Morpho

Condition: I am using the Morpho Tree Editor to edit the columns in an attribute table. The table was, incidentally, imported into an existing Data Package (originally, nceas.906.5) using the 'Import MS Access Database' utility.

Here are the steps that I took:
Click Green Edit button, wait about 45 seconds for the Morpho Editor to
appear. I am editing column attributes by clicking each attribute in the 'tree', changing the value, and then clicking on the next attribute. This is a very efficient way to edit multiple table columns/attributes. Once I have modified all of the attributes, and am ready to save them, I click the OK button. Sometimes, the editor window closes and the modifications appear in the attribute table display (on the right side of the screen).

But several times, when I click OK, the Morpho editor screen freezes
and the first of the attached messages displays. Trying to recover from the error, I click the 'X' box in the upper right corner of the screen.When I click
to close the window (URC), the screen goes away and the second message
appears. My changes to the table metadata do not appear, and have been lost.

Note: the alternative method of editing column metadata, the Edit Column Documentation option, requires more mouse clicks and about 25 % more time
to use for a given group of attribute edits. this is because of the delay (of several seconds) between the time that the user clicks the mouse on an attribute column and the time that the selection 'registers' on the screen so that the user
can edit the field.) And I have some evidence that even using this method to edit columns, sometimes the attribute edits are not saved to the table.

Because of these defects, it takes a very long time to edit large groups of column attributes on stored tables in Morpho. The defects make it difficult to do error-free edition of column attributes. I think that many would-be Morpho users will become frustrated with this performance and resist using the software.