The Table Editor (Figure 4–43) provides a tabular or form-based view on the objects of a given type in a graph. In the editor, the objects of a graph are represented as rows and properties of the objects form columns. Thus, the Table Editor provides an easy way to view all the information about objects in a graph in a compact form.

With the Table Editor you can view and edit properties of objects as well as make or view explosions and decompositions between several graphs. Hence graphs such as requirements specifications or problem lists, which are neither graphical diagrams nor matrices, are most suitable for the Table Editor.

The Table Editor window (as shown in Figure 4–43) consists of three parts: menu bar, toolbar and the table view itself, which is the main area for creating and managing objects. Within the table view, each object is a row and each cell is a property value. If the property value contains a newline character, it will be displayed as a grey paragraph mark (pilcrow).

You can search within any of the columns of a table by clicking in that column and typing the first letters of the desired property value. The search begins at the current row, and highlights the first match after it. To move to the next match, press Alt+Down, and similarly Alt+Up / Alt+Home / Alt+End for the previous, first or last match. Pressing Space will select the highlighted element and clear the search string. To include a special character like Space or Enter in the search string, hold down Alt as you type it.

Unlike other editors, the Table Editor only has an action toolbar: as each table can only show objects of one type, there is no need for the objects or relationship types toolbars. The commands on the action toolbar are (from left to right): Generate, Print, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Autowidth, Fit Window to Table and Delete. Depending on the modeling language used, there may still be additional quick-access buttons for various generators on the right side of the toolbar. The visibility of the toolbars in each Table Editor window can be set from the View | Toolbars menu. Default visibility and layout of toolbars can be set in the Options Tool (see Section 3.1.3).