The LispWorks IDE has been designed so that its features are consistent throughout, and tools have a uniform look and feel. All tools have certain characteristics which look the same, and behave in a consistent manner. By making as many common features as possible, learning how to use each tool is much simpler.
2 A Short Tutorial, introduced you to some of the major tools in the environment, demonstrating the commonality and high integration between them, and showing how this can be used to good effect in the development process. This chapter describes these common features in more detail.
When you start the LispWorks IDE, by default a window known as the podium appears.
The podium contains a menu bar, a toolbar, and a message pane that shows the active window; that is, the window on which commands chosen from the Works menu will have effect. The icons in the podium's toolbar access the Listener, Editor, Output Browser, Inspector, Class Browser, Generic Function Browser, Symbol Browser, Object Clipboard, Function Call Browser, Code Coverage Browser, System Browser, Compilation Conditions Browser, Search Files, Profiler, Tracer, Stepper, Window Browser, Process Browser, Shell and Application Builder tools. If you hold the mouse over these icons for a second, the corresponding tool name will appear as floating help text.
The IDE tools have most of these menu items in common with the podium.
The menu bar contains eight menus:
Users already familiar with Windows will notice that the File menu contains commands available in the File menu of other applications.
The toolbar provides quick access to some of the more common commands in the menus. LispWorks podium buttons and their functions shows each button, together with the menu command it represents.
If you run the Windows version of LispWorks in the default Multiple Document Interface (MDI) mode, then the podium menus and tool icons are located at the top of the MDI window (see MDI Interface in LispWorks for Windows.).
This MDI option is the default, but the multiple window interface (familiar to users of LispWorks for Windows 4.1 and LispWorks on other platforms) can be selected using the Tools > