Easily Overlooked Features

Here are some miscellaneous program features which, for whatever reason, are in danger of being misunderstood or overlooked completely. Some of them are recent additions. I expect to update this list fairly often by simply appending new items to it.

The first thing you'll notice when using the Walls editor is that the ENTER key, by default, skips to the next tab stop instead of inserting a line break. You can end the line with either two successive ENTERs or a CTRL-ENTER (which inserts a line break). This behavior makes entering tab-delimited data via the numeric keypad especially easy. Also note that the grid lines (vertical bars) are due to the inserted tab characters. You control this behavior, along with tab spacing, grid line presence, etc., via the Options | Editor series of dialogs.

Prior to compiling a branch of your project tree for the first time, you should turn on the Options | Compilation | Look for Duplicates menu option. (There is a toolbar button for toggling this option on or off.) This will cause compilation to be interrupted when two vectors with the same pair of FROM/TO names are encountered, which is likely the result of unintentional duplication. Since this slows compilation significantly, the option is initially turned off each time the program is started.

Various kinds of search operations are provided via the Search | Find menu option. You can also click the binocular icon on the toolbar (or the arrow icons on either side) to invoke a search or search-next function. For details, see Search Operations. Basically, the functionality depends on which kind of window is active:

•	If an edit window is active, the search options are basically the same as that of many other Windows text editors.

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If a project tree window is active you are given the opportunity to search all files in the selected tree branch (opened or not) for the specified text. All survey files that contain the text (e.g., a station name) will then be flagged with a red check mark on the tree diagram. Subsequent opening of a checked file will automatically position the cursor at the first highlighted match. Additional matches in the file are accessed by clicking the "find next" icon (a right arrow).

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If the Geometry page of the Review dialog is active, the search operation will locate the component, loop system, and traverse (if any) containing a specified vector. You are prompted to enter a pair of station names in any order. Note that the text editor's right-click menu provides an option to jump directly to the statistics for a vector defined on the current line -- no need to search in that case.

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Finally, if the Map page of the Review dialog is active, the search option allows you to position a small tracker rectangle over a named station. The "find next" operation will do the same, using the previously searched for station as a target, or the component's reference station (or first "fixed" station) if this is the first search.

Like printed maps, the size of screen map windows you generate via the Map Page's "Display" button is customizable. You can do this by setting the "frame width" in the Options | Displayed maps dialog . A much easier way, however, is to right-click an existing screen map and select Resize map frame from the popup context menu. You can resize the current window (effectively changing the map's resolution) and optionally reset the default size for future windows. See Displayed Maps.

Note that the Options | Printed (or Displayed) maps dialogs allow you to change the spacing between station labels and notes. The default spacing (gap) is 1, which produces the densest labeling without overlap. Use larger values for sparser labeling. Use 0 to ignore overlap and label all stations. With each new version of the program, be sure to check out the other settings in these two dialogs. Although you shouldn't need to change the settings often, you may want to experiment to determine what's best for your monitor and printer. Any changes you make are automatically saved.

Character fonts are often problematic in Windows programs since they are so dependent on display settings and particular device drivers. Be sure to run through the Options | Fonts settings that are possible. You may want to experiment with the station label fonts for both display and printer. Realize that the point size for TrueType fonts can be smaller than any of the choices you are given in the font dialog's drop-down list. (You can enter it explicitly.) For example, on my 1024x768-resolution display, I find point 6 Arial a good choice for labels. Point 5 Small Font is smaller but slightly less readable. Point 5 Arial is unreadable.

Also, the Geometry and Traverse pages of the Review Dialogs employ a fixed-space font for tabular data. You can select Options | Fonts | Review tables to choose a font style (bold, italic, face name, etc.) other than the initial default; however, unlike the other font choices in Walls, you cannot choose a proportional font. Neither can you specify its point size since it will be sized automatically.

Currently there are no report printing options in Walls itself. (Only maps are printed.) However, a text file with coordinates and other statistics can be generated for selected portions of the segment tree. To obtain one, go to the Segment page of the Review dialog, select a collapsed branch of the tree and click Reports, or click the right mouse button. In the Adjusted Totals dialog that pops up, click Coordinates to open the Vector and Coordinate Reports dialog. From there you can create a file, <name>.LST, in the project's work folder while simultaneously placing it in the Walls editor. <name> is the workfile base name of the compiled branch. Preexisting files with that name are automatically overwritten. With vector lists, use the mouse shortcut described below for quickly jumping to a vector's definition in the raw data.

Besides the normal method of double-clicking on a file icon in the project tree to open a file, there are other methods of file opening that result in a vector of interest being highlighted in gray:

•	Double-click a vector in the Traverse page of the Review dialog to open an edit window into the data file with the vector's definition highlighted.

•	In the Files list box of the Geometry page, double-click a file name to open an edit window into the file. If the name clicked on was highlighted in red, a vector adjacent to the network component's reference station will be highlighted.

•	When using the editor to scan a vector listing (see above), double-click anywhere in the colon-separated file name and line number (the rightmost column) to open the respective data file.

When working with the preview map, several shortcuts are available. They are described in more detail under Map Page:

•	Left-click and drag with the CTRL key down to pan across the image (also works on the Page Layout page).

The menu selection File | New Project gives you the opportunity to select a folder and name for the project script file by way of the familiar file creation dialog. Since it's often convenient to establish a new project in its own folder (unless it's sharing another project's data), you may at the same time want to create a new folder beneath the folder that's actually selected. This is easy to do by simply prefixing the name you enter with the desired folder name -- for example, "JEWEL/JEWELL.WPJ". In fact, you can specify an entire pathname to create a set of nested folders if necessary. In a similar fashion you can create new folders via the File | Import and File | Save as dialogs.