Usage of the manual
Although MetaEdit+ Method Workbench is easy to use, the large
number of features may appear overwhelming to new users. This section provides
some guidance on how to go about learning MetaEdit+ Method Workbench, and how
best to use this manual.
Guidance for learning
To become familiar with MetaEdit+ Method Workbench, you must
first be familiar with the other features of MetaEdit+. Below is a suggested way
to get started:
1) | Read
the MetaEdit+ User’s Guide Introduction (Chapter 1) to get an overview
of the
environment. |
2) | Walk
through the MetaEdit+ User’s Guide tutorial (Chapter 6). You do not
need to complete each step in detail, but it is good to have an idea of the
basic functionality of the tools where your metamodels will be
used. |
3) | Read
the MetaEdit+ User’s Guide Chapter 5, metamodel and graph structures
to get an understanding about the Object Repository of MetaEdit+. This chapter
describes how design information is structured and how you can link and reuse
information you have already stored in the MetaEdit+ repository. You will use
the concepts described here as you modify and create methods and their
components with MetaEdit+ Method Workbench. A thorough understanding of these
concepts will help you take full advantage of the power of the MetaEdit+
customisation features.
|
4) | Walk
through the Method Workbench tutorial (Chapter
2 in this manual). Especially for new
users, the tutorial is the most efficient way to get to grips with MetaEdit+
Method Workbench. It introduces the user to method customisation, and
familiarises him with the Method Workbench tools. This part of the manual is
best read while sitting at your computer so that you can experiment with the
features of Method Workbench as they are described in the text.
|
5) | Read the
tools chapter (Chapter 1 here), once
you have completed the tutorial and gained some experience with MetaEdit+. The
chapter contains in-depth information about each of the method development tools
that you used in the
tutorial. |
6) | Use
the menu reference (Chapter 3 here).
The menu reference chapter forms a quick source of information about MetaEdit+
functionality, thus serving both experienced users and
novices. |
MetaEdit+ is a dynamic product under
continual improvement, and there may occasionally be some differences between
what is described in the printed manual and what is found in the current
version. The HTML-based manual, however, is updated for any new changes or
improvements as it comes together with the software installation package and
patch files. Therefore, you are strongly advised to use the HTML-based version
of the manual.
Conventions
Throughout the manual, you will find special notes and
comments which point out important features and characteristics of the MetaEdit+
environment. These notes are printed in
italics and are marked by an
arrow (

) in the left margin. The steps required for performing
MetaEdit+’s various functions are indented and numbered: 1), 2), 3)
etc.
Menus, mouse buttons and dialogs
Throughout this manual we assume a right-handed mouse, i.e.
one where the left mouse button is used for most operations. Further, we assume
it has two buttons, referred to as left and right. If your mouse has three
buttons, the middle button normally initially works as a ‘right’
button. In this case, you can swap the middle and right buttons’ menus by
pressing the right button and choosing ‘swap mouse
buttons’.
Tools in MetaEdit+ have two kinds of menus: pull-down and
pop-up. Pull-down menus
are found in the menu bar under the
window title bar, and pop-up menus are related to elements of the models. To use
a pull down menu, select its label from the menu bar with the left mouse button
and choose the desired function from the menu that appears. You may also access
pull-down menus with their accessor keys, underlined in the menu. An individual
menu item may also have its own shortcut keys, shown on the right of the menu
item.
To use pop-up menus
, first select the
element to be operated on (e.g. with the left mouse button), and then use the
right-mouse button to open the pop-up menu for further action. In all tools of
MetaEdit+ the pop-up menu contains the specific functionality appropriate to the
selected element.
List dialogs
MetaEdit+ makes extensive use of list dialogs for selecting
among elements. To quickly select a known element in the list, simply type the
first few letters of that element’s name when the dialog opens. This moves
the cursor to the first element whose name begins with those letters. Pressing
enter will choose the framed element, closing the dialog. Pressing space selects
the framed element, and resets the typed buffer, so you can start typing a
different name. You can also double click an element to choose it and close the
dialog.
Some dialogs allow multiple selections: use shift-click or
shift-space to select a contiguous section of the list, and control-click or
control-space to select individual elements. Again, a double click first
performs the selection operation (modified by shift or control keys), and then
closes the dialog.
The Windows user interface standard prevents resizing of
modal dialogs, which can make life difficult if not everything is visible in the
default size. To help in such situations, MetaEdit+ includes a triangular resize
corner at the bottom right of most dialogs. By clicking and dragging the resize
corner, you can resize the dialog window to be larger.