Deleting topics

How do I delete topics in Topicscape? And what happens when I do?

If you right click on a topic, a menu pops up and you can choose one of the delete items from this. There are several kinds of deletion. You can use Topicscape Orphans - a place to hide things away that you think you have finished with but which you do not wish to delete irretrievably. You can restore topics and occurrences from Topicscape Orphans into the main, active part of the Topicscape. T.O. is not equivalent to the Windows® Recycle Bin because nothing will ever disappear from T.O. unless you delete it yourself.

Or you can delete topics. This means that you can't recover the topics (unless you undo before closing Topicscape) but you won't lose the files that were previously part of an occurrence because they stay in the Topicscape's folder until you show stray files and then delete them. The files become invisible to Topicscape, but can be access normally with Windows Explorer.

There's another apparent level of deletion: deletion by breaking associations. This is not really deletion at all as a topic can have as many associations as you like. But it can make a topic disappear from the 'Scape and thus appear to be deleted. Once a topic has no remaining associations that connect it directly or indirectly to the Home topic (the first one made in this Topicscape), it will be attached to Topicscape Islands. If you do not suppress deletion reports, you will receive a warning when this happens. Even topics under Topicscape Islands appear in a search, so they are not lost. You can also view all island topics by making Topicscape Islands current.

Help! I've just deleted a useful topic that had many occurrences in it!

Don't worry, you can undo any action in Topicscape, and you can keep undoing back through many past actions in this run most of the time. Ctrl+Z will do the trick. Or use the main menu item Edit | Undo.