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Lesson 3: Look&Feel: Becoming familiar with the application's user-interface

After the initial startup of the application, the main window with the centered application-logo is presented. This is followed by the „Welcome Wizard" which is offering a number of most basic commands. I don‘t know what to do with it, so I simply click the small rectangular box in the lower left corner to prevent the Wizard from popping up again in a future session. To complete this process, I click „just continue" now. The main application-window of ATLAS/ti 4.0 is now visible. What are we going to find here? As with other applications, there is a labeled menu bar from „File" to „Help" (while the Help menu is rather empty since online help is still under construction at this time). The menu bar provides all the commands and tools essential for working with ATLAS/ti. However a faster approach to access this functionality through buttons or context-sensitive menus will be demonstrated at a later time.

Main menu – button bar

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Buttons of the main menu

In the second row below is the menu bar containing buttons designed to carry out a number of key functions:

    From the Left to the Right:
  • Network-View/Open
  • View/Edit comments to the HU
  • Zooming the PD-window (all buttons are faded in effect, the text now fills the whole window; this may be undone anytime through the „View" menu)
  • Launches the Object Explorer
  • Launches the Query Tool (the search-engine)
  • Report generator: Allows output of all or a part of the HU to the screen, a file or a printer.
  • Opens a second instance of the HU Editor (if you intend to work on two separate HU's at the same time)
  • Linking of primary documents.
  • Saving the HU
  • Displays Blackboards, originating from a text-file named „blackbrd.txt". This file is used to store messages (e.g. to inform co-authors of the current revision; can be modified, hold down the –key while clicking.)
  • Converts the entire HU or parts to an HTML-document (a World Wide Web page).
  • Changes the Font style/ -size of the current primary text.
  • Displays the configuration-menu.
  • Returns to the last active quotation (within the same session).
  • Hit this button if you are truly frustrated (this will require a soundcard).
Below that you will find 4 combo-boxes, (pop-up and scrolling list-windows with a button) .The lists contain as follows (from the left to the right): primary text-list, quotation-list, code-list and memo-list. Each of them can be opened by clicking the small arrow on the right of the list. If you click the button left to the box, the list will be opened in a separate list-window with its own button and menu and may then be aligned anywhere on the main window.

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Pop-up list windows

The pop-up list-windows feature another tiled window underneath the red moveable line („splitter bar") used to display or edit text as well as comments pertaining to active objects within the list (code-comments, memo-texts etc.) Combo-boxes and the special list-windows alike also feature a context-sensitive menu, which pops up after clicking the right mouse-button over the desired list. The context-sensitive menu contains all commands relevant to its object-type. (Linking of primary text, Output of code-lists etc.) IMPORTANT: context-menus contain different menu-items depending whether an object is activated in the list or not: If the object is activated, only the commands that may be executed are visible (e.g. Memos: edit, Code: delete, Quotation: comment). Virtually all of these commands are also to be found in the menu-items of the main menu related to the object-type. However you might feel more comfortable to work with the context-menus (requires an appropriate screen-resolution).

Primary document -window

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Primary document -window
Below that is the core of the main window: the primary document-window. This window will initially show only the application‘s logo and the startup-screen. It will also let you check whether you are working with the most current version of the application (currently: Version 4.1, Build 51). As soon as you have linked data and activated a PD, a fragment of the PD is displayed within the same window and you may now navigate using the vertical scroll-bar. Margin area On the right there is a margin area aimed to display all quotations within the text-fragment assigned to codes or memos. (You will, similar to a sheet of paper, notice your personal marks and annotations. However at this time it is not possible to print both, the primary-text and the contents of the margin area.). The margin area has its own context-menu as virtually any windows of ATLAS/ti. Here, you may especially select the objects to be displayed. Choose between serpents only, (serpents mark the quotation-borders), serpents plus codes, serpents plus Hyperlinks or serpents plus memos while "serpents plus codes" is the default setting. Since serpents never exactly specify the quotation-boundaries, it might be helpful to additionally select the "line refs" option to make sure that line-numbers of the first and last targets for each quotation are displayed. You may also have object-types displayed as an icon. The margin area only reflects the exact content of the particular object-list. If you have selected a filter (see page 20 for additional info on filtering) to fade out a part of the codes, then the faded codes are not being displayed within the margin area respectively.  :

