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8.4 Messages Received

This section describes the messages which TOPCAT will respond to when it receives them from other applications via the SAMP/PLASTIC hub. The SAMP MTypes and PLASTIC message IDs are listed along with the descriptions; unless you are a tool developer you can probably ignore these.

Load Table
Loads a table sent by another application. It is added to the list of tables in the Control Window.

SAMP MType: table.load.votable or table.load.fits; PLASTIC Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/load or ivo://votech.org/votable/loadFromURL

New Subset
Loads a row selection sent from another application. If an external application is looking at the same table as one that TOPCAT has loaded, it can send a row selection. In this case, TOPCAT will add that selection as a new Row Subset for the table. The name of the received subset will be that of the sending application, for instance "Aladin". If a subset of that name already exists (which is probably because the same application has sent a row selection previously) then its content will be overwritten by the new selection. In either case, receiving the message causes plots displaying data from the table in question to show the points from the new subset.

Note: this behaviour differs from the behaviour in TOPCAT versions prior to v3.0. Different options for handling exactly how a received row selection is treated may be made available in future versions.

SAMP MType: table.select.rowList; PLASTIC Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/showObjects

Highlight Row
If TOPCAT already has loaded the table identified by the request, it will activate the requested row. This will result in the row being marked in any currently visible plots and in the Data Window if it is visible, as well as performing any additional actions you have configured in the Activation Window.

SAMP MType: table.highlight.row; PLASTIC Message ID: ivo://votech.org/votable/highlightObject

System-level messages are also responded to. For SAMP these are:

and for PLASTIC:


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TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk