Using Lucid Player

To start the key, click once on the 'Start' button or on the words "Open the Key".
Once you are in the key, to navigate back to the home page, just click the 'Home' button found in the lucid menu bar at the top of the screen. This opens the homepage in a window in front of the Lucid key screen.
If you have finished an identification and wish to start another, click on the 'Restart' button , located in the lucid menu bar.

When the lucid key first opens, a four panel window will be displayed: Characters available, Character states chosen, Taxa remaining and Taxa discarder. The top two panels are devoted to characters and their states. The bottom two are devoted to taxa. At the start of an identification no Character States have been chosen and no taxa have been discarded.
The top left panel displays the characters and a list of variations (the states). When a character and its associated state are selected they are listed in the upper right panel.
When a character state is selected, the taxa that do not satisfy the criteria of that state are moved to the lower left hand panel. When the list of taxa in the right hand panel is reduced to one, the keying process is complete.

Navigating Lucid Player

The key can be navigated in two principal ways.

To display states belonging to a particular character click on the wording. To select a state double click on it and it will be transferred to the top right panel.You can also click once on the words and drag the words to the top right panel. If you selected the wrong state just double click on the wording (or click once and drag the wording) of the character state in the top right panel and the state will return to the character list (top left panel).

Images for each state can be accessed by selecting the adjacent circular information icon.

Selecting the circular purple icon adjacent to a character presents a window displaying all images associated with the character. To view a larger image, click once on the image and drag it to the slide projector icon. In this mode you may move between characters using arrows in the the top left hand corner of the image window. To select a state double-click on the image of choice. Lucid will automatically scroll to the next character and display the state images. You can exit this screen at any time.

Taxon Information, Description and Images

At any time the images, information and description of individual taxon can be viewed by clicking on the green icon in front of the species name. Choosing 'Notes: general information' will bring up the taxa sheet for that taxon. Once you have entered the fact sheets you can navigate around the CD as if on a web site.

Using the Lucid Player toolbar

A quick explanation of the some of the Lucid menu buttons found in the toolbar follows -

1) Similarities and Dissimilarities : provides a summary of all characters, and their corresponding states, in which the remaining taxa differ.You can choose two taxa and look at the similarities and differences between them.If you had two species left which you could not separate, you could look to see what Character might be useful for you to make a decision.

2) Prune Redundants : a function that discards all characters and states that do not apply to the remaining taxa. Use this button to discard these Character States so that you are not wasting time and effort on Characters that will not help to identify the specimen.

3) Best : selects the next best character recommended in order to distinguish between remaining taxa. After making a selection and narrowing down the taxa remaining you can use the "Best" button. The Character which will help the most in narrowing down the taxa remaining even further will appear at the top of the Characters Available window (top left panel). Since this "Best" Character is statistically determined, it may not always be the best Character for you, so look at the list and choose the easiest Character. 'Best' can be chosen at any time during the identification.

4) Bingo : provides a summary of all characters and states that can be used to reduce the remaining list of taxa to just one.This button is best used when only a few taxa remain.

Selecting one particular portion of the specimen

If the specimen is broken, or only a part of it is of interest you can select character sets.

The Sets icon allows you to select character sets. For example, by ticking the box "head", all characters associated with the head will be displayed and the others discarded. To return the other states just reselect "all".

Sets: Clicking on this button shows the available 'Sets' of Characters for this key. There are three main 'Sets', or sub-sets, of Characters that you can use when making an identification You can add or remove Sets of Characters in the Character list by clicking on the appropriate box for that Set.

Help

For a detailed explanation of all the buttons and features available use Help and click on contents on the Lucid menu bar.

There is also a Lucid tutorial available when using Help on the Lucid menu bar.