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Figure Composer, DataNav Builder, and the related Matlab utilities described in this user guide may be downloaded from the file cabinet at the bottom of this page. The software and related documentation is developed, maintained, and owned by the Lisberger laboratory. It has been made available here free of charge to support other members in the scientific community who are interested in using these applications to construct scientific figures for publication or to build portals for their data.

While Figure Composer is a relatively mature and frequently used app, DataNav Builder is still very much a work in progress and is intended only for use within the Lisberger laboratory. It is available for download here only so that "beta users" can test and evaluate the application.

If you choose to download any software product from this site, you must read and abide by the following disclaimer. In addition, be sure to review the system requirements and the relevant download instructions.

DISCLAIMER

FigureComposer, DataNav Builder, and the supporting Matlab utilities are developed and maintained in-house for use by members of the Lisberger laboratory. Selected applications have been made available here for the greater scientific community. If you choose to download and use any of these applications: (1) you agree that you will not hold the Lisberger laboratory nor the DataNav developers liable for any malfunction in the program or the system on which it is installed, nor any loss of data/information resulting from the use of the program; (2) you agree not to redistribute the application in any form to other users; and (3) you agree not to reverse-engineer the DataNav Java archive (JAR) files with the express purpose of modifying the application and redistributing it as your own software product.

System requirements

[Note: The system requirements here are for the latest version of the DataNav apps. These are the recommended requirements. The apps may, in fact, run on earlier versions of the target operating system or Java runtime environments (as long as the JRE is version 6 or better). The best approach is to download and test the apps on your platform.]

Java on Mac OS X

Apple officially ended support for its proprietary implementation of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in 2013. The last supported release was Java 6 update 65 (1.6.0_65). Oracle purchased Java from Sun Microsystems and now maintains reference implementations of the JRE for the major operating systems, including Mac OS X. Java 7 is now "end of life" (1.7.0_79 was the last update), and all users are encouraged to install Java 8.

Oracle did not preserve Apple's approach to packaging a Java application as an OS X "application bundle". Therefore, in order to continue support for Apple Java 6 as well as Oracle Java 7/8, we must provide separate application bundles for each JRE target. See the OSX-specific installation instructions for details.

Download/Installation Instructions

NOTE: These instructions apply to Version 4.3.0 and later. Go HERE for download instructions pertaining to older versions still available in the file cabinet at the bottom of this page.

Check the table below for the name of the ZIP distribution archive to download for your OS platform. Download the archive from the file cabinet at the bottom of this page, and follow the platform-specific instructions in the table. There are separate distribution archives for Figure Composer and DataNav Builder; each includes a copy of the DataNav support package for Matlab. Multiple versions of each app may be available for download. The distribution ZIP file name includes the application name, the targeted OS platform, and the release/version number N.M.R. For example: DataNavBuilder_win_430.zip, FigureComposer_mac_430.zip.

If you plan to use any of the utility functions in the DataNav support package for Matlab, be sure to review the usage information on the Matlab Utilities page.

NEW in Version 4.1: File associations and better desktop integration

The FigureComposer figure file, ending with the .fyp extension, is a text file with XML markup conforming to the informally specified FypML "dialect". Previous versions of the application did not associate the .fyp file type with the program  -- so users could not start it simply by double-clicking on any file ending in that extension. File associations are a very platform-dependent feature, and their implementation is especially cumbersome on the registry-happy Windows OS. Version 4.1.0 addresses this issue, at least for Windows and Mac OS X.

For Mac, it was a matter of explicitly defining the file type (including a document icon) in the Info.plist resource within the application bundle. The installation procedure remains unchanged; the file association should "just work". You will notice that .fyp files in the Finder now sport FigureComposer's application icon, and that you can double-click any .fyp file to start the program. Furthermore, if the program is already running, double-clicking a .fyp file in the Finder will activate the app, bring it to the foreground, and open the figure file that was clicked.

For Windows, more extensive changes were necessary. Java's recommendation is to deploy the desktop application via Java Web Start, but that technology is fraught with issues and implementation difficulties. Instead, we chose to wrap each Figure Composer as a Win32 executable using the WinRun4J package, and distribute it -- along with the Matlab supporting files -- via a single self-extracting installer (compiled using Inno Setup) that makes the necessary changes in the Windows registry to configure the .fyp file type association. Once you download and run the installer, you'll find Figure Composer in the Start Menu (or you can optionally add a desktop icon during installation) and run it like any other native Windows application; you can also pin it to the task bar in Windows 7. You get the same double-click behavior as described above for Mac OS X; also, the application shows up in the Windows Task Manager as FigureComposer.exe instead of the more generic javaw.exe.

