Selections and bags

Mantis has two different ideas of “these points”. A selection is the set you are pointing at right now: there is exactly one per map, and the next click replaces it. A bag is a set you saved: it has a name, a color, and it stays until you delete it. Almost every panel reads the selection; bags are how you keep a selection long enough to compare it against another one.

Selection

The selection is transient state on the map. It changes when you:

• click a point with the Select tool (I), or shift-click to add to what is already selected,
• click a cluster label with Select active, which takes that cluster’s whole subtree,
• select from another panel, such as the Tree.

Panels that show “the current selection” are reading this. If a panel is empty, the usual reason is that nothing is selected, not that the panel is broken.

Selection is per map. Two maps open in the same space keep independent selections.

Bag

A bag is a named, colored set of points that persists. Bags:

• drive the Summarizer, plots, feature analysis and the Composer’s context,
• carry a selection from one part of the workspace to another,
• can be combined with each other by union, intersection and difference,
• sync to the space thread you are connected to and to collaborators in a live room.

Bags are per map, like selections.

Creating one

The lasso family creates a bag directly. Committing a Lasso (Q), Magic Lasso (M) or Path (P) gesture makes a new bag out of the enclosed points and names it after its color. Hold

Ctrl while releasing to add the points to the active bag

instead, or ⇧ to remove them from it.

To save a selection you already have, open the Bags panel and click New bag. The button shows the point count and is disabled with the hint “Select points or a cluster on the map first” when there is nothing to save.

Seeing one on the map

A bag is only drawn when it is highlighted. Highlighted bags put colored rings around their points, and a point in several highlighted bags gets several concentric rings, up to three. Toggle highlight with the color dot next to a bag in the Bags panel, or clear them all with Clear highlights.

This is why saving a bag can look like it did nothing: the bag exists, it just is not highlighted.

Locking

A bag can be locked. A locked bag cannot be renamed or added to from the panel, and shows “locked” under its name. Use it for a result you do not want to accidentally extend.

The two destructive tools

Both sit at the end of the map tool island, labeled Clear and Delete. The Map (Legacy) palette calls them Clear Bags and Delete Bags. Both act on everything, and neither asks for confirmation.

Important

Clear Bags clears the current selection, despite its name: selected points, selected clusters, highlighted bags and the Composer’s context points, on every open map. Your bags and their contents survive.

Ctrl+⌫ does the same thing, and the shortcut table

calls it “Clear All Selections”.

Delete Bags deletes every bag, with no per-bag scope and no undo prompt. From the Map (Legacy) palette it deletes every bag on every open map.

Ctrl+⇧+⌫ does the same thing.

Both shortcuts use the physical Ctrl key on every platform, including macOS. To remove a single bag, use the delete button on its row in the Bags panel instead. See Clear Bags and Delete Bags.

Colors and names

New bags cycle through fourteen colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Purple, Pink, Cyan, Teal, Lime, Brown, Lavender and Olive. The default name is that color plus the number of times the cycle has come around, so the first bag is Red 1 and the fifteenth is Red 2. Rename freely; the color stays.

Limits

• A single lasso, magic lasso or path commit is capped at 25,000 points. Anything beyond that is dropped silently.
• At most three bag rings are drawn per point, even if the point belongs to more highlighted bags.

Read nextBags panelEvery control in the panel: highlight, rename, lock, set operations, bubbles.