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Viewing a table
Sorting a table
Setting column widths
Showing the whole table
Setting fonts
Refreshing the Table Editor

4.3.4 Viewing and formatting

Viewing a table

The View | Selected... command allows you to hide or show selected properties of elements by hiding or showing columns of the table. Hidden properties are also omitted from the printing functions. View | Selected ... opens a selection dialog like that in Figure 4–45, allowing you to choose the properties to be shown in the table.

Selecting Columns to show

Figure 4–45. Dialog for choosing properties to be shown.

To show all properties of the objects, select View | All.

Sorting a table

When a table is created from an existing graph, the initial order of the objects is based on their names, but otherwise the order in the table is free-form, with objects manually ordered by the user. The table can be sorted by Format | Sort.... Figure 4–46 shows a dialog for selecting the sorting rules. It is possible to set up to three criteria for sorting as well as the sort order (i.e. ascending or descending) for each. It is not necessary to define all criteria, as the empty ones are ignored when sorting. These rules are remembered as long as the Diagram Editor stays open, but only enforced by selecting Sort again.

Sort Table

Figure 4–46. Sort table dialog.

Setting column widths

Column widths of the table can be adjusted in two ways. The first way, Format | Autowidth, adjusts all column widths according to the longest values of properties on columns so that they can all be seen. This functionality can be accessed from the toolbar as well.
*The second way, Format | Widths..., opens a dialog for setting each column width. Figure 4–47 shows the Column Widths Tool start and end show which columns the setting will affect. You can set the width with the slider, which is to the same scale as the actual column width. If your column is wider than the dialog, you can make the dialog wider by dragging the bottom-right resize corner; you can also type the width in pixels directly in the Width box. To apply your changes press Save & Close. You can make changes to multiple ranges by pressing Save and then selecting a new range and width.

Column Widths Tool for Table Editor

Figure 4–47. Column Widths Tool.

Showing the whole table

The View | Fit Window to Table command (also available on the toolbar) scales the window to show the whole of the table. If the table is larger than your screen, your operating system may force the window to be smaller than the table.

Setting fonts

In some cases, it may be necessary to set the font of the table. For that purpose, Table Editor offers a tool for selecting fonts. To do this, select Format | Font... and choose the font from the dialog that opens. The fonts available are generic descriptions, rather than specific fonts available on your computer. Using specific fonts would result in problems when moving to a different computer or platform with a different set of fonts.

Refreshing the Table Editor

Refreshing the table is needed when changes made to the conceptual graph by some other editor or changes made to the underlying metamodel need to be propagated to the currently open table. To do this, select View | Refresh (or press F5).

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