Transferring data with clipboard

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Revision as of 21:12, 27 October 2006 by Akivela (Talk | contribs)

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Sometimes it would be nice to transfer topic knowledge to some other applications such as Microsoft Excel and Word. Wandora enables you to copy topics to clipboard where you can paste them to Excel for example. Moreover you can import data back to Wandora through clipboard. Lets see an example.

Import sample topic map ArtofNoise.xtm to Wandora and open topic title. Then select some of the instance topics as shown below and select Topics > Copy > Copy base names from the context menu.


Copy topics example.gif


Now you have copied all selected instance topics to clipboard and you can paste the data to Excel for example. Below is a screenshot of Excel after the data insertion.


Copy topics example excel.gif


The example was quite simple but Wandora can also copy with more more complicated queries. You can for example copy all class topics of selected topic or players within the topics that are selected.

Furthermore you can copy additional data with the selected topics. For example selecting Copy also > Copy also classes copies to clipboard not only the selected topic base names but also class topics associated to the selected topics. Below is an example where previous selection was copied and pasted to Excel with Copy also > Copy also classes. You should notice that all our topics were classified as titles. Column B is empty if topic has no class. If topic has multiple classes they are placed to subsequent columns.


Copy topics example excel2.gif


The interesting point is that you can also copy topics and topic elements from other applications and paste it to Wandora. Wandora tries to match injected base names to extisting topics or proposes topic creation if the topic does not exist. Once again lets see the injection through an example. We copied few instances of title topic with their classes to Excel. Now suppose we have found out that the Beatback (title) is also a remix. We naturally want to label the title as a remix also. Lets write remix to the title's Excel's column C.


Copy topics example excel3.gif


Now select everything in Excel (A1-C8) and copy cells to clipboard. Go back to Wandora and select Topics > Paste also > Paste also classes from the context menu of instances table of title topic. Wandora confirms the injection. If you allow the injection Wandora checks if all injected topics have given classes. When Wandora notices that Beatback (title) has no class remix it adds it as a class to the Beatback (title). As Wandora does not contain at all the remix topic Wandora asks what to do. You should be very careful answering the topic creation request as all typos end up to the created topics.


Copy topics example wandora.gif


If you allow the topic creation new topic is created for the base name remix and topic is set as a class of Beatback (title). Notice that clipboard data did not contain any subject identifier for the new topic. Topics created during the injection are given a default subject identifier. Of cource you can change the subject identifier later in Wandora.

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