Participants customization

Participant customization in GazePlotter allows you to rename participants and change their display order in eye-tracking plots that display participant names (legends, axes, grouping). You can use pattern-based renaming for batch operations or edit individual participant names.

Accessing participant customization

To customize participants:

1. Click on the More options button in the top right corner of any plot.
2. Select Participant customization from the pop-up menu.

Pattern Renaming

Pattern renaming allows bulk renaming operations using regular expressions for find-and-replace across all participants.

Find and Replace

1. Enter text or pattern to find in the Find text field
2. Enter replacement text in the Replace with field
3. Click Apply renaming to all to execute the replacement

Wildcard Patterns

Wildcard buttons insert regex patterns into the Find text field:

• Any number (e.g., 123) → \d+ - matches one or more digits
• Any space → \s - matches any whitespace character
• Any letter → [A-Za-z] - matches any single letter
• Any character → . - matches any single character

Common Use Cases

Simple examples:

• Remove numbers: Find \d+, Replace with empty
• Remove spaces: Find \s, Replace with empty
• Replace prefixes: Find Participant, Replace with P
• Standardize naming: Find _, Replace with -

Complex Example

Transform Recording34 P20 to P20:

• Find text: Recording\d+\s
• Replace with: `` (empty)
• Result: Recording34 P20 → P20

This pattern breaks down as:

• Recording - matches the literal text "Recording"
• \d+ - matches one or more digits (34)
• \s - matches the space after the number

Advanced Regex Usage

You can input any valid regular expression in the Find text field. For complex patterns, consider using AI tools like ChatGPT to generate regex patterns by describing your transformation needs.

Individual Participant Editing

For each participant you can:

• Edit the Displayed name while keeping the original name unchanged
• Change participant order using the up/down arrows in the Order column

Bulk Participant Sorting

Click on column headers to sort participants:

• Original name - sorts by the original participant names
• Displayed name - sorts by the current displayed names
• Click again to reverse sort direction (ascending/descending)

The sorting uses natural ordering, so Participant10 correctly comes after Participant2 (not alphabetically before it).

Applying Changes

Click Apply to save all modifications. Changes are discarded if you close the window without applying.