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.

This view stack	Open
becomes this Trim Stack when minimized	Open
The minimize behavior for the Editor Area is somewhat different; minimizing the Editor Area results in a trim stack containing only a placeholder icon representing the entire editor area rather than icons for each open editor (since in most cases all the icons would be the same, making them essentially useless).
The editor area	Open
becomes this Trim Stack when minimized	Open

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.

Normal Presentation	Editor Area Maximized
Open	Open

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: