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### A.2.5 Toolbar Buttons

There are a number of buttons on the Control Window's toolbar; these are the most convenient way of invoking most of TOPCAT's functions. They are grouped as follows:

Import and export
  Load Table
    Pops up the Load Table dialogue which allows you to load a table into TOPCAT. If a table is loaded it becomes the new current table.
  Save Table(s)/Session
    Pops up the Save Table dialogue which allows you to write out tables in various ways. You can either write out the current Apparent Table, or multiple tables, or save (much of) the current session state.
  Broadcast Table
    Broadcasts the current Apparent Table to any applications registered using the SAMP or PLASTIC protocol. See Section 9.
Table views (see Appendix A.3)
  Data Window
    Displays the table rows and columns in a scrollable viewer so you can see the cell contents themselves.
  Parameters Window
    Displays table "parameters", that is metadata which applies to the whole table.
  Columns Window
    Displays metadata about each column such as data type, units, description, UCDs etc.
  Subsets Window
    Displays the currently defined row subsets and enables new ones to be defined.
  Statistics Window
    Displays a window for calculating statistical quantities for the values in each column of the table.
  Activation Window
    Displays a window for configuring activation actions.
Graphics windows
  Histogram Plot
    Displays a window for plotting 1D histograms and kernel density estimates.
  Plane Plot
    Displays a window for making various types of plot on 2D Cartesian axes.
  Sky Plot
    Displays a window for making various types of plot on the celestial sphere.
  Cube Plot
    Displays a window for making various types of plot on 3D Cartesian axes.
  Sphere Plot
    Displays a window for making various types of plot on 3D axes using spherical polar coordinates.
  Corner Plot
    Displays a window for showing a grid of scatter plots using all pair combinations of a larger list of coordinates.
  Time Plot
    Displays a window with special features for plotting data which has a time coordinate.
Matching etc (see Section 5)
  Pair Match Window
    Displays a dialog for joining tables side-by-side by locating rows which match between them.
  TAP Query
    Displays a dialogue window for querying remote databases using the Table Access Protocol (TAP). This is a very powerful way to access remote data by writing SQL-like queries, and can be used to do joins with remote tables as well as simply downloading data.
  CDS Upload X-Match
    Displays a dialog window which uses the X-Match provided by the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg to allow fast matching local tables with any tables in the remote VizieR or SIMBAD databases.
  Note that other options for joining tables, including matches involving a single table or more than two tables, and joining tables top-to-bottom, are available from the Joins menu.
Miscellaneous
  Available Functions
    Displays a window containing all the functions which can be used for writing algebraic expressions.
  Global Variables
    Displays a window that allows you to change the values of global variables that can be referenced in algebraic expressions.
  Help
    Displays the help browser, open at the entry on the Control Window.
  Exit
    Queries for confirmation, then exits the application.

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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
Mailing list: topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk