A.1.2 Menus

Most windows have a menu bar at the top containing one or more menus. These menus will usually provide the actions available from the toolbar (identifiable because they have the same icons), and may provide some other less-commonly-required actions too.

Here are some of the menus common to several windows:

Window menu

Nearly all windows have this menu. At least the following options are available:

Control Window

Ensures that the Control Window is visible on the screen, deiconifying and raising it if necessary. This can be useful if you 'lose' the window behind a proliferation of other ones.

Scrollable

If selected, this causes the entire content of the window to be wrapped in scrollbars. It is not generally recommended to use this option, since in general the windows are arranged so that resizing them will resize sensible parts of them, but it may be useful if using some of the larger windows on an unusually small screen.

Close

Closes the window. This convenience button has the same effect as closing the window in whatever way your graphics platform normally allows. In most cases, closing the window does not lose state associated with it (such as fields filled in); if you recover the window later it will look the same as when you closed it.

Exit

Exits TOPCAT. You will be prompted to confirm this action if tables are loaded, since it might result in loss of data.

Help menu

Nearly all windows have this menu. The following options are available:

Help

Pops up the Help Window.

Help for Window

Pops up the Help Window; the window will display help information relevant to the window in which the menu appears.

Help in Browser

Attempts to show the application help in a web browser. This is somewhat system dependent and is not guaranteed to work.

Help in Browser (single page)

Attempts to show the application help in a web browser as a single (long page). This can be useful if you want to search for a given word or string in the text. This is somewhat system dependent and is not guaranteed to work.

Help for Window in Browser

Attempts to show the help page relevant to the window in which the menu appears in a web browser. This is somewhat system dependent and is not guaranteed to work.

About TOPCAT

Pops up a little window giving information on the version and authorship of the program. It also reports on availability of some optional components.

Display menu

This menu is available for most windows which display their data using a JTable component. If present, it contains a list of the columns in the JTable with tickboxes next to them - clicking on a column name in this menu toggles whether the column is visible in the window.