The characteristics of each field are displayed in column form, with the the name of the field displayed at the top. All the fields may be edited except for the "Type"; this is set at the time the field was created and cannot be changed.
Each of the field characteristics is summarized below.
Name: The name of the field. Although there is no limit on the length that the name may have, it is typically only 8-12 characters. This is how the field is referred to in a query. All valid ASCII printable characters are allowed.
Description: Typically longer than a name, it can be a brief sentence describing the field.
Type: This is a characteristic which cannot be modified, it is set at time of creation. Valid Types are "Integer", "Double", "Float", "Text", and "Integer List".
Width: This indicates, for numeric data, the width of the area that the number is to be printed in. If necessary it will be padded on the left or right to make up the field width. Numeric data which exceeds the width will not be truncated. For "Text" data the width indicates the maximum length of the the string. Although this is not enforced in the PIX format, other formats may truncate the string at the supplied limit when exported.
Precision: Valid only for floating point numbers, this indicates the number of characters you wish to display after the decimal point. This value only affects the display and does not round off the data in any way.
Justification: Data when displayed may be right or left justified. This is valid for all fields except for "Integer Lists".
Default: This entry shows the default value for the field. If there are existing shapes when the default value is changed, those shapes' values will not change, even if they had the same value as the old default. Only subsequently created shapes will be assigned the new default value.
The "Add New Field" button launches a panel for creating and adding a new field to the current layer.