages - The Packages button in the C Functions manuals takes you to the list of C
programmer’s Toolkit Packages.

♦ Function Index - The Function Index button in the C Functions manuals takes you to the list
of functions for the current package.

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 Windows 98 and Windows NT

Windows 98 and Windows NT

Many of the examples given in this set of On-Line Help files apply specifically to the UNIX
operating system. We realize that many of you are not familiar with UNIX and as users of
IMAGINE under the Windows operating system, you do not need to be.

The information below is intended to help you to understand some of the differences that you are
likely to encounter while using the On-Line Help.

Directory Structure
UNIX - All directories are relative to the root directory (/). Directories are delimited with the
forward slash (/).

Windows - All directories are relative to a drive (C:). Directories are delimited with the back slash
(\).

System Commands
The following table compares some of the fundamental system commands:

UNIX Windows (DOS) description

cat type display a text file on screen

cp copy copy a file

rm del delete a file

mkdir mkdir make a new directory

Default Paths
Under UNIX, the default path usually begins with the “current” directory. Within IMAGINE, this is
the directory from which IMAGINE was started (not necessarily the <IMAGINE_HOME>
directory).

Under NT, the default path usually begins with the “personal” directory. Within IMAGINE, this is
<HOMEDRIVE>:\<HOMEDIRECTORY>\.imagine<version>. For example:
C:\Users\.imagine840

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 Credits for IMAGINE

Credits for IMAGINE

ERDAS IMAGINE Ver. 8.4 was produced by the Engineering department of ERDAS, Inc.,
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.

Software Development:
Brad Skelton (Director), Larry Brantley, Miles Duke, Zaiyong Gou, Gena Hillhouse, Jude Huang,
Wade Hundley, Brian Kloer, Ruth Lutz, Max Martinez, Paul Pantalone, Jason Rosenberg, Bill
Shelley, Joel Skelton, Vadim Stareev, Younian Wang, and Xinghe Yang

Documentation and On-Line Manuals:

Russ Pouncey, Kris Swanson, and Kathy Hart

Consultant:
Derrold Holcomb

Quality Assurance:
Paul Gonzalez, Howard Zahner, Rob Robinson, Lori Zastrow, and Mohammed Rahman