9.1 SAMP control

When running in SAMP mode, the Control Window features several ways to view and control SAMP status.

SAMP Status button ()

Pops up the SAMP Window which shows a detailed view of the status of SAMP communications, and allows you to register or unregister with the hub, and to start a hub if required.

SAMP Status panel

The bottom part of the right hand panel has an area labelled SAMP. This gives a summary view of registration status, other connected applications, and messages recently sent and received. It is described in more detail in Appendix A.2.4.

Table Broadcast () and Table Send () menu options

The Interop menu provides these options which allow you to send the currently selected table to one or all connected clients. Note they will only be enabled if the hub is running, and there is at least one connected client which knows how to receive a table. The Broadcast option is also available on the toolbar.

Stop Internal Hub () menu option

By default, when TOPCAT starts up, it will look for a SAMP hub, and if none appears to be running it will start one internally, which will normally run until TOPCAT exits. This is usually not problematic, but if you would prefer to run a hub external to TOPCAT, then you may need to shut down TOPCAT's before starting a new one. Using this option shuts down TOPCAT's internal hub.

A number of other windows feature an Interop menu with Broadcast () and Send () operations for data types appropriate to that window. Sometimes Broadcast appears in the toolbar as well. In some cases there are also Accept () toggle options in the Interop menu. These control whether TOPCAT will respond to appropriate messages sent by other SAMP applications.