UI settings and configuration

There are a wide range of UI settings which you can change which will allow you to customize the MAT UI. Some of them are available directly within the View menu, and the remainder are available via a settings panel accessible from the View menu.

• The View menu
• Show character offsets
• Show annotation tables
  
• Settings management
  
• Available settings
• General UI settings
• Annotation table settings
  
• Annotation palette settings
• Annotation popup menu settings
• Annotation editor settings
• Reconciliation settings
• Annotation operation settings
  
• How to change the settings
• List of settings, their names, and their defaults

The View menu

The View menu looks something like this:

The settings in this menu vary according to the type of tab that's active. The settings you see here are:

• Show character offsets: this setting makes character offsets visible in the tag status line when you hover your mouse over the document.
• Edit/view annotations in tabs: this setting applies to editing annotations.
• Edit/view annotations in popups: this setting applies to editing annotations.
• Show annotation tables: this setting creates a detail tab in the lower UI region which displays detailed tables of the annotations in the document.
• Autotag is case-sensitive: this setting controls whether autotagging is case-sensitive or not.

The settings listed in the View menu are only some of the available features. In order to see all the settings, select "All settings..." from the View menu. This will bring up a modal dialog which permits you to change the settings of all the available settings, including those for other types of tabs and those advanced settings which are never available in the View menu directly. This dialog looks something like this (the available settings, again, may change):

You can find a full description of all available UI settings below.

In the remainder of this section, we illustrate two of the most common UI settings, and we'll conclude with more about how to manage your UI settings.

Show character offsets

If you enable this setting, you'll get the following behavior:

You can see that in the tagging info line, the start and end offsets of the annotation are now displayed.

Show annotation tables

When a MAT task has spanless annotations, there will always be a lower pane which allows you to see tables of annotations. If you want this pane to appear for all tasks, not just for spanless tasks, you can enable "Show annotation tables" in the "View" menu. You cannot disable the annotation tables for tasks without spanless annotations by disabling this setting; these tasks will always show the annotation tables.

If you enable this setting, your UI will now look like this:

The lower pane gives you access to a table for each annotation label. You can also set a custom setting via "All settings..." to include summary tables for all spanned and spanless annotations. (If they're included, the summary tables will be the default view when you show the annotation tables.) You can use the menu at the top of this lower pane to select the table you want to see (here, we've selected the table for the ORGANIZATION label). In addition, the menu shows the number of entries in each table. Most of the columns in these tables are sortable, by clicking on the column header.

The annotation tables will always show all content annotations for the document, whether or not they have styles associated with them in the legend.

If you hide the annotation table using the "-" button on the tab, it will be hidden until the next time this document tab is displayed, as long as "Show annotation tables" is enabled.

Settings management

In addition to the "All settings..." item, the View menu has a number of other items which help you manage your UI settings.

"Save settings in browser": if you select this item, your current UI settings will be stored in your browser cookies. Whenever you load the MAT UI within the same browser, these settings will be reload from your browser cookies when the UI loads. Note that this does not enable dynamic saving; if you change the settings, and you want those changed settings saved, you'll need to select "Save settings in browser" again.

"Clear saved browser settings": if you select this item, any UI settings stored in your browser cookies will be cleared. This does not affect your current MAT UI session; it means that whenever you load the MAT UI in the future, there will be no saved settings in your browser cookies available for loading.

"Export settings as XML": if you select this item, the browser will save the current UI settings as an XML file (named "ui_settings.xml" by default). If you've configured your browser to prompt you for where to save files, you'll have the opportunity to change the file name and save it where you want. The format of this XML file is described here.

"Import settings from XML": if you select this item, the browser will prompt you to select a UI settings file in the appropriate format for loading. The current UI settings will be modified as a result of the successful load. The UI will show you a status popup reporting that the load is complete.

"Reset settings to defaults": if you select this item, the current UI settings will be changed to the default settings provided by the MAT Web server.

