RT-LAB presentation provides a rich environment consisting of an Editor Area (containing one or more stacks showing the open editors) surrounded by one or more View Stacks (each containing one or more views).

The RT-LAB presentation provides a variety of ways to access these operations:

• Using the minimize and maximize buttons provided on a stack's border
• Selecting the Minimize or Maximize item on the context (right-click) menu for a stack
• Double-clicking on a stack
• Using Ctrl + M: this is a key binding for a command that toggles the currently active part between its maximized and its restored (i.e. normal) states.

Maximize

Users may want to focus attention on one particular part of the interface to the exclusion of the others. To do this, maximize the editor area in order to make as much of the display available for editing as possible.

The default presentation implements the maximize behavior by minimizing all stacks except the one being maximized.

The maximized stack then occupies the main presentation while still allowing access to any open views in your perspective by using the icons in their Trim Stack (the area around the edges of the window is called the trim).

The behavior for managing the editor maximization operates on the complete Editor Area (rather than simply maximizing the particular Editor Stack. This allows for compare workflows which require the ability to see both files in a split editor area at the same time.

Minimize

Another way to optimize the use of the screen area is to directly minimize stacks that are of no current interest. The default presentation minimizing a stack will cause it to be moved into the trim area at the edges of the workbench window, creating a Trim Stack. View Stacks get minimized into a trim representation that contains the icons for each view in the stack.

If your particular workflow is such that you need to have more than one element (i.e. having the Editor Area and a View Stack in the presentation at the same time) you can still gain additional screen space by minimizing the stacks that aren't of current interest. This will remove them from the main presentation and place them on the outer edge of the workbench window as Trim Stacks, allowing more space for the remaining stacks in the presentation.

Depending on how the Trim Stack was created its behavior is different; when un-maximizing only those trim stacks created during the initial maximize are restored to the main presentation while stacks that were independently minimized stay that way.

Tip: This difference is important in that it allows you fine-grained control over the presentation. While using maximize is a one-click operation, no other stack is allowed to share the presentation with a maximized stack.

While adequate for most tasks, you may find yourself wanting to have the presentation show more than the stack. In these scenarios don't maximize; minimize all the other stacks except the ones you want in the presentation.

Once you have it set up you can still subsequently, maximize the editor area but the un-maximize will only restore the particular stack(s) that were sharing the presentation, not the ones you've explicitly minimized.

Customizing the Workbench

Many aspects of the appearance and behavior of the Workbench can be customized to suit your individual needs.

For example, you can:

• Rearrange where items appear in the main toolbar.
• Change key bindings used by editors.
• Change the fonts and colors used.

Customizing the Welcome

The welcome appearance can be customized via the customize page button above the welcome page. This opens a customize dialog which allows you to select one of the pre-defined themes, which affects the overall look of the welcome. You can also select which pages will be displayed, and the visibility, layout, and priority of the items within each page.

Workspace Switching

The current workspace for RT-LAB can be switched by using the File->Switch Workspace command. The Switch Workspace menu item will open the switch workspace dialog. The dialog allows you to browse for or manually enter a new workspace location. The combo will also allow you to select your previously selected workspaces.

Settings Transfers

When you switch your workspace you can select settings that will be transferred to the new workspace.

RT-LAB supplies transfers for:

Rearranging the Main Toolbar

You can rearrange sections of the main toolbar. Toolbar sections are divided by a thin vertical line.

• Make sure the toolbar is unlocked. The toolbar is unlocked if it has thick vertical bars next to the thin vertical toolbar dividers. If it is locked, unlock the toolbar by right-clicking the toolbar and selecting the Lock the Toolbars menu item.
• Grab the section of the toolbar you want to rearrange by moving the mouse over the thick vertical line on the left side of the desired segment. The mouse cursor changes its shape to indicate that you can click to move the toolbar section.
• Click and hold the left mouse button to grab the toolbar section.
• Move the section left and right or up and down. Release the mouse button to place it in the new location.
• To prevent accidental changes to the toolbar lock it again by right-clicking the toolbar and selecting the Lock the Toolbars menu item.

Changing the Key Bindings

The function of the keyboard can be extensively customized in RT-LAB.

Use the General > Keys preference page to assign key sequences to many of the commands in RT-LAB.

Changing font and Colors

By default, the Workbench uses the fonts and colors provided by the operating system. However, there are a number of ways that this behavior can be customized.

Fonts

The Workbench lets you configure the following fonts:

To change these fonts:

• Open the General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts preference page.
• Select the font you want to change.
• Click Change.
• Use the dialog which opens to select a font.
• Click OK.

In addition to the above, some text is always displayed in the system font. For example, the navigator tree always does this. To change the font used in these areas, you can use the configuration tools provided by the operating system (for example, the Display Properties control panel on Windows).

Colors

To set the colors used by the Workbench to display error text and hyperlink text:

• Open the General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts preference page.
• Select the color you want to change in the tree view and click the color bar on the right.
• Use the dialog which opens to select a color.
• Click OK.

Plug-ins that use other colors may also provide preference entries to allow them to be customized. For example, the searching support provides a preference for controlling the color used to display potential matches (see the Foreground color for potential matches item on the General > Search preference page).

In general, the Workbench uses the colors that are chosen by the operating system. To change these colors you can use the configuration tools provided by the system (for example, the Display Properties control panel on Windows).

Changing the Placement of the Tabs

You can change the placement of the tabs. The tabs for stacked views or editors can appear at the top or bottom of the area which contains them.

• Open the General > Appearance preference page.
• Select from the choices displayed in the Editor tab positions group or View tab positions group to control whether you want the tabs at the top or the bottom.
• Click Apply or OK.
• The tabs will immediately move to their new locations.