The Component tab appears in the Info pane when the focus is on an opened window. It displays information relevant to that component, such as the projection (coordinate system), for the active window and for the active layer within that window. Clicking on a component shown in the Component tab will switch to that component in the Project pane.
The upper part of the pane reports information for the active window, such as a map window. The lower part of the pane reports information for the active layer in that window, for example, for drawings and tables reporting the number of fields, the number of records, and the number of selected records.
The information displayed will vary with the type of component. For example, the Component pane for images will show the size of the image in pixels and also the size of each individual pixel in the units of measure used by the coordinate system for that image. The Info pane for tables reports the number of fetched records, since tables from external data sources might have a user-specified limit on the number of records to fetch, but the Info pane for drawings and images does not report the number of fetched records since drawings and images always display all objects or all tiles.
Coordinate systems are reported in black color text if the coordinate system has already been correctly assigned, or in red color text if the initial coordinate system has not yet been assigned. The records number reports the total number of records in the drawing (objects) or image (tiles).
When the focus is on a table window, the Info pane shows the total number of fields, records, selected records, displayed records, and fetched records.
Table windows automatically fetch and display all records for table stored in the .map project. For tables linked into a project that are stored in an external data source, table windows will fetch and display as many records as have been set in the Tools - Options setting for the initial number of records to show.
When the number of records fetched has been reduced by the Tools - Options setting to less than the total number of records in the table, a (+) notation appears next to Fetched: readout.
The Fetch All
button also appears when the number of records fetched has been reduced
by the Tools - Options setting
to less than the total number of records in the table. Pressing
the button will command the table window to fetch and display all records in the table. Once a table window has been told to fetch all records
for the displayed table, it will keep fetching all records for all further
operations that refresh or replace the table.
The Info pane Components tab will also appear for Command Windows that have results tables. The illustration at left above shows a typical display for a long-running SELECT query from a table in an external data source where the results table is still being populated. The final number of records in the results table is not yet known, and the Displayed and Fetched record numbers are still being dynamically updated as the query runs.
The illustration at right above shows results after the query has finished running, but the number of records is still indeterminate since the remote data source might have been updated while the query was running. Press the Refresh button to update the number of records fetched.
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Move to Previous / Move to Next - Click to pick the previous record or the next record. Will be enabled if an object or record has been picked with an Alt-click, and normally used mainly with the Values tab or the Coordinates tab. This is useful for data sets where records are in order. When records are not ordered in a table, as usually is the case in enterprise class databases, these buttons will be used mainly to step through relatively small selections, with the Selected button pressed to move only within selected records. |
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Selected - Move only within selected records. When enabled (only possible if there is a selection), constrains Previous and Next motion to the previous selected record or to the next selected record. |
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Go - Go to the current object or record in the opened window. |
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Ping - Operates and enabled when the focus is on a drawing, image or layout when an object, pixel or layout frame has been picked. Shows an animated sequence of circles with decreasing radius centered on the record or frame. Pinging helps locate the record or frame on a big and / or busy screen. Has no effect in tables or other settings. |
(geometry or tile field) |
For drawings and images, reports the geometry field (drawings) or tile field (images) being used for geometry or tile date, as well as the spatial index being used for the geometry or tile field. |
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Coordinate System Picker - Manage the coordinate system. Coordinate systems are reported in black color text if the coordinate system has already been correctly assigned, or in red color text if the initial coordinate system has not yet been assigned. |
Fields |
Appears for table windows and for drawing layers in map windows: the total number of fields in the table. |
Records |
Appears for table windows and for drawing layers in map windows: the total number of records. If the total number of records is unknown, the number of records is shown as a question mark, ?. If the number of selected records is unknown, the number of selected records s shown as a question mark, ?. If either of these numbers is unknown, the Info pane shows a Refresh button next to them. Pressing the Refresh button will scan the table and update numbers that are currently unknown. The scan tracks progress and can be canceled. |
Selected |
Appears for table windows and for drawing layers in map windows: the total number of selected records. If the total number of records is unknown, the number of records is shown as a question mark, ?. If the number of selected records is unknown, the number of selected records s shown as a question mark, ?. If either of these numbers is unknown, the Info pane shows a Refresh button next to them. Pressing the Refresh button will scan the table and update numbers that are currently unknown. The scan tracks progress and can be canceled. |
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Refresh - Appears for table windows and for drawing layers in map windows in cases where either the total number of records or the total number of selected records is unknown. If either of these numbers is unknown, the Info pane shows a Refresh button next to them. Pressing the Refresh button will scan the table and update numbers that are currently unknown. The scan tracks progress and can be canceled. |
Displayed |
Appears for table windows: the total number of records displayed in the table window. The number of records displayed might be less than the number of records fetched, for example, when a filter is used to narrow down the records displayed. |
Fetched |
Appears for table windows: the total number of records fetched into the table window. Table windows fetch all records for tables that are stored in the .map project. Table windows for tables linked into the project from external data sources will fetch as many records, up to all, that are specified in the Tools - Options setting for the initial number of records to show. If that setting specifies fetching less than all records in the table, a (+) notation will appear next to the Fetched number to indicate there are more records in the table than have been fetched. |
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Fetch All - Appears for table windows showing tables linked in from external data sources, when the number of records fetched has been reduced by the Tools - Options setting to less than the total number of records in the table. Pressing the button will command the table window to fetch and display all records in the table. Once a table window has been told to fetch all records for the displayed table, it will keep fetching all records for all further operations that refresh or replace the table. |
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Description - Open the Description dialog to enable entering or editing a description. |
Update Record |
Press to apply any changes, such as changes in the Description. |
When a map has the focus the Component tab will report projection information for the map as well as for the active layer within that map. In the illustration below the buildings layer is the active layer in the map.
