Visual Thought User's Guide
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Chapter 14 Using View Windows

Tool Bar

This portion of a View window is discussed in detail in the chapter entitled "Using Drawing Tools" on page 51.

The Tool bar contains icons for the Visual Thought drawing tools: Select, Text, Connect, Shape, Pan, Zoom. Use these tools to select objects, create text, create connections and shapes, pan and zoom the View window, etc.

Status Line

This field displays which tool you are currently using and a brief explanation of what actions the tool can perform.

Rulers

To change the ruler units, see "Units" on page 160.

The rulers draw indicators that track your cursor movements to aid positioning and resizing tasks.

Zoom Buttons

These buttons are discussed later in this chapter, in the section entitled "Zoom In and Zoom Out Buttons" on page 132.

This menu is discussed later in this chapter, in the section entitled "The Zoom Menu" on page 132.

Zoom buttons allow you to zoom in and out of the diagram with a single click.

Zoom Menu

The Zoom menu allows you to zoom in or out of a diagram at a predefined setting. You can also define your own zoom settings.

Scroll Bars

These are standard window scroll bars. To change the portion of the diagram you want displayed in the View window, click-and-drag the scroll bars.

View Window Management

You can create a new View of a new drawing, a new View of an existing drawing, and close Views.

Creating a New View Window

A new, untitled View window is created the first time you open Visual Thought.

To create a new View window of a new drawing,

Choose FileNew (Ctrl-N).

For an example of the Open document chooser see the section titled "Open" on page 167.
To open a previously created diagram,
Choose FileOpen (Ctrl-O). The Open document chooser is displayed. Double-click on the desired Visual Thought document to open it.
To close a particular View window,
Choose FileClose (Ctrl-W). The View window is closed. If it has not been saved, you will be prompted to save the changes.

Using the Window Manager

You can also use your window manager to perform View manipulation. With the Sun OpenWindows window manager, for example, you can:

Move the mouse over a View and press the Open key at the left side of your keyboard to iconify the View.
Double-click on a View's Title bar to expand the window to full size, and double-click again on the Title bar to shrink it back to its original size.
Right-click on the Title bar to display a window management menu; select the Close item to iconify the View; select the Quit item to "close" the View as Visual Thought defines it.

Multiple View Windows

There are two ways you can have multiple View windows:

A new View of a new document.
A new View of an existing document. To use multiple Views effectively, you need to know about the concept of the focused View.

The Focused View

You can have multiple View windows open at the same time in Visual Thought. The window in which you are working and actively making changes is called the focused View. This is generally the window in which you last clicked or pressed a key.

There are several important points to note about focused Views:

The focused View is the View window to which all Inspector, dialog, and menu actions apply. View operations through the main menu bar, like closing, saving, zooming, and panning, all act on the focused View. All actions that affect objects, like changing colors, shapes, alignment, or text attributes, apply to the selected objects in the focused View.
The focused View is the one with the black border around it.

You can make a View the focused View by clicking anywhere in it (except the Title bar) or pressing a key after moving the mouse pointer into it.

Palettes in the View mode are discussed in "Using Palettes in View Mode" on page 139.
All Views can be focused. Palettes can only be focused when they are in the View mode (not in the Palette mode).
The Visual Thought focused View is different from the window manager's focused window. Many windowing systems (such as Sun's OpenWindows) implement a focus-follows-mouse policy. That is, the window manager focus follows the mouse into whichever window the mouse pointer moves. This policy, if used as the focus policy for Visual Thought Views, would prohibit successful implementation of a single application-wide menu bar and a "live" environment, including the Inspector.

Multiple Views of the Same Document

You can have multiple views of the same document. Each of these views can have different magnifications, scroll locations and grid settings. And any change to the diagram in one view will automatically change on all the other views.

This feature allows you, for example, to have both a micro- and macro-view of your diagram. This gives you an editable overview. You can edit your document normally through the initial View window, but you can also use the second View window both to display an overview as well as edit that overview.

Example of Creating Multiple Views of the Same Document

You might be editing a large, multi-page document, like the one shown below, and finding that you would like to see your entire document while editing certain portions of it.

This menu option creates a copy of whichever editable window is currently focused, either a View window or a Palette window in the View mode.

Choose the WindowsNew Window (Ctrl-Alt-N) menu item to create a new View of your current document. Notice that the titles of both windows update to be numbered with ":1," ":2," and so on.
Move the new View window to the right of the initial one and resize it as shown below.

In the new window, choose ViewHide Rulers (Ctrl-Shift-R) and ViewHide Tools (Ctrl-Shift-T) to give yourself more working space.
Finally, choose ViewFit In View (Ctrl-') to display the entire diagram in the View window. You can now see both specific portions of and the entire document at once. You can also edit either view. The changes will be reflected in both views.

Zooming

Zooming in and out does not affect the diagram itself; you are only changing your perspective of the diagram.

Zooming in and out is like changing the power of the magnifying glass with which you look at a document.

There are several ways of changing the magnification factor in a View window. You can use:

The Zoom tool from the Tool bar
The Zoom menu at the bottom of the View window
The Zoom buttons from the View menu
The Zoom dialog

The Zoom Tool

The Zoom tool, located on the Tool bar,

allows you to zoom in and out of a diagram easily.

Once you have clicked on the Zoom tool,

To zoom in, click in the diagram at the location where you want the magnification centered. The View will be zoomed in by a factor of 2 (objects will appear bigger).
To zoom in, you can also drag a zoom rectangle. The View will be zoomed in to fit that rectangle.
To zoom out, hold down the Ctrl key and click in the location where you want the magnification centered. The View will be zoomed out by a factor of 2 (objects will appear smaller).
To return to 100% magnification, regardless of the current magnification setting, hold the Shift key down and click (Shift-click). The View will be returned to 100%.

Example of Using the Zoom Tool

Create a star object in the View window.
Click on the Zoom tool.

Click in the center of the star in the View window. The diagram will zoom in by a factor of 2 (centered at the point at which you click) each time you click.

View Window Buttons and Menus

Zoom In and Zoom Out Buttons

You can also use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons at the base of the View window to magnify and shrink the view.

Click on one of these buttons to zoom in or out.

The Zoom Menu

Each View window has a Zoom menu. From this menu, you can zoom in or out, pop up the Zoom dialog, fit the drawing into the View, or set the magnification of the View to a preset factor from 25% to 200%.

The View Menu

The View menu allows you to change the attributes of the View window. The View menu provides the following commands:

Zoom
Unzoom
Set Zoom...
Fit In View
Actual Size
Scroll to Selection
Show/Hide Rulers
Show/Hide Tools
Show/Hide Page Breaks Use the Hide Rulers and Hide Tools commands on this menu to give yourself more room in your View diagram.

The View menu and its individual commands are discussed in detail in the section entitled "View Menu" on page 173.

Using the Zoom Dialog

Choosing Set Zoom... displays the Zoom dialog. Enter zoom values in the Zoom field or slide the slider.

Panning

Panning allows you to change what portion of the diagram is displayed in the View window. There are several ways you can pan a drawing:

Use the Zoom tool while holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys (described above)
Use the scroll bars (move the bars to change what is shown in the View window)
Use the Pan tool (described below)

Using the Pan Tool

Click on the Pan tool icon in the Tool bar

or press the number 5 on your keyboard to enter the Pan mode.

The cursor changes into the shape of a hand.

Click-and-drag within the View window. Notice how you can move the diagram in order to display the exact portion you want. The Pan tool works regardless of zoom factor.