Morpho User Guide

 

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Editing a Data Package

There are two main reasons you may wish to edit a data package. First, you may want to add additional documentation to the data package documentation, that was not available in the Data Package Wizard. Second, you may want to change or delete documentation that you entered in the Data Package Wizard, or that you added to the data package documentation in some other way. For either of these purposes, you can use either the Morpho Editor, or use the selection available under the Documentation menu at the top of each window. The functions and uses of the Morpho Editor are described below, and the Documentation menu is described later (click here to skip ahead).

 

Morpho Editor

Begin by opening the data package you wish to edit. Next, open Morpho Editor by doing ONE of the following:

  • Under the "Documentation" menu, choose "Add/Edit Documentation"
  • On the upper right side of the data package documentation, click on the "Edit" button.
  • Right click on a data table or other data object within the data package, and choose "Add Documentation".

 

You will then see the Morpho Editor, pictured below.

 

 

Each type of data documentation document (i.e. each metadata type) has some structure which is indicated by the hierarchical outline on the left. By clicking on the "+" symbol next to a category, you can browse through the hierarchy, viewing "parent" and "child" nodes. Parent nodes are the higher level nodes, and child nodes are the sub-level nodes.

 

Items in the outline are color coded to indicate which items are required and which can be repeated. The legend for this color-coding is found at the bottom-left of the screen. Blue and red nodes in the hierarchy are required, while green and yellow nodes are optional. Blue and green nodes are repeatable, meaning they can be duplicated (for example, there can be multiple data set owners), while red nodes can only be used once, and yellow nodes can be used once or not at all (zero).

 

Initially, only the documentation types that already exist in the data package documentation are displayed in the list. When an item is selected in this outline, a form based view of the information contained in the selected item is shown on the right side of the window. You may navigate your way to a desired field that you would like to edit by clicking on the plus symbols next to the documentation types. Alternatively, you can scroll through the fields shown on the right half of the screen by using the scroll bar.

 

Most of the fields on the right side of the editor screen are editable. One can just click on the field of interest and enter text. The 'tab key' will move the selection to the next editable field. To add additional documentation for types that are not shown initially in the tree on the left of the screen, click the "Show All" button. This will cause all of the documentation types to be displayed. To get back to the original view, click "Trim". To expand and view all of the levels of the tree, click on the "+" button at the top left of the screen. All parents and their children will be displayed. To contract the levels of the tree, click the "-" button.

 

A right-click on any item in the outline displays a popup menu (as shown below) which allows the user to choose among several options. These include duplicating an item, deleting an item, or copy and pasting items. Note that all of these operations will include not only the selected item, but also all of the item's children, or sub-levels, in the indicated hierarchy.

 

To navigate quickly through the tree, you can find a section of documentation by choosing it from the drop down list located at the top left of the screen, next to "Find:".

 

The Documentation Menu

The Documentation menu, which can be found at the top of each screen in Morpho (see picture below), is activated when the Morpho user opens an existing data package. The Documentation menu options invoke various documentation editing tools and/or data entry screens that, together, enable the user to edit any field in the data package. As mentioned in the Morpho Editor section above, the first choice in the Documentation menu opens the Morpho Editor, which allows the editing of any field. The other choices in the menu bring up screens that allow one to edit or add data for specific subsections of the documentation. These same screens are used in the Data Package Wizard to create a new data package, and therefore may look familiar.

 

 

The Documentation menu options are (with screens pictured below):

  • Add/Edit Documentation: Invokes the full-featured Morpho Editor, giving the user editing access to all fields in the data package.
  • View Documentation: Allows the user to view all the documentation for the data package in one window.
  • Research Project: Allows user to specify whether data is part of a larger research program.
  • Usage Rights: Accepts a text paragraph that describes the intended usage rights for the
    data package.
  • Geographic Coverage: Allows the user to specify and describe the geographic region
    associated with the data package.
  • Temporal Coverage: Accepts the specification of temporal coverage boundaries.
  • Taxonomic Coverage: Accepts a list of taxa to which the data package applies.
  • Methods: Allows user to specify the method steps used to collect data, and describe
    the study extent and sampling area.

  • Access Permissions: Enables the user to specify access rights to the data for
    specific persons, and to establish public access rights to view and/or edit the data.

In newer versions of Morpho, additional screens may be accessible from the documentation window, such as Title/Abstract, Keywords, Associated Parties, Creators, and Contacts.

Click on any of the above menu options to read about how to fill out the screens. Following are sample screens from each of these options:

 

Add/Edit Documentation:

Invokes the full-featured Morpho Editor, giving the user editing access to all fields in the data package. Read more about the Morpho Editor here.

 

 

View Documentation:

Allows the user to view all the documentation for the data package in one window.

 

 

Research Project:

Allows user to specify whether data is part of a larger research program.

 

 

Usage Rights:

Accepts a text paragraph that describes the intended usage rights for the data package.

 

 

Geographic Coverage:

Allows the user to specify and describe the geographic region associated with the data package.

 

 

Temporal Coverage:

Accepts the specification of temporal coverage boundaries.

 

 

Taxonomic Coverage:

Accepts a list of taxa to which the data package applies.

 

 

Methods:

Allows user to specify the method steps used to collect data, and describe the study extent and sampling area.

 

 

Access Permissions:

Enables the user to specify access rights to the data for specific persons, and to establish public access rights to view and/or edit the data.

 

 

Technical Notes


For those who are interested in technical details, the Morpho editor is an XML editor. It works by first reading an XML file and building an outline (tree) view of the XML document. XML files can have formalized templates called "DTD's" (Document Type Definition) , which describe how the document can be constructed. If the XML document indicates that its structure should conform to a DTD, then the DTD is scanned and a single instance of any optional nodes not present in the original is added to the hierarchy. Finally, if the editor has additional data about the document type, it will add that data as custom displays or help information about the node, as is shown in the above examples. The editor can thus be customized to display the XML data in a variety of ways.

 

Learn how to upload and download data packages in the next section.

 

 

Help Index

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