THIS 22.1

Common Borders for graphics windows

When a page contains more than one graphics window these are laid out in a cellular grid as defined in the Window Layout section. This leads to "common borders" between adjacent windows. From T/HIS 19.0 onwards it is possible to drag this common border with the mouse in a way that resizes windows on both sides of the border as shown in the following images.

Move the mouse (don't depress a button) over a border region between two windows. This will highlight the drag areas in which a "click and drag" operation will move borders. In order to control which borders are dragged, three zones – coloured pink, blue and green – are shown and these have the following meanings:

Pink zone defines a common border between exactly two adjacent windows.

(Horizontal and vertical borders behave the
same way. A horizontal border is shown
here. The example on the right shows a
vertical border being moved.)

Dragging in this pink region border moves only that common border between the two windows.

So in this example, the vertical border between G1 and G2 is moved, but that between G3 and G4 is unchanged.

Blue zones define a common border extending the full height or width of the page as appropriate.

(Both blue zones have the same effect, it
doesn't matter which end you use.)

Dragging in the blue zone moves all windows on either side of the border in the appropriate direction. In this example, all four windows are moved.

Green zones define two common borders extending both horizontally and vertically to the full width and height of the page

(Both green zones have the same effect, it
doesn't matter which end you use.)

Dragging in the green zone moves all windows on either side of the border in the appropriate direction. In this example, all four windows are moved.

When windows are not the same size:

In this example G5 is twice the width of G3 and G4 above it so there is no single common border between G3/G5 or G4/G5. In this situation, there will be no pink zone, only blue and green.

Positioning the mouse at window edges:

When using the green zone to drag both horizontal and vertical axes, the borders that are dragged are those which intersect at the corner where the mouse is located.

In this example, the mouse is at the bottom left of G1 / top left of G3 and it can be seen that the borders that are highlighted for dragging are those which intersect at this point.

Switching common border dragging on/off

Common borders are on by default, but they can be controlled from the Graph Layout panel.

The default behaviour may also be set by the preference:

this*common_window_borders: true | false

Window "snap to grid" and other options.

When dragging an entire window with the mouse to move its position on the screen (i.e. not resizing it) there are several possible outcomes:

Snap to Grid: The window is moved from one "cell" in a multi-window page to a different cell, shifting the contents of one or more cells out of the way.
Free positioning #1: The window is moved from inside the T/HIS master window to a new user-defined position within that window, i.e. positioned where it is "dropped".
Free positioning #2: The window is moved from inside the T/HIS master window and out onto the desktop.

The behaviour of "Snap to Grid" is illustrated in the following figure:

In this example, G4 is being dragged and the cursor is
at the "+" position inside G1. The borders of W1 are
highlighted in blue to show it is the destination window.

Releasing the mouse in this example causes G4 to
move to the "cell" of G1, and windows G1 to G3
to move down in the grid to make space for it.

"Snap to grid" behaviour illustrated in "Insert" mode

Switching "Snap to grid" on/off

Snap to grid is on by default, but itcan be controlled from the Graph Layout panel.

The default behaviour may also be set by the preference

this*snap_window_position: true | false

If turned off, the window positioning within the master T/HIS window reverts to "Free positioning #1" mode with the window positioned where it is dropped with the mouse.

The behaviour of the other windows when a window is moved into a new position depends on whether the mode is Insert or Swap:

Insert	Other windows circulate either up or down, as in the example above.
Swap	The window being dragged and its destination window swap places

Dragging a window from inside the T/HIS master window onto the desktop, "Free positioning #2", is independent of the "snap to grid" setting: once on the desktop the window does not have any cell membership.

The ordering of windows within cells can also be controlled explicitly within the the Graph Layout panel.

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