In this part of the exercise you will explore some of the powerful
functions of xtme, not with the intention of creating
some metadata you will save, but rather with the idea of putting
xtme through its paces. Although this exercise will
demonstrate some of the functions and operational characteristics of
xtme it is by no means an exhaustive demonstration.
You should examine the metadata for xtme,
tools/doc/editor.doc
for other details.
- Start up xtme without specifying a document to open:
$ xtme
A window called "Untitled" should open with a menu bar across the top.
At the top of the window should be the word
Metadata, under it a line going across the window (with a
square at its right end), and finally the word
Metadata again. If you put the pointer
on the little square you can drag it to resize the two parts of the
window.
- Mouse click on Metadata in the upper
window, causing the word to be highlighted. Hold down the left mouse
button on Add on the menu bar, then drag
down the list of choices until (all of the
above) is highlighted, then release the mouse button. In the
upper window you should now see the seven major sections of metadata
listed hierarchically under the word Metadata.
The upper window will always show the structural skeleton of the
metadata, that is the metadata element names which are present. The
lower window is the edit window in which you can type or paste values
for metadata, unless the element highlighted in the upper window is a
container element. If the latter is the case, then the lower window
mirrors what is highlighted in the upper window and acts as a reminder
that this element does not require a value to be entered. I may refer
to the upper window as the "element window", and the lower window as
the "value window" in the following material.
- Before you go any further, you should give your file a name.
Position the mouse pointer over the word File
on the menu bar, hold down the left mouse button and drag
down to Save As. A message box will pop
up, prompting you for a file name. Let's use
tester
for
the file name. Also, periodically during this exercise, you should
revisit the File menu and select
Save.
- Highlight Identification_Information in
the element window and notice that the element name is mirrored in the
value window (it is a container element). Go to
Add on the menu bar and hold down the left mouse button.
Notice that the Add menu has now changed to
reflect what can be added as elements under
Identification_Information. Select (all
of the above) again.
- These new elements add hierarchically under
Identification_Information in the element window. There are
probably now more elements than the element window can display so a
scroll bar may have appeared on the right side of it. To scroll the
element window up or down position the mouse pointer over the dark
part of the scroll bar, depress your middle mouse key and drag up or
down.
- Highlight Keywords in the element
window, then from the Add menu, select
Theme. With Theme
highlighted in the element window, go to the
Add menu and select
Theme_Keyword_Thesaurus. This new element
appears in the element window.
- Notice that now the value window only has a caret in it. This
indicates that this is an element which requires a value (it is not a
container element). Mouse click in the value window (changes focus to
lower window) then type in:
GCMD Directory
- We now need to add a Theme_Keyword,
so we go back to the Add menu, but alas,
Theme_Keyword is not available as a pick.
In fact, all the menu says is Enter Value Below
. Here is the reason:
In order to add a child
element, its parent must be selected in the element window.
Select Theme in the element window and
from the Add menu, select
Theme_Keyword. It now appears in the
element window, and in the value window, a lonely caret appears.
Mouse click in the value window and give the caret some company by typing:
atmospheric phenomena
- We want to add another Theme_Keyword,
and we could do it by repeating the above procedure. There is an
easier way, though. Assuming that Theme_Keyword
is still highlighted in the upper window, select
Duplicate from the
Edit menu. Another Theme_Keyword
is added into the element window, and a caret appears in
the value window. Mouse click in the value window and type:
snow
- Select Version from the
Help menu. A new window should appear
which gives hints about using xtme. Grab the title
bar of this new window and drag it away from xtme's
editing window so it doesn't obscure it. Select
Dismiss from the Help window's
menu bar to make the Help window go away.
- Select Element from the
Help menu and see that it gives the
definition and production rules for the element selected in the
element window. Select a different element and notice that the Help
window reflects this newly selected element. What is displayed here
comes from the help file specified when xtme is
started (tools/doc/xtme.hlp in our case). The help file is a
plain text file and you can add additional information to it if you so
desire (see tools/doc/editor.doc for information on how to do
this).
- Select Output from the
Help menu. The Help window now displays
all of the metadata elements that you have added, and all of the
values that you have entered. The Output window reflects exactly the
structure of your current metadata document which is just a plain
ASCII document. Very nice.
