THE CONFIGURATION FILE AND WINDOWING SETTINGS MANUAL

• jSymbolic has special configuration files that you can use to store settings and extraction jobs
• We will now look at these files in some detail, as they can be very useful:
• These files can keep an archive of experiments you perform for future records
• They can be shared for the purpose of research verification / duplication
• They can also be very useful for quickly running different variants of an experiment
• The Configuration File and Windowing Settings Panel, on the bottom left of the jSymbolic GUI, includes:
• The Load New Settings from a Config File button allows the user to load a pre-saved set of selected features, input files, output paths and windowing settings from a configuration file
• The Save These Settings to a Config File button allows the user to save the currently entered set of selected features, input files, output paths and windowing settings to a configuration file
• The Extract Features from Entire Files radio button setting causes features to only be extracted from symbolic files in their entirety (i.e. without windowing)
  • We will focus on this kind of feature extraction in this demo, as it tends to be the most useful
  • Selecting this option will grey out the Window Duration and Window Overlap text areas
• The Extract Features from Windows Radio Button causes features to be extracted from windows only (as opposed to extracting them from files in their entirety)
  • Each window will have a duration equal to the number of seconds specified in the Window Duration Text Area
  • The windows will have a fractional overlap specified in the Window Overlap Fraction Text Area
    • A value of 0 indicates no overlap
    • e.g. for a window duration value of 10 and a window overlap fraction value of 0.1, the windows will be from 0 sec to 10 sec, 9 sec to 19 sec, etc.
• We can return to windowed extraction later if we have time, but let's move on for now
• Let's save the settings you entered into jSymbolic in the previous steps:
  • Click the Save These Settings to a Config File button
  • Navigate to inside the "01_Comparing_Two_Files" folder
    • In the File Name field type "MySimpleJosqOckConfigs.txt"
    • Press the Save button
• In your favorite text editor, open this config file that you just saved
  • You will rarely look at config files manually in practice, but this gives you an idea of what they look like
• Let's now look at how you can load config files:
  • Quit jSymbolic (press the exit box at the top right of the jSymbolic window) and rerun jSymbolic
    • Note that you have lost the settings you entered previously
    • This step is not strictly necessary, but is included here for the purpose of illustration
  • Click the Load New Settings from a Config File button
  • Navigate to inside the "01_Comparing_Two_Files" folder
    • Double click the "MySimpleJosqOckConfigs.txt" file that you created
  • Click the Yes button in the warning dialog box that comes up
  • Note that you have now recovered the settings you saved earlier

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON CONFIGURATION FILES

• You can also save configuration files without specifying input files or output paths
  • i.e. indicating only things like chosen features and windowing settings
• If you wish to always start up jSymbolic with a given set of default settings, save the corresponding configuration file in the same folder as the "jSymbolic2.jar" file, with the name "jSymbolicDefaultConfigs.txt"
• See the jSymbolic manual for more information on how the configuration files work

Let's now conduct some real research with jSymbolic . . .

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