The interface
GW v2’s overlay UI is built with Dear ImGui: menus, settings dialogs, read popups, the command box, label tables and file browsers, all rendered on top of the plot window.
docs/assets/images/v2/interface_overview.png The plot window
The plot area responds to the mouse directly:
- Left-click a read to select it; right-click for the read popup
- Drag to zoom; scroll to zoom in/out at the cursor
- Drag pane boundaries to resize them (e.g. the track pane)
The view can be split into multiple regions (side-by-side) and multiple BAMs stacked vertically — see Commands.
Top menu
The hamburger button (top-left) opens the main menu: open files, settings, save images/sessions, browse online genomes and files, open the label table. The view dropdown next to it controls layout options (grid lines, coverage scale, track expansion and more).
docs/assets/images/v2/top_menu.png Command box
Press : or / to open the command box. Type help for a summary or man COMMAND for details.
↑/↓cycles through command history- Unrecognised text is echoed to the terminal (useful for notes)
- Commands can also be applied at startup with
-c 'sort strand'
Read popups
Clicking a read selects it and opens a popup with read details (SAM fields, tags, mate info) and read-specific actions such as mate add, find, sam and tags. Each popup keeps its own read context, so popups stay valid after you click elsewhere.
docs/assets/images/v2/read_popup.png Settings dialogs
The settings editors (General, Genomes, Interaction, Labelling, Navigation, Tracks, Thresholds, Keymap) are ImGui dialogs with live preview. Changes apply immediately and save to .gw.ini. See Settings.
Label table and online files
When labelling variants, the label table dialog shows progress through the variant list. The online files dialog browses remote genomes and data catalogues, searches UCSC tables, and downloads files into a session. See Labelling and Remote access.
Startup genome picker
When GW starts without a reference genome, a terminal (ncurses) picker lists the available online genomes — type a number or a genome tag (e.g. hg38). The same genomes can be selected from the ImGui menus (Settings → Genomes, or the online files dialog).