Adornments

Adornments are a map view only feature (though they may appear in Timeline views if dates are set). They are used to provide a means of adding visual elements to the background of the Map view. Some general points about adornments are also described under general concepts.

Adornments can:

act as prototypes.
show on timelines if start and end dates are set.
be of special types:
- a 'smart adornment', having an agent query.
- a 'geographic adornment', having geographical data settings.
- an 'image adornment', displaying an image as a fill.
use visual grids to delimit visible sections within the adornment—see adornment grids.
display badges and flags
use display expressions and hover expressions.
use a subtitle.
react to notes moving fully or partially onto ($OnAdd) or fully off ($OnRemove) the adornment. See adornment actions.

Adornments can not:

have child objects (and has no child map - navigating 'down' into an adornment is not possible).
be matched by queries.
be referenced by designators.
display $Text.
have aliases.
be exported.
be linked to/from notes.
use table expressions (but see grids above).
be counted by $ChildCount or $DescendantCount, but see $AdornmentCount below.

Creating adornments

Created via the Create Adornment menu item in the Note menu or the map's context menu. A map may have one, many or no adornments. Different types of adornments—normal, smart, etc.—can be used on the same map. Additional setting are used to make a normal adornment into a smart, geographic or image type of adornment.

Positioning and stacking

New adornments are placed on top of existing adornments. This is the reverse of existing behaviour for notes but should be more intuitive for use. The change is achieved by always adding new adornments in $OutlineOrder in front of existing ones rather than at the end, as the lowest outline order item is always drawn on top.

Note that adornments do get counted in the $OutlineOrder, even if not shown; the are counted as the last sibling(s) child(ren) of the note on whose Map view they appear but they do not affect the normal hierarchy or the links of any notes. However, adornments do not affect $SiblingOrder, and are not included in $ChildCount and $DescendantCount. Containers have a separate $AdornmentCount for the number of adornments on their child map.

Adornments & searches

Adornments are always excluded from agent query matches, i.e. they are not treated as notes when matching, as well as by group designators including find(), plus the view pane's Find toolbar. Altering $Searchable for an adornment will not make it appear in searches.

Queries can test the inside() operator using an adornment's name to see if any notes lie on top of that adornment.

The boolean $IsAdornment is true for adornments.

Use of $Text

Adornments have a Text pane, and can have $Text. However, unlike normal notes, $Text—even when present—is never displayed in the map icon. Altering $MapBodyTextSize has no effect on this..

Adornments and export

Adornments cannot be exported. As they are excluded from child/descendant counts, normal export tests for the presence of children in a container, etc., will work properly even if there are adornments present.

Styling adornments

Adornments set to zero width or height can be used to make 'divider' lines on maps (see more).

If $Color is set to 'transparent' the adornment's icon is hidden and only the title shows on the map, although the adornment still works as usual for things like $OnAdd actions. Adornments fully respect $Opacity enabling them to be fully translucent. It is possible to have a visible border for a transparent adornment, but to do this $BorderColor must be set to a value other than 'automatic': styled borders (e.g. dashed) can be used with adornments.

Adornments can have drop shadows like note icons. The $Shadow will always default to false for an adornment regardless of the app/doc setting for notes, i.e. such defaults only apply to the latter. For that reason, making a prototype adornment with a shadow and then inheriting that is an easy way to use drop-shadowed adornments. Adornments show a small inner shadow (inside the border line).

See also—notes linking to here: