Create new association

Revision as of 18:59, 2 February 2008

To create new association you have several alternatives:

• Create a schema and use schema association editor. You should consider this alternative if you need to create similar association frequently.
• Use schemaless association editor. Consider this alternative if you are familiar with topic maps and you create only few associations or associations you create are very different from each other.
• Paste associations. Consider association paste if you have the association data available in external application such as spreadsheet application. To paste associations you need to construct simple text fragments in external application and transfer them to Wandora via clipboard.
• Use Wandora's drag and drop feature to create associations. This option is for Wandora experts. To create associations with drag and drop, you create and select template association, and drop player topics over the template.
• Draw associations between graph nodes representing topics. This alternative uses schemaless association editor but initializes the editor with topics user has drawn an association between in Graph topic panel.

Next chapters examine association creation alternatives more detailed.

Association editor

Association editor expects you have created a special topic map schema for associations accepted for the player. To start the association editor

• Locate player for the association
• Either select the player topic and
  • Right click the selected player topic
  • Choose Topics > Add to topic > Add associations... in context of topic table or Add to topic > Add associations... in context of topic tree.
• Or open the player topic in topic panel and
  • Open top menu bar Topics and
  • Select option Add to topic > Add associations....
• Or open the player in traditional or tabbed topic panel and
  • Right click the Associations title to reveal context menu.
  • Select Add association....

Association editor used to add schema associations has a drop down selector on the top of the 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 tab 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. The editor starts with menu option Add schemaless association....

Each topic in association is picked clicking the topic button. Topic button has label <No topic> if topic has not yet been picked. Button's label changes to topic's base name after topic pick. Association type is defined with topic button beside Association type label. Roles and players locate in separate columns. Player's role is defined by the topic button beside player button. To add another player to the 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 Associations title as shown below.

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. 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. Number of roles and players should be equal. Number of association roles (columns) or associations (lines) is not limited. User may even inject multiple different associations within a single paste. Additional newline character should separate different association types:

association_type
role_1               role_2
player_a1            player_a2
player_b1            player_b2

another_association_type
role_1               role_2               role_3
player_a1            player_a2            player_a3
player_b1            player_b2            player_b3
player_c1            player_c2            player_c3

As you may paste any kind of associations you may not see created associations immediately after paste as topic panel views only such associations that contain opened topic as a player or association type. To see created association use finder to locate and open player topic for example.

Creating associations with drag and drop

Wandora enables drag and drop feature for topics in tables and trees. To start drag

• Select topics with LEFT mouse button
• Press MIDDLE mouse button and move mouse keeping the button pressed

You may drop topics to association table for example. Association table drop creates new associations, one for each dragged topic. New associations have

• Same association type as the association at the drop point
• Same roles as the association at the drop point
• Same players as the association at the drop point except the player at the drop point! The player at the drop point is replaced with dragged topics.

Another way of thinking the association drop is to think the association at the drop point as a template for new associations. Template defines association type, roles and players except the one at the drop point. As topic drag drags actually topic's base name the feature works also when topics are dragged from external applications such WWW browser. Drag and drop enables extremely easy method to generate similar associations.

New topic is created for each dropped base name not known in Wandora. As Wandora can't resolve the subject identifier for created topics, default subject identifier is inserted into each created topic.

When you create new association with the drag'n'drop feature, new association generally appears to the association table. However, it is possible that the created association is not visible due to the association's players.