The Archive Pane

The fourth, and final (for now), pane of the main tab pane is the Archive pane. On this pane we manage the database of our four sets of graphing information: Layouts (Graph2 properties), Colorsets, Titlesets and Datasets. The data display fields and pushbuttons provided here apply to the information type currently selected.

The list field displays the names of all records of the current type that are in our database. It also highlights the Default record in red and shows the name of the most recently applied record in italics. The user can select any record in the list and edit its name and description without applying it. But new records are created from the current state of the Graph2 object on the Graph pane. Updates are applied to the currently applied record (shown in the upper right of this window) using the current state of this Graph2 object.

While an internal ID number is assigned to each new record introduced to the database, the Name value is also required to be unique with an information set. If a record is imported whose name is already in use, a number will be appended to this name to make it unique. The user will be notified of the need for this and can abort the import or allow it to continue with the name modification.

The ability to export and import information set records was added to allow the developer to create custom graph setups for clients as well as to allow end users to trade them amongst themselves. Four extensions are used to represent exported records of the four different types. While these have not been registered internationally, we have checked to be certain that they are not in use by other applications. We are using .g2l for layout records, .g2c for colorset records, .g2t for titleset records and .g2d for dataset records. These types are appropriately filtered by the import file dialog.