Note! Output doesn't update while you are entering
values, but it will as soon as you select Update
from its menu bar.
- View is pretty self explanatory. It
controls the hierarchical depth of metadata elements which are visible
in the element window. In the View menu
All levels,
1 level,
2 levels, and
3 levels affect all elements.
Hide and Show
operate relative to the currently selected element and only affect the
children of the currently selected element. All
levels makes all elements to the lowest hierarchical depth
visible in the element window. 1 level
makes only the first hierarchical elements (like
Identification_Information and
Distribution_Information) visible.
If an element has children which are not visible this will be
indicated by the presence of a + sign to the left of the element
name. Show reveals one more hierarchical
depth below the currently selected element (assuming there are
actually elements to be made visible). Hide
conceals all children elements of the currently selected
element.
- Select All Levels from the
View menu, then select the
Keywords element in the element window.
From the Add menu choose
Temporal. Select the
Keywords element again, then choose Stratum
from the menu. Select the Keywords
element again, then choose Place. So now
the Keywords fragment of our metadata
tree looks like so:
Keywords
Theme
Theme_Keyword
Theme_Keyword
Theme_Keyword
Temporal
Stratum
Place
Notice that these elements do not reflect the order in which
they are given in the Add menu, the order
in which they are listed in the CSDGM. There is nothing in the CSDGM
that says anything about the order of sibling metadata elements, so
really there is nothing really wrong here. However for consistency
and to keep elements of metadata placed in the order people come to
expect them when reviewing metadata, it would be helpful to reorder
these Keyword elements into the more
standard order of Theme,
Place, Stratum,
Temporal. Swap
will do this.
- Swap exchanges the currently selected element with its nearest
sibling element above it. Select the Place
element, then Swap from the
Edit menu. Repeat the operation twice
more, moving the Place element
above the Theme element (notice that all
of Theme's children were swapped with
it). Select Theme, then
Swap from the Edit
menu to place Theme and
Place in the standard order.
- Cut (from the
Edit menu) removes the currently selected element and all its
children. What is cut is still an X-selection and is available to
be pasted, thus forming an alternate way to swap items without
having to swap repeatedly. Cut the Temporal
element from the metadata.
- Paste (from the
Edit Menu) attempts to paste the current X-selection (if it is
a metadata subtree) appropriately relative to the currently selected
element. If a sibling element is selected as a target the subtree is
pasted immediately below the selected element. If a sibling isn't
selected, but rather a parent element or the child of a sibling, then
the element is placed at the bottom of all its siblings. For example:
- Select Keywords in the element
window, then select Paste from the
Edit menu. Temporal
is placed underneath Stratum.
Cut Temporal again.
- Select one of the Theme_Keyword
elements, then select Paste from the
Edit menu. Temporal
is placed underneath Stratum.
Cut Temporal again.
- Select Place, then select
Paste from the
Edit menu. Temporal is placed
underneath Place (a high speed swap!).
Cut Temporal again.
Paste is good about not letting you paste
a subtree where it shouldn't go. For example, select the
Spatial_Domain element, then
Paste from the
Edit menu. Nothing should have appeared under
Spatial_Domain, and if you were watching
the window you started xtme from, there was probably a message
stating "No place to paste this information." Nothing happened
because Temporal is not a valid child
element of Spatial_Domain. Select the
Keywords element again, then
Paste from the
Edit menu to put Temporal back
where it belongs before you lose it.
- Copy makes a copy of the currently
selected element and its subtree children available as an X-selection
without removing it from the existing tree (very different from
Cut).
Select the Theme element, then select
Copy from the
Edit menu. Select the Keywords
element, then select Paste from the
Edit menu. The
Theme element and its children appear below
Temporal. Select
Output from the Help menu, and see
that the values for the children of both instances of
Theme are identical.
- Clear "zeroes out" the values for the
elements under the currently selected element without removing the
metadata element skeleton.
Select the second instance of the element Theme
, then select Clear from the
Edit menu. Select
Output from the Help menu and
observe that the Theme_Keyword_Thesaurus
and Theme_Keyword elements no longer have
values (under the second instance of Theme
only, the first instance is unchanged).
