PlanetGIS User Guide/Finding Your Way Around
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The graphical user interface
PlanetGIS' GUI is illustrated in the figure below.
To quickly familiarize yourself with the graphical user interface, notice what happens when you position the mouse cursor over any element of the GUI. After a pause of about a second over an element, a little yellow tool tip will appear showing the function of the button. The tool tip is only displayed for a few seconds, but the description remains in the hint bar at the bottom of the screen. Also, once a particular function is activated and you move the mouse cursor over the map, a more comprehensive tool tip will tell you what will happen if you click or right-click.
The main menu & menu bar
The main menu and menu bar work together for all application-wide functions. Buttons in the “menu bar” all have corresponding items in the main menu. They are provided for quicker access to often used functions. For detailed descriptions of each item, please refer to the Reference section.
The map toolbar
The map toolbar is used for navigation on the map and for selecting features. The buttons are described briefly below.
The first six buttons are modal buttons which select a certain “click mode” for the map. Depending on which mode you are in, different things will happen when you click on the map. Some of these buttons also have sub-modes which may be accessed by depressing the button for ½ second. The current “click mode” of the map is displayed in the hint bar when the mouse cursor is placed over the map and the cursor image will change to an icon that is similar to the button image. The <Shift>, <Ctrl> and <Alt> keyboard buttons change the function of some of the modes.
For most modes, right-clicking on the map causes a zoom-out. Right-clicking and holding for ½ second activates the map menu.
Tag. In this mode a map feature is selected while the existing selection is cleared. <Shift> changes the click mode into “Tag multiple” and <Alt> changes to “Untag”. Keeping the left mouse button down for ½ a second when pressing this button activates the palette of additional tagging modes. See Selecting features for more information.
Info. This mode is the same as Tag mode except that the attribute information window pops up whenever a feature is selected that has attribute information attached to it.
Measure. In this mode you can measure distance, direction and area. Click once on the map to indicate the starting position of a measurement and move the mouse in the direction of measurement. The distance from the start location, direction and bearing is displayed in the scale box. The total distance will be updated continually as you move the mouse. Click one or more times to fix a coordinate and create further line segments. If you keep the mouse button depressed a path will be captured with many points as you move the mouse. To measure area, return to the starting point. Clicking at the starting point clears the measurement polygon. The <Esc> key on the keyboard also cancels the current measurement.
Capture. In this mode you can place your own points, lines or polygons on the map. Please see Capturing Spatial Information for more.
Zoom. In this mode you can click on the map to centre that position and reduce the scale by half, or alternatively click and draw a zoom rectangle by moving the mouse while depressing the left mouse button. Right-clicking, as with most other modes, will zoom out by doubling the scale.
Pan. In this mode you can change your viewing location of the map without changing scale. Click on the map and drag (move mouse while left button is depressed) to “pan”.
The next 5 buttons do not change the click-mode selected above. They all perform a single action which usually do not need to be repeated.
Zoom all. This button causes the map to be displayed to its full extent, within the map window area. In cases where the map extent is limited to a specific area, zoom-all will display only that area.
Zoom previous. This button causes the map to revert to a prior location and scale. This is like an “undo” for zooming and panning operations.
Zoom tags. Clicking on this button will cause the map to fit selected features into the screen.
Clear tags. Clears all tags and empties the selection.
Redraw. Re-renders the map on screen.
Expanding tabs
A brief explanation of the tabbed windows follow.
Legend. This displays an automated legend of all the visible layers on the map. No interaction with the legend is possible, but various display characteristics may be controlled through the display properties. (See The Display Manager).
Displays. This tab contains the display manager. The display manager controls everything that is visible in the current view of your map. Here you can add layers, toggle the visibility of layers and change the order in which they are drawn. An entire chapter is devoted to the display manager. (See The Display Manager).
Info. This tab contains attribute information of currently selected features. Please see Attributes.
Edit. (Not available in PlanetGIS Explorer). This tab displays the coordinate list of a selected feature and offers many tools for manipulating individual features. See Capturing Spatial Information.
View tabs
You can also add your own views by right-clicking on a view tab and selecting New view‑>After this view.
Locating features
- If you know its unique identifier (GID or key),
- By its label, or
- By a unique attribute value.
Locate by key. Enter the exact identifier of the feature you are looking for and select the layer on which you want to do the search. You can omit selecting a specific layer, in which case a list will be provided of all features that were found. Only layers that have been selected into the current view will be searched.
Locate label. A label is an optional text string that is stored with the coordinates of a feature for fast rendering of the text. You can look for partial labels by using wildcard characters. Some examples:
- Find all features with a label that starts with an X enter: X*
- Find all features with a label that starts with an X and is 3 characters long: X??
- Find all features with a label that contains a number: *[0-9]*
As with locating by key, one or more layers from the current view may optionally be specified for the search.
Locate by attribute. todo
The map menu
Todo: describe map menu
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