The Set Attributes Button: Set Window Attributes

The Set Attributes button in the Attributes Menu brings up the Window Attributes panel. The panel contains controls which affect presentation attributes in all drawing windows. The panel contains five tabbed pages: General, Selections, Phys Props, Terminals, and Labels

The controls found in the General page are as follows.

Cursor
This menu provides a choice of cursors. These include the system default cursor (which is probably the same as the left arrow), cross cursor, left and right arrows. Under Windows, there is no right arrow, so an up arrow is used instead (but it is ugly and useless). Also, the default cross cursor for Windows 7 service pack 1 is huge and grotesque, but can be switched for a better looking cross cursor through the selections in the Windows System Preferences panel.

Use full-window cursor
When this check box is checked, the mouse cursor will be represented by horizontal and vertical lines which extend across the entire width and height of the drawing window containing the cursor. The lines intersect at the nearest snap point in the current window.

When not checked, the cursor is the normal small cross.

This tracks the state of the FullWinCursor variable.

Subcell visibility threshold (pixels)
This entry area specifies a pixel size threshold for display of expanded subcells. Subcells with height or width less than this threshold will not be displayed, or displayed as an unfilled bounding box, according to the setting of the Subthreshold Boxes menu button in the Main Window sub-menu of the Attributes Menu, and the Attributes menu of sub-windows. The value can be in the range 0-100. If 0, subcells will always be rendered when in expanded state, which can greatly increase drawing time when zoomed out. This setting applies to all drawing windows.

This entry tracks the setting of the CellThreshold variable.

Push context display illumination percent
When the Push command is active, and the ``context'' (the features surrounding the pushed-to subcell) is being displayed, the intensity of colors used to render the context is reduced. This visually differentiates objects in the current cell from those in the context. The percentage intensity of the context can be set from this input area. If set to 100, the context is rendered with the same coloring as the current cell.

This entry tracks the setting of the ContextDarkPcnt variable.

Pixels between pop-ups and prompt line
For windows that are automatically placed just above the prompt line, giving this entry a positive integer value will position these windows toward the top of the screen by that many pixels. This is useful when using ``plasma'' displays (such as Mac or KDE), where the shadow falls on the prompt line, which can be distracting. It might also be helpful if the window positioning is incorrect, which might occur with some window managers.

This tracks the state of the LowerWinOffset Variable.

The Selections page contains the following two check boxes.

Show origin of selected physical instances
When this check box is set, selected physical instances will have the cell origin marked with a cross. This applies to the selection highlighting, as well as to the ghost rendition which is attached to the mouse pointer during a move or copy operation.

Showing the origin may seem trivial, but marking the origin requires a bit of overhead since it requires running a transformation and keeping track of an additional redisplay area since the origin may be outside of the cell bounding box. Thus, the default is to not show the mark.

This tracks the state of the MarkInstanceOrigin variable, and applies to all physical drawing windows.

Show centroids of selected physical objects
In mathematics, the centroid or geometric center of a two-dimensional region is the arithmetic mean of all the points in the shape. When this check box is set, selected objects will mark the centroid with a cross. This applies to the selection highlighting, as well as to the ghost rendition which is attached to the mouse pointer during a move or copy operation.

This tracks the state of the MarkObjectCentroid variable, and applies to all physical drawing windows.

The Phys Props page contains the following controls.

Erase behind physical properties text
When this check box is set, in windows where physical properties are being displayed, the area around the physical property text is erased, providing improved visibility.

This tracks the state of the EraseBehindProps variable.

Physical property text size (pixels)
This entry sets the height, in pixels, of the text used to render physical properties on-screen, when physical property text is being displayed.

This tracks the state of the PhysPropTextSize variable.

The Terminals page contains the following controls.

Erase behind physical terminals
This will cause the area under terminals in physical windows to be erased, to promote visibility. One can choose to not erase, to erase only under the cell's terminals, or to erase under all terminals. This tracks the setting of the EraseBehindTerms variable.

Terminal text pixel size
This sets the text height, in pixels, of the text associated with terminals in both physical and electrical windows. This tracks the setting of the TermTextSize variable. The default text height is 14 pixels.

Terminal mark size
This sets the pixel size of the mark used to indicate terminal locations in both physical and electrical windows. It tracks the value of the TermMarkSize variable. The default mark size is 10 pixels.

Finally, the Labels page contains controls related to label presentation.

Hidden label scope
By default, all labels participate in a protocol whereby clicking on the label with the Shift key held will ``hide'' the label, displaying a small box instead. Shift-clicking on the box will return to the display of the label text. This menu limits the labels which will participate in this protocol. The choices are all labels (the default), all electrical labels, electrical property labels, and no labels.

This menu tracks the setting of the LabelHiddenMode variable.

Default minimum label height
This sets the minimum label height, in microns, for new text labels. The actual initial height may be larger, depending on the zoom factor of the window, but it can not be smaller.

This tracks the setting of the LabelDefHeight variable.

Maximum displayed label length
This entry sets the maximum width, in default-sized character cells, of a displayed label. If the label exceeds this width, it is not shown, and a small box at the text origin is shown instead. The default is 256.

The ``hidden'' status of a property label can be toggled by clicking the text or box with button 1 with the Shift key held. See 7.9 for more information.

This entry tracks the setting of the LabelMaxLen variable.

Label optional displayed line limit
Label text strings may have embedded newline characters which cause them to be displayed on multiple lines. This setting, when set to a positive integer value, provides a limit on the number of lines that are actually displayed, in labels that respect this limit. Only the first N lines would actually appear in the display, where N is the given number. If N is zero, there is no limit.

Labels observe this limit only if an internal flag is set in the label. Presently, this is set internally for the labels associated with value and param properties. The user can apply the limit to any label by setting the LIML flag in the XprpXform pseudo-property.

The setting tracks the value of the LabelMaxLines variable.