Like tkme, the interface to this tool provides multiple panes for the user. The left hand pane displays a tree view of the metadata elements, and the right hand pane is used for metadata entry.

The depth of the metadata element tree displayed in the left hand pane can be increased by mouse clicking an element, similar to opening successively deeper folders in File Manager or Windows Explorer. A very nice feature of the tree view is the use of icons to indicate which elements are mandatory (a key ), mandatory if applicable (a key with a superimposed question mark ), optional (a question mark ), one of a choice (radio buttons on the branch ), and modifiers to these elements to indicate sections that are partially complete (an orange blob with exclamation point ), or complete (a check mark ). The degree-of-completion modifiers propogate correctly up the tree, so partially complete child elements are reflected as a partially complete parent as well. These modifiers only become visible when a subsection has been modified from its original blank state. Elements which can be repeated are sometimes indicated with a page symbol and a number following the element name, however such elements are not indicated consistently. To add additional instances of these elements which may repeat, right mouse button click on the element above the element indicated with a page symbol (e.g. Distribution_Information above Distribution_Information_1). This will cause a small popup menu with an 'Add' option to surface and which on selection would add something like Distribution_Information_2 to the metadata element tree. Right mouse button clicking on repeatable elements of instance number 2 or higher will allow them to be removed. A triple dot modifier to the base symbols (e.g. ) is used to indicate that the particular element can display deeper elements in the metadata tree (i.e. it is a compound element). When the lowest element in a branch of the tree does not have the triple dot modifier, it can be double clicked to open that element in the right hand window for metadata entry.

The right hand pane provides the means the enter metadata information by typing it into text boxes (or pasting in from other Windows applications), or by selecting from pick lists. This pane may be for the entry of a single element, or for several elements in which case the pane is 'tabbed' for each element. Additional 'tabs' may be added into the right hand pane depending the selection for a 'choice' element. Selecting the "Apply' button button in the right hand pane saves changes to the section currently being edited. Selecting the 'OK' button saves the section and closes the metadata entry pane for the current element.

The tool stores its metadata in discrete ASCII .gen files which are hierarchically indented (with tabs) as mp would expect. In fact, the major difference between the .gen file that Corpsmet uses internally and the .met file that that tool produces as output, is that the output process strips out all sections that are only partially complete. A .gen file complete for sections 1 and 7 also posesses some empty structural framework for sections 2-6. With this in mind, the text output files from some files that passed mp (with space indents converted to tabs) were renamed with .gen extensions and opened without problem in Corpsmet (and subsequently built (as .met files). The major cosmetic issue for the import was that Corpsmet wraps free text lines at about 45 characters in its metadata entry pane; longer lines than 45 characters in the original are broken at about 45 characters, and then again on the subsequent line, wherever the hard return occured in the original non-Corpsmet document.

Although in general, Corpsmet is very true to the production rules, it falls short on several elements. It is not possible to create multiple Enumerated_Domain_Value, Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition, Enumerated_Domain_Value_Definition_Source triplets under a single Enumerated_Domain element. As a result, attribute metadata which passes mp may be become garbled when imported into Corpsmet. This was noted to occur when more than one enumeration (Enumerated_Domain_Value) was present under an Enumerated_Domain element. As a result, all the enumerations were combined into a single enumeration in Corpsmet. This is a serious limitation for this tool. Corpsmet also does not allow multiple address types, you can select 'mailing,' 'physical,' or 'mailing and physical,' but not both 'mailing' and 'physical.' Similar to the enumeration problem listed above, if both address types are present in an imported file, the two address types are combined into a single confusing record.

Although it appears possible to enter paragraph breaks as blank lines in free text elements, and those blank lines will be transmitted through to the .met output file created during that editing session, the next time that metadata file is opened in Corpsmet95, the blank line paragraph breaks will be gone, and any output file produced from it will not have them either. Other paragraph breaking tricks like <cntrl><ret> don't help. This can make for very long paragraphs in output metadata for extensively doumented datasets... A work-around for this characteristic is to insert a standard string of characters where you want the paragraph break to occur (like ---), then perform a global search and replace on the output .met document before passing it through mp.

Corpsmet does not like colons in free text fields; all the text on the line containing the colon which precedes the colon, and the colon itself are deleted when the document is saved, closed and reopened (like the disappearing paragraph break above). Again, a work around is to replace the colon with a character string which is unlikely to appear in regular text and which can be changed back again later, before passing through mp.

For grid coordinate systems as common as State Plane and UTM it would be nice if this tool could provide the projection parameters appropriate to the zone for common datums.

Date entry forces you to go through a calendar to select year, month, and day, even though a text entry box is provided (nothing can be typed into it) and it could be typed in much more quickly than using the 'calendar.'

Any metadata (.gen) file currently being edited can be saved as another name which gives the ability to clone a base metadata document or to quickly document closely related data sets. The tool does not have is a good way to clear the metadata elements for a subsection (or an entire major section) of metadata. In fact, I found that I could never blank out the Format_Name for a Digital_Transfer_Information section once a format was selected, thus I could never blank out a Standard Order Process (it would always show partial completion, even if I wanted to get rid of it).

The bounding box default is East longitude; making it West longitude would save a step for U.S. users.

Although it is possible to associate a .gen file with Corpsmet, double clicking on the filename only launches Corpsmet with an empty file; it doesn't launch Corpsmet with the selected file. This is unusual behavior for a Windows application.