.. _technical-terms: Technical Terms =============== This page draws together some of the technical terms used throughout the documentation. Consider a 1D line scan: .. image:: ../images/definitions.png .. _axis_: Axis ---- A fixed reference that can be scanned, i.e. a motor or the `frame_` `DURATION`. In the diagram above, the Axis is ``x``. `Spec.axes` will return the Axes that should be scanned for a given Spec. .. _point_: Point ----- A single or multidimensional location in scan space. In the diagram above, each `frame_` is made up of lower, midpoint and upper Points. `Midpoints` are available as an interator from `Spec.midpoints`. Arrays of these are available as `Frames.lower`, `Frames.midpoints` and `Frames.upper`. .. _frame_: Frame ----- A vector of three `Points <point_>` in scan space: lower, midpoint, upper. They describe the trajectory that should be taken while a detector is active while fly scanning. In the diagram above each Frame is denoted by a different coloured section. .. _stack_: Stack of Frames --------------- A repeatable, possibly snaking, series of `Frames` along a number of `Axes <axis_>`. In the diagram above, the whole Line produces a single `Frames` object, while a grid scan would be a stack of two `Frames` objects. A stack of `Frames` objects are produced by `Spec.calculate`. .. seealso:: `./why-stack-frames` .. _path_: Path ---- A consumable route through a _stack_. If the Line in the above diagram was stacked within another line of length 5, then the Path would contain 15 `Frames <frame_>`. A `Path` is created from a `list` of `Frames` objects.