Using Electric 4-3: Creating and Deleting Editing Windows

Chapter 4: THE DISPLAY

| ## 4-3: Creating and Deleting Editing Windows |

### Multiple Editing Windows

Initially, there is only one editing window on the screen. Electric allows you to create multiple editing windows, each of which can show a different cell. You can also have the same cell in more than one window to see it at different scales and locations.

New windows are created by checking the appropriate checkbox in the Edit Cell... command of the Cells menu. New windows can also be created with the New Window command of the Windows menu. To delete a window, click its close box, or use the Delete Window command of the Windows menu. Note that you cannot delete the last window on UNIX systems, because the UNIX pulldown menus are part of the edit windows.

When there are many editing windows on the display, you can arrange them neatly with the Adjust Position subcommands of the Windows menu. The Tile Horizontally subcommand adjusts the windows so that they are full-width, but just tall enough to fill the screen, one above the other. The Tile Vertically subcommand adjusts the windows so that they are full-height, but just wide enough to fill the screen, one next to the other. The Cascade subcommand adjusts the windows so that they are all the same size and overlap each other uniformly from the upper-left to the lower-right.

### Splitting Editing Windows

Each editing window can be split into multiple subwindows by using subcommands of the Window Partitions command. The Split subommand divides the current window in half, either vertically or horizontally, When splitting windows, the aspect ratio of the editing window and its contents are used to determine how the window is split.

Once the original is split, only one half is the current window, and its border is highlighted. The current window changes, however, whenever the cursor moves to another window and a command is issued. You can grab the border and slide it to adjust the location of the split.

The Split command can be used repeatedly to subdivide windows into halves, quarters, and so on. Once the initial split has been made, there is no longer a choice between horizontal and vertical splits: Each division follows an alternating sequence to achieve a clean binary tree of windows.

To undo the partitioning of a window, use the Delete subcommand of the Window Partitions command of the Windows menu, which deletes the current partition and merges it with its neighbor. This command can be issued only to a window at the bottom of the subdivision tree. To back out completely from multiple partitions, use the Make 1 Window subcommand, which returns to a single partition.

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