Controlling Table Contents

Context: HL Kit … Basic Concepts and Terminology … Manipulation of Visual Elements … Working With Tables 

The purpose of tables is to display a collection of picks or things that are related in some way. For example, all the attributes for a character are shown in a table, all the skills are shown in a table, all the weapons and armor are broken up across multiple tables, etc. So the first order of business with a table is identifying the set of picks or things to be viewed.

Tables are generally associated with a specific component. This component establishes the first criteria for determining which objects are displayed in the table. If an object derives from the specified component, then it is valid for inclusion in the table. In many situations, this is all that's required.

However, there are times when additional filtering is required. In this case, you can specify an additional tag expression that is applied to every object that derives from the component. This is referred to as the "List" tag expression, since it identifies which objects are shown within the list of objects for the table. Any object that satisfies the List tag expression are included in the table, while any object that does not is omitted.