The tab displays the active layer component, the table used by that
component, the geometry field or tile field used, and the spatial index
used. The number of records reported will report the number of rows in
the source table (including those with NULLs for the geometry or tile
field), as well as reporting the number of selected records. The
Info pane will report the text field used for labels. 
Tech tip: Clicking on any component shown in the Component display will highlight that component in the Project pane opening folders as necessary in the Project pane to show the component.
When a drawing has the focus the Component tab will report projection information for the drawing as well as for the active layer within that drawing, if the drawing has more than one layer. When a drawing window has only one layer, the same component is reported in both the upper and lower parts of the pane.
The number of records reported for a drawing is the number of objects, since each object is one record in the drawing's table.
When a table has the focus the Component tab will report the number of fields and records in the table as well as the number of selected records, the number of displayed records, and the number of fetched records. The number of records displayed may be less than the number fetched if a filter has been used to reduce the number of records displayed to only those that match the filter criteria.
When displaying tables stored inside a .map file, table windows will fetch and display all records in the table. When displaying tables stored outside of the .map file, table windows fetch and display as many records as are specified in the Tools - Options dialog for the Initial number of records to show (non-.MAP) option. See the discussion in the Tables topic.
When the number of records fetched has been reduced by the Tools - Options setting to less than the total number of records in the table, a (+) notation appears next to Fetched: readout.
The Fetch All
button appears when the number of records fetched has been reduced
by the Tools - Options setting
to less than the total number of records in the table. Pressing
the button will command the table window to fetch and display all records in the table. Once a table window has been told to fetch all records
for the displayed table, it will keep fetching all records for all further
operations that refresh or replace the table.
When an image has the focus the Component tab will report projection information for the image as well as for the active layer within that image, if the image has more than one layer.
The Component pane for images will show the size of the image in pixels and also the size of each individual pixel in the units of measure used by the coordinate system for that image.
The number of records in an image is the number of tiles. The info pane will provide the size in pixels for each tile as well as the data type for each pixel. A Tile size of 128x128 means each tile is 128 pixels wide by 128 pixels high, for a total of 16,284 pixels per tile. A data type of float32 indicates each pixel has one channel, that is, only one value per pixel with a float32 data type used for the value. A three channel image will have an x3 data type, such as uint8x3, where each of the three values per pixel is a uint8 data type.
When the focus is on a text component such as a Comments, Location, Query, or Script component, the Info pane will report the number of lines of text. For scripts, the Info pane will report the language used by the script.
When a layout has the focus the Component tab will report the page size of the layout as well as the description.
See the Layouts: Info Pane topic for many examples.
The Component tab in the Info pane is our primary interface for seeing and changing projections, that is, the coordinate systems assigned to components, and to edit those coordinate systems. In Manifold, the terms projection and coordinate system are synonyms and are used interchangeably. The Component tab tells us at a glance the coordinate system (projection) used by a component, and it also tells us at a glance if that coordinate system has not yet been correctly assigned.
When a format or data source has specified the coordinate system to use, Manifold displays the coordinate system in black color. If the coordinate system is shown in red color, that tells us the coordinate system has not been correctly assigned. In that case, we must click the coordinate system picker button and choose Assign Initial Coordinate System to assign the coordinate system that should be used.
Black projection name - Indicates the coordinate system has been assigned. Modern GIS formats will automatically specify the coordinate system to be used when we import a drawing or image from such a format. They will appear in the right places in maps with other layers, we can re-project them if we like and so on.
Red projection name - Indicates the coordinate system must be manually assigned before that data can be used. Older GIS formats or non-spatial formats, such as CAD formats, often will not correctly specify the coordinate system used by their data. In such cases, the default coordinate system, WGS 84 / Pseudo-Mercator (EPSG:3857) will be assigned as a placeholder, and red text is a warning that the correct coordinate system must be assigned before any further use of the data.
