Create new association

Revision as of 14:40, 15 November 2007

To create new association you need to first address which topic plays a role in the association. Addressing the player may happen by

• Opening player topic to closer inspection in topic panel
• Selecting player topic in topic tree or topic table

As you have addressed the player, start association editor. Wandora has two slightly different editors to create and modify associations. Schema editor expects you have created a special topic map schema for associations accepted for the player. Schemaless editor doesn't make any assumptions and gives you freedom to create any kind of associations. Schema association editor starts with Add to topic > Add association.... Schemaless association editor starts with Add to topic > Add schemaless association....

Association editor

Association editor used to add schema associations has a drop down selector on the top of editor window. Selector contains only schema defined association types. Below the horizontal ruler are members of the association. All members have a role and a player. First player is fixed as you started the editor in context of the player, here artist, and you can only change the role of first player.

Other players of the association are entered to text fields. Pressing TABULATOR key in the field opens selection list for available players. You can select the player in the list or write player's base name. If no topic exists with given base name, new topic is created with given name and the topic is typed with the role.

New association is created when you click Add or OK buttons. Clicking Cancel closes the editor window without association changes.

Schemaless association editor

If you are not familiar with schemas you may find schemaless association editor more comfortable. Schemaless editor allows you to pick association type, all players (except the context player) and roles by hand.

Each topic in association is picked clicking the topic button. Topic button has label <No topic> if topic has not yet been picked and topic's base name after the pick. To add another player to the schemaless association press Add Player button. To remove player press Remove button beside the player line.

New association is created when you press OK button. Pressing Cancel closes the association editor without changes.

Injecting associations via clipboard

Addition to association editors described in previous chapters Wandora also allows the user to inject or paste association via clipboard. Clipboard injection allows you to construct associations in external applications such as text editor. Association paste is started with option Paste > Paste associations... found in context menu of Wandora panel title Associations.

Paste associations injects clipboard associations to Wandora. Wandora expects the clipboard contains a text formatted like

association_type
role_1               role_2
player_a1            player_a2
player_b1            player_b2

where each line is separated with newline character and each token within a line is separated with tab character. Each token represents topic's base name. If topic does not exist, Wandora consults the user and rejects the base name or creates a topic for the base name.