1) Interface:

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DM appears as a frame (window) with a vertical stack of horizontal meters (bars).  Each bar represents a value for a single player.  Bars can be sorted in increasing or decreasing order, though almost always in the latter.  The bar for the player with the highest value of a given quantity will always be at full length.  Everyone else's bar will be some shorter length in proportion

to the lead player's value.  In addition to the bar itself, various text can be specified to be drawn over each bar, including the player name, the value, etc.  Moving the mouse over a given person's bar brings up a tooltip which shows detailed information for a given player.

There are two interfaces for setting program options: menus and console commands.  There are two menus.  The main menu is reached by right clicking on the title of the DM window.  There is also a player menu which is reached by right clicking on a particular player's bar.  Console commands all start with /dm and are entered like chat commands.  Use /dm help to get a full list.

The window can be moved by click-and-dragging on the title button.  Clicking on a player's bar will attempt to target them. The window can be resized by dragging the sides or corners, similar to the chat frames.  You can also scroll through the bars (when "Self Always Visible" is disabled) with the mouse wheel.

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2) Bar Counts:

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When a player is detected doing something we are interested in, DM automatically adds it to its internal list.  The internal list can have at most 50 entries, at which point it is full and NO new players will be added.  The number of players in the list, though, is independant of the number of bars visible on the screen.  Generally, there are two ways you can specify the

number of bars: 1) as a hard number, or 2) as an up-to number.  The latter is called the "auto-count" number, and it basically means "show as many bars as I have player information for, up to this number."

Again, though, it is important to note: the internal player list is NOT limited by the number of visible bars.

There are two options which override bar counts.  The first is "Minimize", which causes only the player's bar to be visible.  (If there is no player entry one is automatically created.)  The second is "Show Max", which causes the maximum number of bars (40) to be shown.  You can set up key bindings to toggle either of these options quickly.

The visible bars by default start at the first one in the list (for example, the player with the most damage done).  The "Self Always Visible" option can be set which makes it so the players shown is adjusted such that the player (self) is always visible in the list.

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3) Quantities:

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DM monitors the following quantities:

- Damage Done: The amount of damage done by a player.

- Healing Done: The amount of healing done by a player.

- Damage Taken: The amount of damage taken by a player.

- Healing Taken: The amount of healing taken by a player.

- Curing Done: The amount of cures/decurses/etc done by a player.

- Idle Time: The amount of time that has passed since the player has last done something (either done damage or done healing).  This is useful for detecting when someone has gone ninja-afk.

In addition, there are 4 pseudo-quantities which display the same info as the first 4, but only for the current Fight.  These quantities can be shown as totals or as the total divided by the current Fight time, thus providing a type of Damage-Per-Second meter. 

DamageMeters has two ways of determining when a Fight starts and stops.  They are quite a bit different and can greatly effect what your personal DPS value is.  The default is "Group DPS Mode" ON.  In this mode, a Fight starts when anyone you are monitoring (for instance, a party member) does damage.  Fights end in that mode when you leave combat.  The advantage of this mode is that it provides a good comparison of the contributions of everyone of a group.

When "Group DPS Mode" is OFF, a Fight is determined by whether or not a mob is aggro vs. you.  This mode is not very useful for comparing DPS with other group members, but can provide better personal numbers.

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4) Players:

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DM, by default, monitors yourself, your pet, your party/raid members, any nearby friendly players, and miscellaneous things like totems.  There is a menu option, "Only Monitor Group Members", which tells DM to reject nearby friendlies and miscellaneous things.  There are valid reasons for having both options available. For example, in a pvp environment data from friendlys can quickly bury your own, and so you'd want to turn that option on.  However, if you are a soloing shaman you could be interested in how much healing your totems are doing, for instance, so you'd want the option off.

Note: there is no easy way to distinguish totems from players, and there is no way at all to determine who dropped a particular totem.

Pets present challenges for DM which require some understanding on the users part for best results.  DM CANNOT distinguish someone else's pet from a random friendly player. DM CAN tell if something is YOUR pet.  Your pet is always shown.

The "Treat Pet Data As Your Data" option is meant to help people determine what their total (themselves plus their pets) contributions are.  When this option is on, any data that registers for your pet is treated as if it came from yourself.  If you accumulate data from one or more pets with this option off, then turn the option on, the pet(s) data will be AUTOMATICALLY merged into your own. As of v5.8.0 this option also merged group members' and their pets' data.

Known Group Pet Exception Cases:

- If more than one unnamed pet of the same type (e.g. Water and Fire Elementals) exists at the same time the events are all attributed to the same entity.  If "Treat Pet Data As Your Data" is enabled the event data will be attributed to the last person to be scanned (highest raid ID).

- If there is a duplicate name among pets and group members the group member will be attributed all the events associated with that name.  The only exception to this is if the conflict is with you or your own pet, in which case the events should be attributed correctly, because they happen on different events.

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5) Event Data.

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DamageMeters can be configured to record stats on an event-by-event basis. [I'm using the term event to refer to a specific damage/healing source, such as a melee attack or spell.]  While the information displayed isn't terribly in-depth, it can still be handy for quickly determining how much various abilities are contributing to someone's totals. Event data for a player is  displayed in their bar tooltip. 

The downside to event data is that it takes up quite a bit of memory to store, so by default DM only saves event data for one's self.  It also makes sync'ing take a *lot* longer (see the section on synchronization).

Here is an example of some DamageTaken events:

Fireball = 300 (75%) 0/2 0% 150 (0 Fire)

[Melee] = 100 (25%) 1/2 50% 50

The entries are:

"Fireball" - Event name

"300" - Total from this event (in this case, total damage taken)

"(75%)" - Percent that this event contributes to this quantity

"0/2" - Crits/hits

"0%" - Crit percentage

"150" - Average

"(0 Fire)" - The magic type and your average resistance (only if applicable)

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6) Reporting.

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DM has a system for reporting its data to other people.  It is accessible using the "Report" menu or via the /dm report command.  The former is quicker, but the latter is much more flexible. 

The basic syntax for the /dm report command is:

/dm report [X[#]] [tell target|channel]

X is the report destination, and can be one of the following:

c - Console: Chat messages that you only can see.  This is the default.

s - Say

p - Party

r - Raid

g - Guild

w - Whisper - For example, /dm report w dandelion

h - cHannel - Use the channel name, or number: /dm report h mychannel

f - Frame - Shows results in a frame (window), which you can use to copy the text to the clipboard.

# is optional.  If specified, it limits the number of people reported to the top #, otherwise only the currently visible bars are reported.  For example, to output the top 10 to raid, use:

/dm report r10

As far as doing reports via the menu: it works the same as the console command.