Collections

A collection is the container of everything: its graphemes (shared) and its ideograms, organised by locale. Every collection has a name, an owner, a creation and a modification date, and lives in a resource group that decides who can see and edit it.

The collections screen

It is the first screen, and you return to it with the Collections button of the toolbar or of the rail. It shows three sections:

• My collections: the ones you own.
• Recent collections: the ones you opened lately (up to eight).
• Other collections: the rest of what you can see.

Every card shows the name, @owner · group, the number of graphemes and ideograms and one badge per locale. A click on the card opens the detail; the Open collection button goes straight to the item browser. Top right, New collection (if you may create) and, next to it, your quota: "n / max collections" (see limits).

New collection

File → New collection or the button on the collections screen.

The new collection is empty: no graphemes, no ideograms. To start from existing material, clone another one or import XML.

The detail of a collection

Reached with a click on a card, with the collection name on the toolbar or with the Collection details button of the rail.

At the top: ← All collections, the name with the ✎ Rename button (if you may edit the collection) and @owner. Below, the data: Resource group, Modified, Created, graphemes and ideograms (each as "n / max", see limits) and, when there are any, Unversioned changes (how many items have autosaved edits that are not a version yet).

The Locales table lists every locale with its number of ideograms and of (shared) graphemes. A click on the locale opens the collection in the editor directly in that locale.

The action buttons:

Buttons appear only if you hold the matching action on the collection.

Master collection and merge

A master collection is the reference the others are brought up to date with: for instance the official collection the regional variants start from. An administrator marks it on its detail, in the Master collection row (Mark as master); there can be several, and their cards carry the master badge.

⇣ Merge from master, on the detail of any collection that is not a master, picks the master and first shows what the merge would do, touching nothing. On confirming:

• The live versions of both collections are used and items are matched by name.
• Graphemes the master has and this collection lacks are copied; those the master no longer has are removed from this collection (and from its ideograms).
• Missing locales are added with all their ideograms; in existing ones, the missing ideograms are copied.
• In an ideogram present in both, the graphemes the master added are inserted (with their placement in the master) and those it dropped are removed; the rest keep the placement they have here, so local adjustments survive.
• Every changed ideogram gets a new version, promoted live; the previous one stays in history and can be checked out or promoted again. If the ideogram had unversioned edits, they stay on top of the previous version (the dialog says how many).

Additions count against the collection's limits; if they do not fit, the merge is refused before anything is written. Repeating the merge with the same master changes nothing.

Limits

Every account has a maximum number of collections, and every collection a maximum of graphemes and of ideograms. The defaults are set by an administrator in Administration → Operations → Limits; a user (Max. collections on their card) or a collection can also be given a limit of its own.

• The collections screen shows "n / max collections"; at the maximum the figure is highlighted and New collection is disabled (the hover text says why). Cloning and importing count too.
• The detail shows graphemes and ideograms as "n / max". Creating, cloning, importing or restoring an item beyond the maximum is refused with "… limit reached (n of max). Ask an administrator to raise it".
• An administrator also sees the Limits row with two fields, graphemes and ideograms, for this collection: 0 = the default. Lowering a limit never removes what already exists; it only stops additions.
• If two people add at the same time, one of them may get "Another change is in progress; try again in a moment": just retry.

Rename collection

Asks for the new name; the button is disabled when it is empty or matches (case-insensitively) another collection. Renaming changes nothing in exported files except the name of the root folder.

Add locale

The field validates the xx_XX format as you type and warns when the collection already has that locale. The new locale starts with no ideograms; the graphemes are already available because they belong to the collection.

Clone locale

Copies the live versions of every ideogram of the Source locale into a New locale of the same collection. It is the way to start translating a corpus into another language: clone first, then rename every ideogram with its gloss in the new language. The final notice says how many ideograms were copied.

Clone collection

Creates a new collection owned by you:

Only the live versions are copied: the copy inherits neither the history nor the snapshots.

The item browser

Opening a collection shows the browser: the index of everything it holds. The top bar has:

Every cell is a specimen drawn live from its current state (autosaved changes included), with the name, a ● dot if it has unversioned changes and the date of the last modification. Cells load as they come into view, so a collection of thousands of ideograms opens instantly. A click opens the item in an editor tab; the cells of items already open are highlighted.

Tabs

Every open item is a tab with its kind (I ideogram, G grapheme), its name and a dot if it has changes waiting to be sent. Tabs close with × or with the middle mouse button; they reorder by dragging; the + tab returns to the browser leaving the others open. Closing a tab with pending changes sends them before closing.

New grapheme or ideogram

The picker searches by name from two characters on and shows up to sixty matches with their drawing; a click picks one. Once picked, the dialog shows the preview with Change and Start empty.

Create creates the item as version 1, live, opens it in a tab and shows it in the browser.

The same dialog appears when cloning an item from the editor (Edit → Clone item… or the ⧉ button of the panel): the name is then proposed as "Name 2" and the copy starts from exactly the state on screen, unsaved changes included.

Import XML

Imports .grf (grapheme) and .idg (ideogram) files from a folder on disk, with any structure of subfolders.

1. Choose folder…: in Chrome and Edge the system folder picker opens and the files are read without uploading anything yet; in other browsers the standard "upload folder" dialog is used. When reading ends, the dialog says how many .grf and .idg files it found.
2. Detect the locale from the folder structure (ticked by default): every ideogram goes to the locale whose name (es_CO, en_US…) appears as the closest folder on its path. Locales the collection lacks are created; ideograms under no locale folder go to the collection's first locale (the dialog says so). Unticked, the field Import into locale appears and everything goes to the one you type, which may be new.
3. Legacy format (VisaSoft 4.0, Y downwards): tick it only for files from the original program. Their coordinates use the old canvas (Y downwards) and are converted to the current page: scaled, shifted to the page origin, and rotations change sign. Unticked, files are imported as they are because they already hold the current canvas (Y upwards, 1,000 units, root marked lienzo="y-arriba-1000"), like the ones VisaSoft Studio exports.
4. The summary shows the ideograms per locale, with the new badge on the ones that will be created.
5. If an imported item already exists, choose what to do with duplicates:
   • Override: creates a new version and makes it live;
   • Create version: creates the version without making it live, to review it first;
   • Discard duplicates: leaves the existing ones untouched.
6. Import uploads the package and shows progress. When done, the notice says how many graphemes and ideograms were imported and, if any ideogram references graphemes the collection lacks, which ones are missing (those ideograms are imported anyway, but that grapheme is not drawn until it exists).

Graphemes are always imported first and are common to every locale; the same .grf under several locale folders counts once.

Export XML

Exports the live versions of the collection as .grf and .idg files.

Files are ISO-8859-1 with CRLF line endings, like the originals; properties that exist only in VisaSoft Studio (thickness ×, object names, rotation centres) are not written.

Resource groups and permissions

Every collection lives in exactly one resource group. The three initial groups are Default, Private and Public, owned by the administrators' team; more can be created. The group is chosen when a collection is created or cloned and only changes through a transfer request accepted by the owning team of the target group. Who may read, create, edit, delete, version, import, export or generate fonts is decided by the permission rules.