Creating Type Transformations

Creating and using a type transformation involves the following three steps:

1. Define a set of Tcl callback functions. As you will see, the kind of data being mapped determines the number and kind of callback functions that you will use.
    
2. Use the TV::prototype command to create a new prototype object. The callback functions are named as properties of this object.

   You will define a separate prototype for each data type being mapped.

3. Individually add your prototype to each image object in your process.

When TotalView parses the debug information created by your compiler, it checks the type name. If the type name matches the prototype's name (which is actually regular expression), TotalView uses your callbacks to redefine the type.

Later, when TotalView displays this data, it uses the callbacks to extract information from the specific instance. For example, the run-time bounds for an array depend on the array being displayed.