User Interface
Illuminator uses a dockable window system with multi-viewport support. All panels can be rearranged, docked side-by-side, or floated as standalone windows.
Appearance Window
The primary styling panel, with three tabs for the different object types. All changes apply to the current selection.
Nodes Tab
- Node Size — Slider (0–63) controlling the radius of selected nodes
- Node Shape — Dropdown to pick from available shapes (circle, square, etc.)
- Node Rotation — Slider (0–360°). Hold Alt while dragging to snap to 45° increments.
- Border Size — Slider (0–63) for border thickness
- Node Colour — Colour picker with alpha
- Border Colour — Colour picker (no alpha)
- Map Style — Opens the Map Style modal to drive any property from a numeric attribute
Edges Tab
- Edge Width — Slider (0–63)
- Edge Colour — Colour picker with alpha
- Map Style — Data-driven edge styling
Labels Tab
- Label Content — Dropdown to select which string attribute to display as text
- Label Anchor — Edge (at node border) or Center (at node center)
- Label Distance — Offset from the node (0–63)
- Label Offset Rotation — Direction of the offset (0–360°)
- Label Text Rotation — Rotation of the text itself (0–360°)
- Label Font Size — Slider (0–63)
- Text Colour / Highlight Colour — Colour pickers
- Map Style — Data-driven label styling
Selection Window
Displays sortable tables of the currently selected nodes and edges, along with all their attributes. The window is split into a node pane (top) and an edge pane (bottom) with a draggable splitter to resize them.
- Click a row to highlight it
- Shift-click to highlight a range of rows
- Ctrl-click to toggle individual rows
- Right-click to open a context menu: set the selection to highlighted rows, or remove highlighted rows from the selection
An Expand Selection dialog is also accessible here, letting you grow the selection outward along graph edges by a specified BFS depth.
Layout Window
Contains collapsible sections for each layout algorithm with their tunable parameters and apply buttons. See the Layout Algorithms page for parameter details.
- Force-Directed (Live) — Enable/disable toggle plus repulsion, spring strength, ideal edge length sliders. Fix selected nodes checkbox.
- Random — Spacing slider and Apply button
- GRIP — Ideal edge length, rounds per level, and Apply button
Subset Window
Manage named subsets of nodes. Create a subset from the current selection with Ctrl+N or via Selection > Create Subset.
- The left panel lists all named subsets
- Selecting a subset shows its nodes in the right panel
- Subsets can be created, updated, selected (restoring the selection), or deleted
Subsets can also be created via the create subset command.
Console
Toggle via View > Console. Type any command and press Enter to execute it. All commands work here, and error messages and script output are displayed inline. The console is essential for using the query language and running scripts.
Menu Bar
The menu bar at the top of the application provides access to all major features:
| Menu | Items |
|---|---|
| File | Open (Ctrl+O), Save As |
| Script | Execute a script file, plus a list of recently run scripts for quick re-execution |
| Selection | Edge selection mode (Among / All), Select All, Invert, Clear, Expand, Create Subset, Sort |
| Renderer | Reset Camera, toggle rendering of Nodes / Edges / Labels |
| Layout | Toggle spring layout, Apply Random layout, Apply GRIP layout |
| View | Toggle Console, Appearance, Subset, Selection, and Layout windows |
Edge Selection Mode
Under Selection > Edge Selection Mode:
- Among (default) — Only edges where both endpoints are selected are included in the edge selection
- All — Any edge touching at least one selected node is included