Note!
NOTE: The content of the margin area must move synchronously on scrolling the primary text-window, which works in most cases. If you happen to use the arrow-keys of the vertical scroll-bar, you may encounter that the serpents are being enlarged to the bottom and as a result, they mark a longer section than the actual quotation. You may also encounter serpents that only reveal a section of the length of the display-window in longer quotations although the quotation might actually be longer. Displaying "line refs" is a good way to verify this. Another problem is dealing with the overlapping of two code-labels, which occasionally occurs whenever two quotations start in the same line. If you feel disturbed by this effect, you may choose a larger font for the PD-window and try to keep the font-size for the margin area as small as possible. Since the transition to build 51, the objects displayed within the margin area are active. You can now carry out tasks by clicking the right and the left mouse button. A double-click with the left mouse button on a code-object will present a list of quotations assigned to it while a click with the right mouse button on such an object shows annotations, creation date and the names of the authors for the particular object. You may quickly jump from one quotation to another by utilizing the margin area's display of hyperlinks.  :

Hint!

You may also use the margin area to display one of the object-lists: Simply drag and drop the button on the left from the particular combo-box into the margin area. It is especially recommended to use this technique if you are working on a low-resolution monitor with limited space to position multiple list-windows. If you choose to display an object-list (for example codes), then the margin area works entirely like a list-window. As a result, you get the context-menu of the object-list and may not toggle back to display serpents anymore from the context-menu. Since the upgrade to build 50, context-menus of object-lists in the margin area have been enhanced to facilitate changing the displayed object-type as well as returning back to display the margin area. You can also achieve this effect by switching the „toolbar" on and off again with the appropriate button on the vertical primary-text window toolbar (the 4th button from the bottom). The default-settings (serpents plus codes) are then restored. The primary text-window has its own context-menu that for example allows you to toggle from write-protected mode to edit-mode or inserting hyperlinks etc. PLEASE NOTE: Some PD-related operations may only be executed from the context-menu of the PD-list (new numbering, changing the character-set etc.)

The primary-text toolbar

The vertical toolbar on the left side to the primary text-window contains essential tools for working with primary-texts. From the top to the bottom:
  • GoTo function: allows you to jump to a specific line-number.
  • Search function: looks up text-strings (even complex expressions).
  • Creating a quotation from the currently selected text.
  • "Open coding": the marked section is treated as a quotation. An input-window allows you to enter one or more new codes and link them to a quotation.
  • "In-vivo coding": the marked section is coded to itself.
  • Coding by selecting from a list: the marked section is coded by selecting and assigning an arbitrary number of existing codes from the code-list.
  • Fast-coding: the marked section is coded with the recent active code. (Frequently used in the process of selective coding).
  • Creates a new memo. This memo is automatically assigned to the currently selected text. You are free to choose a title, however the recently active code is suggested.
  • Changing the boundaries of active coding (activates a quotation, marks new quotation-boundaries). Confirm by clicking this key.
  • Enables or disables a left margin-area with continuous line-numbering (useful when used in connection with a line-identical and line-numbered expression of the data-texts: facilitates quick adaptation of paper-notes. )
  • Enables or disables the margin area (for example in case the text was formatted too widely or graphics are being coded, which doesn't make sense)
  • The currently marked area becomes the origin of a hyperlink to another passage.
  • The currently marked area becomes the target of a hyperlink.
  • Shows a list of existing quotations at the current cursor-position (especially useful if you have lost overview due to overlapping quotations.)