databrowser: change order in which channels appear?

[Robert Oostenveld]

Dear Henning


On 25 Jun 2010, at 14:19, Henning Holle wrote:
> when looking at data with the databrowser (vertical viewmode), the
> channels
> appear in the order in which they happen to be in the dataset. Is
> there a
> way to define another order (so that, for instance, more anterior
> channels
> appear more on top of the screen, and more posterior channels at the
> bottom
> of the screen).

It is currently not possible without changing the code. But if you go
into ft_databrowser, line 926, you'll see

   case 'vertical'
     tmpcfg = [];
     tmpcfg.layout = 'vertical';
     tmpcfg.channel = opt.cfg.channel;
     tmpcfg.skipcomnt = 'yes';
     tmpcfg.skipscale = 'yes';
     laytime = ft_prepare_layout(tmpcfg, opt.orgdata);


In that part the layout is created with the vertical arrangement of
the channels, you can think of that as a set of boxes that are
vertically stacked on top opf each other, where each box contains one
timecourse. There you could change the code to create a custom layout.
Have a look here
http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/tutorial/layout for an explanation of
layouts.

You could just change that code into

   case 'vertical'
     tmpcfg = [];
     tmpcfg.layout = 'yourlayoutfile.lay';
     tmpcfg.channel = opt.cfg.channel;
     tmpcfg.skipcomnt = 'yes';
     tmpcfg.skipscale = 'yes';
     laytime = ft_prepare_layout(tmpcfg, opt.orgdata);

and have the arrangement of the channels for the databrowser in an
"yourlayoutfile.lay" ascii file

best
Robert

PS a clean extension of teh code would be to allow for cfg.viewmode =
'yourlayoutfile.lay';

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