The default UI settings are described below. If you start up MATWeb normally, MATWeb will provide those settings as the defaults. However, you can modify the default UI settings provided by the server by passing an XML file to the --ui_settings option of MATWeb. The XML file produced by the "Export settings as XML" item has the proper format for the --ui_settings option to MATWeb; in other words, you can start the server, customize your settings, save an XML file from the UI, and then use that XML file as the server defaults in the future.

Available settings

The UI settings are subdivided into several categories. The description here mirrors the tabs in the UI settings popup.

General UI settings

• By default, when you hover over an annotation in the palette, the description of the annotation appears below, without the character offsets. Set the showCharOffsets setting to add the character offsets.
• To change the default width of the right column of panes in the UI, use the layoutRightPanelWidth setting.
• To change the default height of the bottom pane in the UI, use the layoutBottomPanelHeight setting.
• When annotations are values of annotation-valued attributes, they're assigned an annotation ID which is used to maintain the link. This ID is not displayed in the UI. To display it in various locations for debugging purposes, use the showAnnotationIDForDebugging setting.
• The XML reader provides various options for how to treat XML elements which don't correspond to annotations in your task. To control this behavior, use the xmlInputAnnotationConversion setting.
• By default, the UI inherits its setting for dealing with Unicode characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane from the default MAT setting. To set a different UI behavior, change the handleNonBMP setting.
  

Annotation table settings

• By default, tables of annotations are shown at the bottom only if spanless annotations are present. If you want the tables to always appear, set the showAnnotationTables setting.
• By default, when the annotation tables are shown, no summary of all spanned and all spanless annotations is presented. If you want the summary tables included, set the showAnnotationTableSummaries setting. By default, these summaries will show a single column describing the attribute values for each annotation. If you want a sparse display with a sortable column for each attribute of each annotation type, set the showExplodedAttributesInAnnotationTableSummary setting.
• To change the size of the font in the annotation table, use the annotationTableFontSizePercentage setting.

Annotation palette settings

• MAT uses the SEGMENT annotation to keep track of annotatable regions of the document. These annotations are not typically displayed on the palette. If, for some odd reason, you want these SEGMENT annotations displayed as left and right brackets, set the showSegments setting.
• By default, when you hover over an annotation which is linked to another annotation via an annotation-valued attribute, the linked annotations will be highlighted. To disable this, use the highlightLinksDuringHover setting.
• To add line spacing between the lines in the annotation palette, use the extraLineSpacing setting.
• By default, overlapping annotations in the palette are stacked. To disable this, use the alwaysShowStackedAnnotations setting.
• By default, during tokenless annotation, an annotation swipe will not be automatically modified in any way. To have the annotation palette remove peripheral whitespace and tokenless autotag delimiters, set the trimTokenlessSwipe setting. To have the annotation palette expand the swipe to the nearest whitespace or tokenless autotag delimiter, set the expandTokenlessSwipe setting. When one or the other of these is enabled, the annotation palette will have a toggle button at the top that allows the settings to be temporarily suspended.
  
• By default, in the simple annotation palette (not in reconciliation, comparison or alignment), there is no gap between the various stacking levels, or between the stacked annotation and the main text. To set a gap, set the stackedLayerSeparation setting. This setting is a float, which will be interpreted in em units. To return to the default, clear the setting.
• By default, in the simple annotation palette (not in reconciliation, comparison or alignment), the height of a stacked annotation layer above or below the text is .4em. To change this height, set the stackedLayerHeight setting. This setting is a float, which will be interpreted in em units. To return to the default, clear the setting.
  

