Guidance for learning
To become familiar with MetaEdit+ Workbench:
| 1) | Walk-through
the Evaluation tutorial (Family Tree example) to familiarize yourself
with the MetaEdit+ environment and its metamodeling and modeling functionality.
The material from this tutorial is used extensively as examples throughout this
manual. |
| 2) | Read
Chapters 2 and 6 of the MetaEdit+ User’s Guide for
more information about the basic principles of
MetaEdit+. |
| 3) | Examine
the Watch example to get a full-blooded overview of the possibilities of
metamodeling and MetaEdit+ Workbench. This material is also used as an example
in this
manual. |
| 4) | Read
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 from this manual to learn the usage
of those metamodeling tools you need to use the most. These include conceptual
modeling tools that are used to create element types and the Symbol Editor that
is used to create graphical representations for element
types. |
| 5) | Read
Chapter 5 to become familiar with
MetaEdit+ generator creation and debugging environment and the MERL generator
definition
language. |
| 6) | Read
Chapters 4 and 6 to learn to use additional
metamodeling tools like the Dialog Editor, Metamodel Browser and Type
Manager. |
| 7) | Read
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 for information about external interfacing
provided by the API, import/export features and command line
parameters. |
MetaEdit+ Workbench is a dynamic
product under continual improvement, and there may occasionally be some
differences between what is described in the printed manual and what is found in
the current version. The latest versions of the manuals are available from
MetaCase.
Conventions
Throughout the manual, you will find special notes and
comments that point out important features and characteristics of the MetaEdit+
Workbench environment. These notes are printed in
italics and are marked
by an arrow (
) in the left margin. The steps required for performing various
functions are indented and numbered: 1), 2), 3) etc.
List dialogs
MetaEdit+ Workbench makes extensive use of list dialogs for
selecting among elements. To quickly select a known element in the list, simply
type the first few letters of that element’s name when the dialog opens.
This moves the cursor to the first element whose name begins with those letters.
Pressing enter will choose the framed element, closing the dialog. Pressing
space selects the framed element, and resets the typed buffer, so you can start
typing a different name. You can also double click an element to choose it and
close the dialog.
Some dialogs allow multiple selections: use shift-click or
shift-space to select a contiguous section of the list, and control-click or
control-space to select individual elements. Again, a double click first
performs the selection operation (modified by shift or control keys), and then
closes the dialog.
The Windows user interface standard prevents resizing of
modal dialogs, which can make life difficult if not everything is visible in the
default size. To help in such situations, MetaEdit+ Workbench includes a
triangular resize corner at the bottom right of most dialogs. By clicking and
dragging the resize corner, you can resize the dialog window to be
larger.