- Prune removes all elements below the
currently selected element whose children are all devoid of values
(that is, there is no entered metadata in them, only the metadata
element names are there). Hmmm... Remember back when we worked with
cns, we showed that it could clean up an irregular
metadata record pretty well, but that our record still contained a
number of empty elements which cns also passed on but
that mp complained about because they were empty?
This is a quick job for xtme.
- Close whatever document you were working on, then make a copy of
that metadata file that was processed with cns and
call it prunetest
$ cd kygs
$ cp output prunetest
- Now open this document up with xtme
$ xtme prunetest
- Select 1 level from the
View menu and then select
Metadata_Reference_Information.
Show the details of this element by holding down the Alt key
and pressing the 6 on the numeric keypad or by selecting
Show from the
View menu.
- Select (all of the above) from the
Add menu to put additional empty elements
into this section.
- Select Output from the
Help menu and scroll down to the end of
the document. In the
Metadata_Reference_Information section you will see the new
empty elements. Select the Metadata
element in the element window, then select
Prune from the Edit menu. Update
the output window. Notice that the empty elements are all gone.
- Save
prunetest, then quit xtme.
- Run prunetest through mp
$ mp -c kygs.cfg prunetest -e prunetest.err
- Look at the error file, prunetest.err. Now there is an
improvement - down to 30 errors from the former 36!
- Go back to the examples subdirectory
$ cd ..
- Serious mucking about - pasting into xtme from other X-Windows
Open your tester document with xtme
$ xtme tester
Under the Description element in
Identification_Information, add an
Abstract element. From the value window
you will see that Abstract is an element
that requires a value. We are going to paste it in from another
source.
- Open an xterm window and launch vi with the
hap/abstract document:
$ vi hap/abstract
- Highlight any or all or the paragraph of this document, by
dragging your mouse or by marking the beginning point (left mouse
button) and end point (right mouse button). By this process, this
material is made available as an X-selection and can be pasted into
another X-Window.
- The empty Abstract value
window in xtme looks inviting. Mouse click in the
Abstract value window, then with the
mouse pointer still in that window, depress your middle mouse button.
This should paste what you just highlighted into the value window.
- If what you have highlighted has hierarchical metadata structure,
you can also paste it as an element into the element window, that is,
you can paste a subtree.
- Close the abstract document then open hap/csdgmtab.txt
with vi (in an xterm window):
$ vi hap/csdgmtab.txt
- Highlight from Time_Period_of_Content
to Currentness_Reference under
Identification_Information in your
vi window.
- Mouse click back into the element window of xtme,
and select the Citation element with your
left mouse button.
- Now press your middle mouse button. The section you just
highlighted should be pasted in under Citation
. Note that the middle mouse button is the only way to
accomplish this; Paste from the
Edit menu will not work for this
operation!
- Okay, now lets do something similar from another xtme
session.
- Close your vi window, then start
up another xtme session with the
hap/csdgmtab.txt document:
$ xtme hap/csdgmtab.txt
- Cut the Distribution_Information
element from your tester document in your first
xtme session.
- Highlight Distribution_Information
in the csdgmtab.txt document (second xtme
session) then select Copy from the
Edit menu of that session.
- Mouse click back into the first xtme element
window and select Entity_and_Attribute_Information
.
- Press your middle mouse button. The full
Distribution_Information with all subtree children should now
be appearing in your tester document.
- You may notice that text doesn't wrap automatically in the value
window. Text that goes beyond the right margin turns into a black
smudge on the window edge. To get a paragraph to wrap in this window,
place the cursor within the paragraph then strike a Control b, that
is, the Control key and the 'b' key together. If you think about it
as you are typing you can just enter a carriage return before you
get to the end of the line.
- You will shortly grow tired of using the backspace key to perform
deletions in the value window. When that happens, you should know that
you can select and delete a section of text in the value window by
dragging the mouse across it, then pressing the Control-w key
combination.
- When you have finished editing a metadata file with
xtme, select Save, then
Quit from the File
menu.
- This completes the exercise.