Morpho

Imagine someone wants to quickly inspect the contents of a binary data file attached to a data package. Currently, the only way to do so is to export the entire DP, then drill down through cryptically named directories in the exported directory tree to manually locate and open the file. There should be a more straightforward way within Morpho to externally save or open a specific attached data object.

For the user, this should behave much like handling an email attachment: e.g., provide some sort of GUI element (button or menu option) that triggers a pop-up dialog presenting the option of saving the data object to disk or opening it with some other application. Note that the Metacat web registry already provides this functionality by presenting a "Download File" link for each attached entity in the DP, and allowing the web browser to handle the rest.

Ideally this functionality would apply not just to data tables, but also to other entity types (especially otherEntity).

Note: The button or menu text should probably be more along the lines of "export data" rather than "open data", otherwise users may be misled into thinking that editing/saving the object in the external application will actually save it within the DP.