15.8 Harmony options and preferences

Harmony options and preferences include language settings and the default sort order for members of a collection. Harmony' s Language Preference dialog allows users to specify a prioritized list of preferred languages.

In the example above, English is currently the first choice language, followed by German. The language preference determines both Harmony' s user interface and the selection of documents available in multiple languages. Languages can be selected and deselected by double-clicking and by dragging and dropping between the boxes. The preference order of selected languages can be changed by dragging and dropping inside the Selected box.

The Default Sort Order dialog allows users to specify the sort order used by default when listing members of a collection in the collection browser. The actual sort order can be overridden by setting a collection' s SortOrder attribute. Hence the default sort order determines the order in which members of a collection are listed, only insofar as no particular sort order has been specified by the author of the collection.

In the Default Sort Order dialog, individual sort criteria can be selected and deselected both by double-clicking and by dragging and dropping between the boxes. The order of selected sort criteria is significant. Each individual criterion can be applied in descending rather than ascending order by clicking on the button which precedes it. In the example above, the members of collections for which no particular sort order has been defined will henceforth be listed first by ascending order of sequence number, then in ascending alphabetical order of title.

Figure 15.39: The Harmony Status Browser

Other options include Scan Attributes and Global Viewers. Turning Scan Attribute on brings up Harmony' s Attribute window and continually updates it to reflect the Hyper-G object currently beneath the mouse cursor. This allows quick scanning of objects in the collection browser and their associated attributes.

Turning Global Viewer off instructs the Session Manager principally to start a new document viewer every time a document is retrieved, resulting in multiple document viewers. Turning Global Viewer on instructs the Session Manager to reuse existing document viewers by displaying documents in an existing viewer of the same type (if one is already available).