Locations Editor
The Locations Editor holds the shared list of geographic locations that every study's Location dropdown draws from. Enter the places you work with once (birth places, observatories, cities of interest), and you never have to re-key coordinates on a study again.
The list is shared application-wide, so a place added here is immediately selectable in every study in every workspace. Because a location is required for every study type, including geocentric and heliocentric ones, this is usually the first editor a new user opens.
Open the Locations Editor
To open the editor:
- Open the Edit menu.
- Click Locations in the Edit menu.
The Locations Editor window opens centered on screen, showing the grid of places with a File and Data menu above it and a row of buttons along the bottom.
The Locations button on the Toolbar opens the same window.
The Locations Grid
Each row is one location, and the four columns are the same for every row.
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Name | The descriptive name of the location. This is the label a study's Location dropdown shows. |
| Latitude | The latitude in decimal degrees, positive north of the equator and negative south. |
| Longitude | The longitude in decimal degrees, positive east of the Prime Meridian and negative west. |
| Height (feet) | The elevation above sea level, in feet. Topocentric studies use it together with the coordinates to place the observing point. |
Setting the latitude or the longitude also re-resolves the location's time zone, which is what dates each generated record. Changing the height does not.
Columns in this grid cannot be sorted by clicking their headers.
Add a Location Row
To start a new place:
- Click the Add button.
Cygnus appends a new empty row to the grid, selects it, and puts its first cell into edit mode, ready for you to type. Pressing Tab from the last cell of the last row appends a new row the same way, so you can enter one place after another without going back to the button.
Edit a Location
Rows are edited in place, one cell at a time. Editing is a single-click gesture.
- Click the row to select it.
- Click the cell you want to edit, which puts the row into edit mode, and enter the new value.
- Press Tab to commit the edit and move to the next cell.
Pressing Enter commits the value in place instead of advancing. To edit further cells on the same row, press Tab to reach each one, or click it: the row stays in edit mode until the focus leaves the row. Shift+Tab moves backward through the cells, and from a row's first cell it moves to the last cell of the row above.
Work through the four cells in whatever order suits you:
| Cell | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | The name you want to see in the Location dropdown. Rows with no name are dropped when the list is saved. |
| Latitude | The latitude in decimal degrees. |
| Longitude | The longitude in decimal degrees. |
| Height (feet) | The elevation in feet. |
Delete Locations
To remove places you no longer want:
- Click the row to delete.
- Click the Delete button.
- Confirm the deletion. See Confirm a Yes/No Confirmation Prompt.
The Delete button acts on every row currently selected, so you can remove several places in one action; the confirmation prompt reads "Delete the selected locations?" when more than one row is selected. The selected rows disappear from the grid and a neighboring row becomes the selected row. Pressing the Delete key does the same thing as the Delete button, confirmation prompt included. The Delete button is disabled while no row is selected.
Shift-click extends the selection to a contiguous range of rows, and Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on macOS) adds individual rows to it. Click Delete once to remove them all.
Save the Locations List
Nothing you do in this editor reaches the studies until you save.
- Click the Save button.
Cygnus sorts the list, drops rows without a name, and stores the locations, so every study's Location dropdown sees them. Pressing Ctrl+S does the same thing, as does File → Save on the editor's own menu bar. This editor uses Ctrl+S on every platform: on macOS the shortcut here is Ctrl+S as well, not Cmd+S. Save is disabled while nothing has changed.
Close the Locations Editor
- Click the Close button.
If the editor still holds unsaved edits, the "Unsaved Changes" prompt appears first rather than the window closing straight away. See Save Changes from the Unsaved Changes Prompt.
Working with Whole Lists
The editor's Data menu moves the whole collection in and out of Cygnus as a CSV file, which is quicker than typing when you already have the places in a spreadsheet, and is the way to keep a backup.
| Command | Description | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Import | Load locations from a CSV file and append them to the list. | Import Locations |
| Export | Write the list to a CSV file for backup or transfer. | Export Locations |
The editor's File menu holds Save and Exit, which do the same as the Save and Close buttons.
