6.3 Windows

Nowadays, working with windowed applications should be no problem for most WINDOWS and LINUX users. Nevertheless, the following section describes how the windows work in the Free Pascal IDE, to allow efficient work with it.

Window basics

A common IDE window is displayed in figure (6.2).

The window is surrounded by a so-called frame, the white double line around the window.

At the top of the window 4 things are displayed:

• At the upper left corner of the window, a close icon is shown. When clicked, the window will be closed. It can be also closed by pressing ALT-F3 or selecting the menu item ”Window--Close”. All open windows can be closed by selecting the menu item ”Window--Close all”.
• In the middle, the title of the window is displayed.
• Almost at the upper right corner, a number is visible. This number identifies the editor window, and pressing ALT-NUMBER will jump to this window. Only the first 9 windows will get such a number.
• At the upper right corner, a small green arrow is visible. Clicking this arrow zooms the window so it covers the whole desktop. Clicking this arrow on a zoomed window will restore old size of the window. Pressing the key F5 has the same effect as clicking that arrow. The same effect can be achieved with the menu item ”Window--Zoom”. Windows and dialogs which aren’t resizeable can’t be zoomed, either.

The right edge and bottom edges of a window contain scrollbars. They can be used to scroll the window contents with the mouse. The arrows at the ends of the scrollbars can be clicked to scroll the contents line by line. Clicking on the dotted area between the arrows and the cyan-coloured rectangle will scroll the window’s content page by page. By dragging the rectangle the content can be scrolled continuously.

The star and the numbers in the lower left corner of the window display information about the contents of the window. They are explained in the section about the editor, see section 6.5, page 133.

Sizing and moving windows

• using the mouse, click on the title bar and drag the window with the mouse.
• using the keyboard, go into the size/move mode by pressing CTRL-F5 or selecting the menu item ”Window--Size/Move”. . Using the cursor keys the window can be moved. The size/move mode can be left by pressing ENTER. In this case, the window will keep its size and position. Alternatively, pressing ESC will restore the old position.

To resize a window:

• using the mouse, click on the lower right corner of the window and drag it.
• using the keyboard, go into the size/move mode by pressing CTRL-F5 or selecting the menu item ”Window--Size/Move”. The window frame will be green to indicate that the IDE is in size/move mode. By pressing shift and the cursor keys simultaneously, the window can be resized. The size/move mode can be left by pressing ENTER. In this case, the window will keep the new size. Pressing ESC will restore the old size.

Not all windows can be resized. This applies, for example, to dialog windows (section 6.3, page 120).

A window can also be hidden. To hide a window, the CTRL-F6 key combination can be used, or the ”Window--Hide” menu may be selected. To restore a Hidden window, it is necessary to select it from the window list. More information about the window list can be found in the next section.

Working with multiple windows

An inactive window is identified by a grey frame. An inactive window can be made active in one of several ways:

• using the mouse, activate a window by clicking on it.
• using the keyboard, pressing F6 will step trough all open windows. To activate the previously activated window, SHIFT-F6 can be used.
• the menu item ”Window--Next” can be used to activate the next window in the list of windows, while Window|Previous will select the previous window.
• If the window has a number in the upper right corner, it can be activated by pressing ALT-¡NUMBER¿.
• Pressing ALT-0 will pop up a dialog with all available windows which allows a quick activation of windows which don’t have a number.

The windows can be ordered and placed on the IDE desktop by zooming and resizing them with the mouse or keyboard. This is a time-consuming task, and particularly difficult with the keyboard. Instead, the menu items ”Window--Tile” and ”Window--Cascade” can be used:

Tile

will divide whole desktop space evenly between all resizable windows.

Cascade

puts all windows in a cascaded position.

In very rare cases the screen of the IDE may be mixed up. In this case the whole IDE screen can be refreshed by selecting the menu item ”Window--Refresh display”.

Dialog windows

A typical dialog window is shown in figure (6.3).