A.2.6 Menu Items

This section describes actions available from the Control Window menus additional to those also available from the toolbar (described in the previous section) and those common to other windows (described in Appendix A.1.2).

The File menu contains the following additional actions:

Duplicate Table

Adds a new copy of the current Apparent Table to the list of known tables. This is like loading in the current table again, except that its apparent characteristics become the basic characteristics of the copied one, so for instance whatever is the current row order becomes the natural order of the new one.

Discard Table(s)

Removes the current table from the list and closes and forgets any view windows associated with it. A discarded table cannot be reinstated. You will be prompted to confirm this action. Discarding a table in this way may free up memory, for other operations, but often will not; whether it does or not depends on the details of where the table comes from. This action can also be triggered by hitting the Delete key on the keyboard when the table list has keyboard focus. If multiple tables are selected at the same time, you will be prompted to remove them all.

Move Table Up

Moves the currently selected table up one slot in the tables list. This can be convenient for viewing, and it also influences the order in which tables are saved when doing a Multiple Table or Session save. This action can also be triggered by hitting ALT-up-arrow key on the keyboard when the table list has keyboard focus.

Move Table Down

Moves the currently selected table down one slot in the tables list. This can be convenient for viewing, and it also influences the order in which tables are saved when doing a Multiple Table or Session save. This action can also be triggered by hitting ALT-down-arrow key on the keyboard when the table list has keyboard focus.

Send Table to ...

Sends the currently selected table to a selected listening application using SAMP or PLASTIC. Select the desired recipient application from the submenu.

View Log

Pops up the Log Window to display logging messages generated by the application. Intended mainly for debugging.

Reset Authentication

Logs out of any external services that you have logged in to. If you try to access these services again, you will either access them anonymously or (in cases where authentication is mandatory) be prompted to log in again.

The Views menu contains actions for launching the windows which give certain views of the table metadata. Most of these are provided as toolbar buttons as well, but one is rather special-interest, so appears only in this menu:

Datalink Window

Displays a window for display of tables in the {links}-response format defined by the DataLink standard.

The Graphics menu contains actions for launching the windows which give various plotting and visualisation options. The most important ones are provided as toolbar buttons as well, but this menu contains some actions not available elsewhere. The ones marked "(old)" are the plotting windows that were available before TOPCAT version 4; they have a different user interface, are generally less powerful, and are somewhat deprecated, but still work.

Histogram Plot (old)

Displays the old-style Histogram window for plotting 1-d histograms.

2D Plot (old)

Displays the old-style 2D plot window for plotting 2-d scatter plots.

3D Plot (old)

Displays the old-style 3D plot window for plotting 3-d scatter plots on Cartesian axes.

Sphere Plot (old)

Displays the old-style sphere window for plotting 3-d scatter plots on spherical polar axes, with or without a radial coordinate.

Stacked Line Plot (old)

Displays the old-style Stacked Line Plot window for plotting multiple vertically stacked line plots against a single X coordinate.

Density Map (old)

Displays the old-style Density Map window for plotting 2-d density maps (image-like histograms on a 2-d grid of bins).

The Joins menu contains actions for various types of table join. The items provided additional to those on the toolbar are:

Concatenation Window

Displays the Contatenate Tables window, which allows you to join two tables top-to-bottom.

Multiple Cone Search

Displays the Multiple Cone Search Window which allows you to crossmatch a local table with a remote catalogue exposed via the Cone Search protocol. Note this is somewhat deprecated in favour of TAP or CDS X-Match Upload.

Multiple SIA

Displays the Multiple SIA Window which allows you to crossmatch with a remote image service.

Multiple SSA

Displays the Multiple SSA Window which allows you to crossmatch with a remote spectrum service.

Internal Match

Displays the Internal Match Window for finding internal matches between rows in the same table.

N-Table Match

Displays a dialog for matching more than two tables together.

The Windows menu contains actions for controlling which table view windows are currently visible on the screen. If you have lots of tables and are using various different views of several of them, the number of windows on the screen can get out of hand and it's easy to lose track of what window is where. The actions on this menu do some combination of either hiding or revealing all the various view windows associated with either the selected table or all the other ones. Windows hidden are removed from the screen but if reactivated (e.g. by using the appropriate toolbar button) will come back in the same place and the same state. Revealing all the windows associated with a given table means showing all the view windows which have been opened before (it won't display windows which have never explicitly been opened).

Show Selected Views Only

Reveal all view windows associated with the currently selected table and hide all others.

Show Selected Views

Reveal all view windows which are associated with the currently selected table.

Show All Views

Reveal all view windows associated with all tables.

Hide Unselected Views

Hide all view windows associated with tables other than the currently selected one.

Hide Selected Views

Hide all view windows associated with the currently selected table.

Hide All Views

Hide all the view windows. If you get really confused, this is a good one to select to clear up your screen prior to reinstating the ones that you actually want to look at.

The VO menu groups together those actions which access remote data sources. All of these options can also be found in either the Load Window toolbar or the Joins menu.

The Interop menu contains options relevant to SAMP (or possibly PLASTIC) tool interoperability; see Section 9:

SAMP Window

Pops up the SAMP Window which displays detail about the current status, and allows configuration, of SAMP messaging. Note this option will not be available if TOPCAT is running in PLASTIC mode.

Stop Internal Hub

By default, when TOPCAT starts up, it will look for a SAMP hub, and if none appears to be running it will start one internally, which will normally run until TOPCAT exits. This is usually not problematic, but if you would prefer to run a hub external to TOPCAT, then you may need to shut down TOPCAT's before starting a new one. Using this option shuts down TOPCAT's internal hub.

Broadcast Table

Broadcasts the currently selected table to all listening applications using SAMP.

Send Table to ...

Sends the currently selected table to a selected listening application using SAMP. Select the desired recipient application from the submenu.