We use the Component tab for three key activities involving coordinate systems:
Assign Initial Coordinate System - If a component is imported from a format that fails to specify the coordinate system it should use, we must do so manually. Until we assign the initial coordinate system to use, the Component tab will use red text for the read-out. Once we assign the initial coordinate system the read-out will switch to black text. This command should only be used once, immediately after initial import or linking of a component. For a step-by-step illustrated example using the Assign Initial Coordinate System command, see the Example: Assign Initial Coordinate System topic.
Repair Initial Coordinate System - If people and software never made mistakes we would not need this option. Sometimes a component is imported from a format that incorrectly specifies the coordinate system it should use, and we must manually change that initial setting to the correct coordinate system. At other times, we might have used Assign Initial Coordinate System to specify the initial setting, but we made a mistake and specified the wrong projection. This option allows us to repair such errors by specifying the correct initial coordinate system.
Reproject Component - This is the routine command we use to re-project data into whatever projection we want. Suppose, for example, we import data that is in Latitude / Longitude format but we want it to be in pseudo-Mercator or some other coordinate system. This option allows us to re-project the data to the new coordinate system.
To assign, repair, or change a projection,
click on the coordinate picker button.
The Component tab provides room for a text Description for the context component. The description can contain whatever text we want, edited by clicking the [...] browse button. Adding text using the browse button will cause the description text to appear.
If we start with a component that has no description, we can press
the browse button to pop open an editing window. We enter
the description desired and then press OK.
The new description appears in the Info pane. Descriptions in the Info pane will be word-wrapped to fit into the available width of the pane.
The text is in the Description property for the component, which we can create and edit manually in the Properties dialog for that component (right-click the component in the Project pane and choose Properties).
Like all properties for components, the Description property appears in the mfd_meta table, seen above and selected for emphasis. We can manipulate descriptions in the mfd_meta table by manually editing the table, or editing the table programmatically or using SQL.
When a component has a Description, hovering the mouse over that component will show the first line of the description as a tool tip.
When working with undocked panes, if we have the Info pane sized to minimum width, there may not be enough horizontal room to display the full numbers and units of the Pixel size values.
For example, in the illustration above the pixel size numbers for an image imported from ECW are not exactly 0.5 by 0.5, apparently because the image was at some point reprojected into the coordinate system now being used, which resulted in a slight change in pixel size.
Seeing the full numbers is easy: we simply widen the pane by dragging the right border of the pane to make it wider.
The result provides plenty of room to see the full numbers, as well as the units of measure used, in this case a custom value for US feet.
Highlight a component - Clicking on a component shown in the Component tab will highlight that component in the Project pane, opening folders as necessary in the Project pane to show the component.
Unknown total number of records or selected records - The total number of records in a table may be unknown when the table is generated from a query or a data source that streams data into the table window. We can see the beginning of the records sent and begin working with the table, but that doesn't mean the Info pane can know how many in total will be sent. There are two scenarios in which the number of selected records can be unknown:
The total number of records in a table is unknown and the selection is inverted. This happens with streaming tables. Prime examples are the result tables of queries: such tables compute their data as they are being read so that we can start working with the returned records without waiting until all records are computed. An inverted selection stores keys of the unselected records, so while the system knows how many records are unselected, it cannot compute how many are selected.
The total number of records in a table is known, but the table has changed in a way that could affect the selection after the last selection operation. Examples of changes that can affect the selection are adding or removing records, or changing values in the key fields.
Assign Initial Coordinate System
Repair Initial Coordinate System
Example: Edit Coordinates While Creating an Object - When creating an object in a map using a tool such as Create Area, right in the middle of the process we can edit coordinates in the Info pane Coordinates tab. This example shows the step by step process.
Example: Edit Attributes and Move a Point - We look at the attributes for a point in a drawing layer and edit one of the attributes using a more expanded Edit dialog. We then move the point to a new location. Easy!
Example: Edit Attributes, Larger Text, IME for Asian Languages - A tour showing how to edit attributes in a drawing using the Info pane Values tab and the expanded Edit dialog, including advanced Unicode facilities and use of the built in Input Method Editor (IME) to input text in Japanese language.
Example: Assign Initial Coordinate System - Use the Info pane to manually assign an initial coordinate system when importing from a format that does not specify the coordinate system.
Example: Change Projection of an Image - Use the Reproject Component command to change the projection of an image, raster data showing terrain elevations in a region of Florida, from Latitude / Longitude to Orthographic centered on Florida.
Example: Create Parcels from Traverse Files - Traverse files using ESRI traverse file format are widely used by surveyors and government organizations in the US to define parcels and lines by describing a sequence of directions, distances and curves from a starting point. Manifold automatically handles both tangent and non-tangent curves in ESRI traverse file format as well as the full variety of options used to specify angles, distances and curves. This video shows how it's easy to create a parcel from a traverse file.
