Trees

To add, change, view items you need to get familiar with the trees in the main view. Each tree (matrices tree, function tree...) is a panel in the main window that displays all the items of a certain type. For example the matrices tree shows all the matrices.

They are called trees, because the items are disposed in the same way as the files in a file system browser (Windows Explorer, Nautilus), with folders containing other folders and simple items.

For example, the matrix sample.matrices.logresult is represented as the logresult item of the tree, which is contained in the folder matrices; the folder matrices is contained in the folder sample, which is on the top level of the tree.

In a project there are trees for matrices, for functions, for presentations, for charts and for timers. To avoid confusion, it is possible to choose which trees to display, using the show/hide tree buttons on the top of the project tab.
A tree is visible if and only if the related button is selected. These buttons can be configured using the GUI settings dialog.

Trees are central in Matrex. Their purpose, in fact, is not only to show the items in the project (or the templates) but:

to create new items
to edit existing items
to view items (for example matrices, presentations, charts)
to remove, rename, move, comment items and get information about them.

It is using the trees that you control Matrex, and you do it through popup menus.
Right clicking with the mouse in any tree of the project (as in the templates tree), a popup menu comes up with the actions available for the selected item in the tree.

To have an idea of what you can do with Matrex, give a look to each tree and its popup menus:

Search in trees

In small projects it is very easy to find items (matrices, functions...) in the trees, thanks to the tree structure. In bigger projects that can become more time consuming.
To solve this problem there is a search bar on the top of each tree:

To find an item in the tree, just write a part of the name-package of the item (separate packages and name using the . character) in the text box and either press enter or click on the arrow button. The first item having a name-package containing that text is displayed and selected. If the item was not visible when you searched for it, the part of the tree containing it is expanded to make it visible.
Examples of search text are:

expenses.expenses finds expenses.expenses
expenses finds expenses.expenses
ses finds expenses.expenses
ses.exp finds expenses.expenses

Pressing enter or clicking on the arrow button again goes to the next item in the tree matching the text in the search bar.

The tree top menu

The arrow buttons on the top of each tree also open a menu, used to expand or collapse the tree.