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The Viewport Button: Create Subwindow

The Viewport button brings up a subwindow. The user is requested to point at the diagonal endpoints of the region to be displayed in the subwindow. Each viewport contains a menu of attribute buttons which apply to that window only. In particular, the subwindow can display cells in either electrical or physical mode, however editing operations are only possible if the subwindow mode and cell match those of the main window.

The subwindow has a set of menus which control attributes which can be set on a per-window basis. When the cursor is in a subwindow, characters entered are delivered to that subwindow, and an unambiguous sequence match will select a subwindow button. Matches are looked for in the subwindow menu, the main menu, and any pop-up menus, in that order.

The menu button commands are analogous to the commands found in the main menu. An exception is the Dump To File command, which allows the contents of the subwindow to be dumped to a disk file. When pressed, a file name will be solicited, and the contents of the subwindow will be dumped to the file. The filename extension determines the file type: jpg, tiff, png, etc. This provides a mechanism for obtaining printable output from the Cross Section views. The dumped bitmap will be the same size as the window.

This feature makes use of the imsave library, which is also used in the imlib print driver. See 5.5.2 for additional information.

Another exception is the Show Location command, which draws an indicator in the main window showing the display area of the subwindow. When this menu button is active, and both the subwindow and the main window are in physical mode and displaying the same cell, an outline box is drawn in the main window around the area displayed in the subwindow. This indicates the position of the subwindow display, assuming that the subwindow is showing a zoomed-in part of the display in the main window.

If a cell shown in a subwindow is the cell shown in the main window, with the same mode (physical or electrical), then all editing operations will work in the subwindow as well as the main window. The subwindow will display all highlighting, terminals, and other special markings. If the subwindow shows a different cell, then in that window selections and editing are not possible, and no highlighting or special markings are shown.

When the Viewport command is used to create a new subwindow, the subwindow will initially show the same cell as the main window.

There are presently two ways to set the cell displayed in a subwindow: the !cc command, and by drag/drop. In addition, the !sw command will swap the displays between the main window and one of the subwindows. The subwindows are sensitive as drop-receivers from the file manager and other listing pop-ups. File or cell names can be dragged from the listing pop-up and dropped in a subwindow, which will cause that cell/file to be opened and displayed in the window.


next up previous contents index
Next: The Peek Button: Show Up: The View Menu: Alter Previous: The Zoom Button: Zoom   Contents   Index
Stephen R. Whiteley 2006-10-23