Glotaran: A Java-Based Graphical User Interface for the R Package TIMP

Abstract

In this work the software application called Glotaran is introduced as a Java-based graphical user interface to the R package TIMP, a problem solving environment for fitting superposition models to multi-dimensional data. TIMP uses a command-line user interface for the interaction with data, the specification of models and viewing of analysis results. Instead, Glotaran provides a graphical user interface which features interactive and dynamic data inspection, easier -- assisted by the user interface -- model specification and interactive viewing of results. The interactivity component is especially helpful when working with large, multi-dimensional datasets as often result from time-resolved spectroscopy measurements, allowing the user to easily pre-select and manipulate data before analysis and to quickly zoom in to regions of interest in the analysis results. Glotaran has been developed on top of the NetBeans rich client platform and communicates with R through the Java-to-R interface Rserve. The background and the functionality of the application are described here. In addition, the design, development and implementation process of Glotaran is documented in a generic way.