As of Version 4.1.1, DataNav Builder (formerly, Portal Builder) includes a figure composition perspective that offers the same functionality in FigureComposer. Thus, a .fyp figure file can be opened in either Java application. If you choose to install both applications, you will need to modify your system settings to indicate which should be the "preferred" application for opening .fyp files.

NEW in Version 4.2: Changes in Supporting JARs for Matlab Utilities

During development of the new Matlab utilities matfig2fyp() and dn_rasterplot(), we had to update the  JAR files required by these and the other existing DataNav-related Matlab support functions. The Java code is now distributed in three separate files instead of two:

Once you've downloaded and installed Figure Composer or DataNav Builder for your OS, locate the file system directory containing the Matlab support package. You should find each of the above JAR files in that directory, and each must be added to Matlab's Java class path. The best way to do this is to append the line javaaddpath path_to_JAR to your Matlab startup.m file for each required JAR file; here, path_to_JAR is the full file system pathname locating the JAR. Alternatively, you could call javaclasspath(path_to_JAR) from the Matlab command line, but then you have to remember to do this for each JAR every time you run the program.

NOTE 1: Delete datanavsrc.jar. In previous versions, the required JARs were xpp3-1.1.3.4.D.jar and datanavsrc.jar. The former is unchanged, but the latter is now replaced by hhmi-ms-common.jar and hhmi-ms-datanav.jar. Be sure to remove datanavsrc.jar from your Matlab Java class path, or the DataNav Matlab functions will fail with strange errors!

NOTE 2: Always use the latest version of hhmi-ms-common.jar. If you have configured your Matlab installation to run both Maestro-specific and DataNav-specific Matlab support functions, understand that hhmi-ms-common.jar is shared by all. Whenever you update this particular JAR file, whether you're retrieving it from this download page or the download page for Maestro's online guide, check the modification date to ensure that the new hhmi-ms-common.jar is more recent than the one you're replacing. If you accidentally overwrite hhmi-ms-common.jar with an older version of the file, you again may encounter strange Java class-loading errors when you run any of the Matlab support functions.

New in Version 4.7.1: Application bundle supporting Oracle Java 7/8

While Oracle's Java 7 and 8 runtime implementations for Mac OS X support the OS X notion of an application "bundle" (.app folder), there are significant differences in the expected structure and contents of the application bundle. 

Therefore, in order to support migration toward the latest Java runtime (version 8 update 45 as of this writing) without dropping support for Apple's Java 6, we must provide separate distribution archives for both Figure Composer and DataNav Builder -- one compatible with Oracle's JRE and another with Apple's JRE.

Nevertheless, Java 6 is very outdated, and all users are strongly encouraged to migrate their Mac OS X workstations to the latest release of Oracle's JRE. In fact, we have found that, on OS X 10.12 (Sierra), the Apple Java JRE-compatible releases of Composer and Builder crash during startup, probably due to a problem with the old JavaApplicationStub executable that launches an Apple Java 6 program. For this reason,  we will no longer support the Apple JRE as of DataNav version 5.0.3.

Mac OS X Users: Installing on Mountain Lion or later versions

In OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and later, Apple ships the OS configured to prevent you from opening any software that was not downloaded from the Mac App Store. Thus, you will be unable to run FigureComposer or Builder, unless you make a change in your System Preferences. Under the Security & Privacy section, set "Allow applications downloaded from" to "Anywhere".

If you would rather not open up your machine in this way, you can instead choose to make an exception only for FC. Right-click on the downloaded app, choose "Open" and confirm that you would like to open and run the app. Hopefully you'll only have to do this once!

Memory usage concerns. With the introduction of the matrix-like heatmap data, it is rather easy to tax the default maximum heap size of 64MB allocated to the Java virtual machine (JVM). In recent testing, we got the dreaded "OutOfMemoryException" when trying to load the dataset for a 1000x1000 heatmap. The recommended workaround is to increase the JVM's maximum heap size to 1024MB. That is the reason why the JVM option "-Xmx1024m" is included in the commands that start Figure Composer and DataNav Builder. The Mac OS X application bundles and the Windows Win32 executables are already preconfigured to set the maximum heap size to 1024MB.