Annotation popup menu settings

• By default, '-' is the key used to delete an annotation when using keyboard accelerators while the annotation popup menu is visible. To change this key, use the deleteAnnotationAccelerator setting.
• By default, '=' is the key used to repeat an annotation label when using keyboard accelerators while the annotation popup menu is visible. To change this key, use the repeatAnnotationAccelerator setting.
• When annotation editors are open, the annotation popup menu shows the usual available actions. To remove the standard annotation actions when an annotation editor is open, use the suppressMenuActionsDuringAnnotationEdit setting.
• By default, the annotation popup menu will provide options to allow you to link together annotations without having to open an annotation editor. These options are convenient, but also take up space in the menu. To disable these options, use the invokeChooseModeFromPopupMenu setting.
• By default, when you create a spanless annotation, the annotation editor opens automatically. To disable this, use the editSpanlessAnnotationsImmediately setting.
• It's possible to add more controls in the annotation popup menu to interact with an open annotation editor. To enable these controls, use the addNumberedLinkAcceleratorsDuringAnnotationEdit setting.
• To change the font size of the annotation editor, use the annotationPopupMenuFontSizePercentage setting.
• To compress the popup menu for modifying existing annotations by moving some of the actions to submenus, use the compressAnnotationEditMenu setting.
  

Annotation editor settings

• MAT uses annotation editors to allow you to edit the attributes of an annotation. These editors can appear in a popup window or in a tab along the bottom of the UI, and the UI gives you a choice when you select the annotation. If you prefer one or the other of these locations always, set the editAnnotationsIn setting.
• By default, the annotation editor provides a good deal of information about the types of the attributes. If you want to see less information, set the terseAnnotationEditor setting.
• By default, the annotation editor popup appears in the upper left of the UI, so as not to obstruct the annotation palette. If you want the annotation editor popup to appear in the middle of the UI, set the centerAnnotationEditorPopup setting.
• To set the default width of the annotation editor popup, use the annotationEditorWidth setting.
• To change the font size of the annotation editor, use the annotationEditorFontSizePercentage setting.
• The MAT UI supports guided navigation mode to work through annotation editors more efficiently. This mode is not enabled by default. To enable it, use the enterGuidedNavigationModeInAnnotationEditors setting.
• A keystroke to dismiss the active annotation editor can be set using the annotationEditorDismissKey setting. This setting is only active when guided navigation mode is not available. When the "Done" button is focused, the annotation editor popup can be dismissed with the <Enter> or <Return> keystrokes; this setting, on the other hand, controls both types of annotation editors (popup and tab) and doesn't require keyboard focus on the editor.
  

Reconciliation settings

• By default, in reconciliation, the UI will wait for you to advance from one reconciliation stratum to another, so you can review your reconciliation choices. To advance automatically, set the reconciliationAutoAdvance setting.
• By default, when you export files from reconciliation, they're exported to another UI tab. To export to files by default, set the reconciliationExportToFile setting.

Annotation operation settings

• By default, when you "Autotag matches" in the annotation popup menu, the matching is case-sensitive. If you want the matching to be case-insensitive, disable the autotagIsCaseSensitive setting.
• By default, your only autotagging operation is "Autotag matches". To enable batch replace and delete, enable the enhancedAutotagging setting.
  

How to change the settings

There are three ways to change your settings in the MAT UI.

Via XML

You can change the default UI settings by creating an XML file and passing it to the --ui_settings option of MATWeb when you start it up, or you can load the settings into the UI directly via "View -> Import settings from XML". You can also save your current settings to XML via "View -> Export settings to XML".

Let's say that you want to change the default way the UI prepares the annotation hover. By default, the text doesn't show the annotation offsets; but you want them to be shown. Your XML file would look like this:

<ui_settings>
  <showCharOffsets default="yes"/>
</ui_settings>

Each setting is the name of an element within the <ui_settings> element, and each element accepts the new default value as the value of its "default" attribute.

In the MAT UI

In the MAT UI, the "View" menu will allow you to change the settings. The more common settings are available directly in the "View" menu, and you can review and change all the settings via "View -> All settings...".

Via browser cookies

In the MAT UI, you can also save your current browser settings as cookies via "View -> Save settings in browser", and the settings will be applied when you visit the MAT URL in the same browser. You can also clear the saved browser settings.

In the standalone UI

List of settings

Here are all the known settings. The order of the settings is the order in which they were introduced into MAT.