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Entry Selection Dialog Box |
The Entry Selection dialog box enables you to select entries in the Project Table based on a combination of criteria for property values. This combination of criteria is called a filter. Once you have defined a set of criteria for selecting entries, you can store this set of criteria as a named filter, and use the filter directly from the Select menu in the Project Table panel.
The Entry Selection dialog box is similar in design to the Atom Selection dialog box. It allows you to select entries using GUI tools rather than entering an ESL expression.
To open the Entry Selection dialog box, you can:
Choose Select → Only in the Project Table panel.
Choose Select → Add in the Project Table panel.
Choose Select → Deselect in the Project Table panel.
Click Select in the Edit Filter panel.
The Entry Selection dialog box allows you to define a filter that can be applied to the entries in the project table. The action taken depends on how you opened the dialog box.
The filter that you define can be a combination of individual filters. To define a property filter, choose a property from the list in the Properties tab, then select a criterion from the right side of the tab, and, if appropriate, enter a property range or a string to be matched. To combine this filter with the current filter definition, click Add to create a filter for entries whose properties meet either the new criterion or the existing criteria, click Remove to create a filter for entries whose properties meet the existing criteria but not the new criterion, or click Intersect to create a filter for entries whose properties must meet both the existing criteria and the new criterion.
Once you have defined a filter, you can create a named filter by clicking Create Filter. To apply the specified action and dismiss the dialog box, click OK
At the top of the entry selection dialog box is a title bar, which defines the action to be taken when you click OK. In the center are two tabs, Properties and Filters, that you use to define or choose filters for entry selection. On the right are buttons for combining the new filter with the current filter. These tools become available when you have selected a property and a criterion for that property, or a named filter. In the lower portion of the panel is an ESL text box and a set of buttons for editing the filter.
The Properties tab contains a property selector, from which you can make a selection, and a set of tools to define a criterion for the property that entries must meet. The available criteria are:
In addition, the inclusion state and the selection state of the entry can be selected as criteria. The tools become available once you have selected a property, and vary according to the kind of property.
To specify a range for a numerical property, you can use any of the following operators:
| == | (equals) |
| != | (is not equal to) |
| > | (greater than) |
| >= | (greater than or equal to) |
| < | (less than) |
| <= | (less than or equal to) |
or you can specify a range with a minus sign, such as 1 - 3. There must be a space on both sides of the minus sign.
The Filters tab contains a list of already-defined filters that you can combine with the current entry selection to define a new selection.
The combining tools are the three buttons to the right of the tabs. When you have set up a criterion for a property or selected a filter, a new entry selection is defined. These tools combine the new selection with the current selection, which is defined by the expression in the ESL text box.
Add adds the new selection to the current selection, using a logical OR operation on the ESL expressions. The resulting selection includes all entries that are in the new criteria or the current criteria. This is the default action, which is performed if you press RETURN.
Remove removes the new selection from the current selection, using a logical AND NOT operation on the ESL expressions. If this is the first operation, the default current entry selection is "all". The resulting selection includes all entries in the current selection but not in the new selection.
Intersect takes only the common members of the new and current selections, using a logical AND operation on the ESL expressions. The resulting selection includes all entries that are in both the new selection and the current selection.
In addition to these three buttons, the Invert button at the bottom of the panel inverts the entire current entry selection, using a logical NOT operation. All entries that were selected are unselected, and all entries that were not selected are selected.
You can undo multiple operations with repeated clicks on the Undo button. The Redo button reverses undo operations, and can also be used multiple times. You can also type ESL expressions directly into the ESL text box. The hand-edited expressions are considered part of the last operation performed with the mouse and can be undone and redone as part of that operation, but cannot be undone or redone separately.
Once you have defined the criteria for selecting entries, the resultant ESL expression can be stored as a filter. To create a filter, click Create Filter. The New Filter dialog box opens, in which you can provide a name to the new filter. The newly created filter appears in the Filters tab of the Entry Selection dialog box and on the Filter submenu of the Select menu in the Project Table panel.
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