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General Visual

The following !set keywords affect general visual attributes of Xic.

MouseWheel
Value: two floating-point numbers.
This variable controls the per-click increments for mouse wheel panning and zooming of drawing windows. Without a key held, the mouse wheel scrolls drawing windows up/down. If Shift is held, scrolling is right/left. If Ctrl is held (overrides Shift), the mouse wheel zooms out or in.

The string provided to this variable consists of two space-separated floating-point numbers, each in the range of 0 - 0.5. The first is the pan factor, the second is the zoom factor. The default is 0.1 0.1. Larger numbers increase the effect per mouse wheel click. If either number is set to 0, that effect (pan or zoom) is suppressed. Thus, to turn off mouse wheel support in drawing windows, give ``0 0''.

NoCheckUpdate
Value: boolean.
By default, when the program starts, the distribution repository will be queried via the internet, and if a newer release is available, a pop-up will appear that notifies the user. If this variable is set in a startup file, this checking will be skipped.

FullWinCursor
Value: boolean.
When this variable is set, the default cursor consists of horizontal and vertical lines that extend completely across the drawing window. The lines intersect at the nearest snap point in the current window.

This variable tracks the state of the Use full-window cursor check box in the Cursor Modes panel.

CellThreshold
Value: integer 0-100.
This sets the size threshold in pixels for physical mode subcells to be shown in the display. If not set, the value is effectively 4. Subcells that are smaller than this size in the display are either shown as a bounding box, or not shown at all, depending on the setting of the Subthreshold Boxes button in the Main Window sub-menu in the Attributes Menu or the sub-window Attributes menu. If set to 0, all detail is drawn, which can significantly increase rendering time. This applies to hard copy output as well as to on-screen rendering.

This variable tracks the Subcell visibility threshold (pixels) entry area in the Window Attributes panel from the Set Attributes button in the Attributes Menu.

In electrical mode, the thresold is effectively fixed at one pixel.

LayerTable
Value: string, ``compact'' or ``tiny''.
The presentation of the layer table can be altered to squeeze more visible entries into available space by setting this variable to one of the keywords indicated (actually, only the first character of the keyword is significant). If ``compact'', the size of the entry is reduced. If ``tiny'', the size is further reduced, and two rows are presented. The states of this variable can be cycled through by pressing the small button marked with a blue dash to the left of the scroll bar under the layer table.

ListPageEntries
Value: integer 100-50000
This sets the number of entries that appear per page in the pop-ups that list cells. If the number of cells to be listed exceeds this number, a page menu will become visible in the listing panel. Each page will contain at most this number of entries. Only the entries for the currently selected page will be visible. If this variable is not set, the default value is 5000.

MaxPrpLabelLen
Value: integer >= 6.
This variable sets the maximum width, in default-sized character cells, of a displayed property 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 (32 in releases prior to 2.5.66).

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 4.9 for more information.

This variable tracks the Maximum displayed property label length entry area in the Window Attributes panel from the Set Attributes button in the Attributes Menu.

NoLocalImage
Value: boolean.
In Xic generation 3, a ``local image'' may be used to compose images for screen rendering. The display image is composed in local memory, and flushed to the screen when drawing is complete. When using X-Windows, this provides much faster rendering of complex displays, particularly when running remotely over a network, than the standard method of server-side image manipulation as used exclusively in previous Xic releases.

The local image method is not used under Windows, since it provides no benefit in the Windows architecture. It is also not used if the hierarchy being shown is not complex, i.e., contains few subcells and objects, as the conventional drawing mode is quicker in this case.

If this variable is set, the local image feature is disabled, and rendering is always performed by server-side functions. This is for debugging, it is not likely that the user will need to set this variable.

NoPixmapStore
Value: boolean.
In normal operation, the screen refreshes are buffered through an in-core pixel map. The geometry is rendered in the map, and when finished the map is copied to the screen. This is generally faster than drawing directly to the screen. When this variable is set, all drawing is direct to the screen. This is intended only for debugging purposes.

NoDisplayCache
Value: boolean.
In normal operation, boxes are cached during rendering, and displayed with a multiple object rendering call. This should be faster than rendering the boxes individually. When this variable is set, the caching is disabled. This is intended only for debugging purposes.

PhysGridOrigin
Value: two floating-point numbers.
This will set the origin of the displayed grid in physical-mode windows. The value consists of two floating-point numbers, which are taken as the x and y grid origin location in microns. This applies only to the displayed grid, and specifically not to the grid/snap used when creating or locating objects.

When an offset is active, the word "PhGridOffs" will be displayed in the status area.

ScreenCoords
Value: boolean.
When set, the coordinate readout area will display the position of the mouse pointer in the current drawing window in the window's pixel coordinates. This is for development/debugging purposes and is not likely to be useful to the user, and in fact may cause trouble if used while editing.

EdgeSnapMode
Value: string or integer.
In physical mode, the mouse cursor may indicate or snap to edges or vertices of existing objects in the layout. A single dotted box indicates an edge, and a double dotted box appears over a vertex. This variable controls when and how this feature is enabled.

This variable tracks the edge-snapping menu state in the Cursor Modes panel.

The variable can be set to a string or small integer enumerator according to the following table. The string testing is case-independent.

Set to an empty string, a word starting with `n' (e.g., ``None'' or ``n'') or the integer 0:
Edge snapping will be disabled.

Set to a word starting with `c' that does not contain `o' (e.g., ``Cmd'' or ``c''), or the integer 1:
This is also the mode that applies when the variable is unset. In this mode, edge snapping is enabled only in the side menu commands with the following keywords: polyg, round, donut, arc, wire, box, erase, xor, break.

In these commands, the cursor will change to indicate when it is over an edge or vertex of an existing object, but only if the edge or vertex is on-grid in the current window.

Set to a word starting with `c' that contains `o' (e.g., ``CmdO'' or ``co''), or the integer 2:
This mode is similar to the above in that it applies only in certain commands, however it will snap to edges and vertices that are off-grid, as well as those that are on-grid. Thus, these commands may then create features that are off-grid, which may or may not be desirable.

Set to a word starting with `a' that does not contain `o' (e.g., ``All'' or ``a''), or the integer 3:
This is similar to the default mode (1), though it is enabled at all times, even in the idle mode when no command is active. The cursor will indicate when it is over an edge or vertex, but only if the edge or vertex is on-grid in the current window.

Set to a word starting with `a' that contains `o' (e.g., ``AllO'' or ``ao''), or the integer 4:
This is similar to the mode above, however snapping to off-grid edges and vertices is allowed.

Attempting to set the variable to something unrecognized as above will trigger an error.

PixelDelta
Value: integer (default 3).
This variable determines how close, in screen pixels, a user must click to a feature for Xic to recognize this as clicking ``on'' that feature. The value should likely be set larger than the default for very high-resolution screens, or for inaccurate pointing devices, or for users with less than the sharpest eyesight.


next up previous contents index
Next: Keyboard `!' Commands Up: Xic Variables Previous: Paths and Directories   Contents   Index
Stephen R. Whiteley 2012-04-01