Introduction to MATLAB - MATLAB Recipes for Earth Sciences - page 51

of these functions are those with a graphical user interface (GUI). A GUI in
MATLAB is a graphical display in one or more windows containing controls
(or components) that enable the user to perform interactive tasks without
typing commands in the Command Window or writing a script in the Editor.
h ese components include pull-down menus, push buttons, sliders, text input
i elds and more. h e GUI can read and write data i les as well as performing
many types of computation and displaying the results in graphics.
h e manual entitled MATLAB Creating Graphical User Interfaces
(MathWorks 2014b) provides a comprehensive guide to the creation of
GUIs with MATLAB. Within this manual, however, the section on Create
a Simple GUIDE GUI demonstrates a rather complex example with many
interactive elements instead of providing the simplest possible example of a
GUI. h e following text therefore provides a very simple example of a GUI
that computes and displays a Gaussian function for a mean and a standard
deviation that can be dei ned by the user. Creating such a simple GUI with
MATLAB requires two steps: the i rst step involves designing the layout of
the GUI, and the second step involves adding functions to the components
of the GUI. h e best way to create a graphical user interface with MATLAB
is using the GUI Design Environment (GUIDE). We start GUIDE by typing
guide
in the Command Window. Calling GUIDE opens the GUIDE Quick Start
dialog where we can choose to open a previously created GUI or create a new
one from a template. From the dialog we choose the GUIDE template Blank
GUI (Default) and click OK , at er which the GUIDE Layout Editor starts.
First, we enable Show names in component palette in the GUIDE Preferences
under the File menu and click OK . Second, we select Grid and Rulers from
the To o l s menu and enable Show rulers . h e GUIDE Layout Editor displays
an empty layout with dimensions of 670-by-388 pixels. We resize the layout
to 500-by-300 pixels by clicking and dragging the lower right corner of the
GUI.
Next, we place components such as static text, edit text, and axes onto the
GUI by choosing the corresponding controls from the component palette. In
our example we place two Edit Text areas on the let side of the GUI, along
with a Static Text area containing the title Mean , with Standard Deviation
above it. Double clicking the static text areas, the Property Inspector comes
up in which we can modify the properties of the components. We change the
String of the static text areas to Mean and Standard Deviation . We can also
change other properties, such as the FontName , FontSize , BackgroundColor ,
and HorizontalAlignment of the text. Instead of the default Edit Text content