"Phillips, Frank" wrote: > > Hi, Carri. I am also a former ArcView user, and I'm shocked by MapInfo's > inability to do "on the fly" sorting of browser fields. Yes, there is a way > to do this, but you have to do a new SQL query to get your sort. I have not
You make this sound so difficult... Just choose Query > Select, and fill out the Select dialog, choosing the field you want to sort on. > yet found a way to do what I "think" you want to do (that is, the easy way > that ArcView can do it on the fly simply by rearranging the order of the > rows in a browser window). There must be some technical limitation inside > of MapInfo... Huh? "...ArcView can do it on the fly simply by rearranging the order of the rows...?" That's the result of a sort. How does that define what to sort on? But you're right. It could be made easier. A click on a column name could indicate that the user wants the browser view ascendingly sorted on that column. A second click could mean "sort descending." But MapInfo doesn't do this yet. A lot of the shocks that ArcView users get when they switch are just that they don't know how to do things the MapInfo way. I've had the same experience learning ArcView, and it's just a little culture shock. I can remember waxing wroth one day trying to change a value in an ArcView "browser." In MapInfo this is easy to do; just highlight it and change the value. But in ArcView you have to know about unlocking the table first or you can't do squat to it. I was so used to MapInfo's way, I couldn't see why ArcView made this so hard to do. In truth, it turned out to be easy, and it made sense, once I knew how and why it's done that way. Another shocking first-encounter thing about ArcView is that it doesn't store graphic styles with its map features. I thought that was a real limitation at the time, but once I learned how styles are applied and saved, it wasn't such a pain, and in fact, I've come to see that convention as a more pure GIS implementation than MapInfo's way. MapInfo's combining styles with objects is certainly an easier implementation to use, but I now think that logically styles are not an intrinsic component of the geometry. I wonder if anybody could design a perfect GIS tool. There's always such a range of needs, abilities and budgets in any large user community that you just can't please everyone all the time with a single product. I guess I'm happy when I've learned enough about a product that it pleases me. - Bill Thoen --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 10940
