Tutorial

Installation

Stand-alone application

If you do not have a Python environment, download the installer for your platform from the GitHub releases page. The installer bundles its own Python and the recommended dependencies (with PySide6 as the Qt backend), so no other setup is required.

Windows: run himena-<version>-windows-x86_64.exe. himena is installed for the current user and added to the Start menu, and files of any type can be opened with himena from the "Open with" menu of Explorer. Check "Add himena to the user PATH" if you want to use the himena command from a terminal.
macOS: open the .dmg and drag himena.app to Applications. The app is not notarized yet, so on first launch you may need to run xattr -cr /Applications/himena.app in a terminal.
Linux: extract the .tar.gz anywhere and run ./install.sh to register the himena command and a desktop entry.

With pip

himena is available on PyPI. You can install it with the recommended dependencies:

pip install himena[recommended]

or with the minimal dependencies:

pip install himena

Start Application

After installation, you can start the application by running the himena command:

himena

himena can manage multiple profiles. A profile is a set of configurations, color theme and plugins. You can create a new profile of name "test" with:

himena --new test

and start the application with the profile:

himena test

Note

A profile can be used to separate the configurations for different users, or for different purposes. For example, you can have a profile "img" for image analysis, in which himena img is just like a sub-command of himena.

Open a Data

Let's start with a simple example. From the menubar, select File > New > Seaborn > iris. This command will fetch the iris dataset online and open it as a subwindow.

In himena, a subwindow represents a single data model. For example, this iris dataset is opened as a "table" data model. himena automatically picked the table viewer widget to display the data.

Of course, you can open a local file from File > Open File(s) ... menu, Ctrl+O shortcut, drag-and-drop or directly paste the data from the clipboard.

There are also several ways to create a new window. They are listed in File > New menu, or you can use Ctrl+N shortcut to look for the available options.

Execute Commands

Many commands are registered on the startup of the application. There are several ways to run a command.

The "window menu button" pops up a menu that contains the commands relevant to the operation on the current window. These commands are always available regardless of the data model the window represents. For example, "Duplicate window" and "Copy path to cliboard" are in the window menu.

The "model menu button" pops up a menu that contains the commands relevant to the type of the underlying data model. For example, the "Convert table to text" is available in the window "iris" just opened above.

Command Palette

All the commands are accessible from the command palette. Press Ctrl+Shift+P to open the command palette and you can search for any commands by the name.

Manage Plugins

himena is designed to be highly extensible. You can install plugins to add new IO supports, new widgets, and commands. For example, himena-stats, a himena plugin for statistical analysis, can be installed with the following lines.

pip install himena-stats -U  # install to the python virtual environment
himena --install himena-stats  # install the module to the default profile
himena your-profile-name --install himena-stats  # install to a specific profile

You can also select which plugins to be included in the himena profile from the setting dialog. A setting dialog can be opened from File > Settings ... or shortcut Ctrl+,

The Python Interpreter Console

A built-in Qt console dock widget plugin is registered by default. You can oepn it by shortcut Ctrl+Shift+C.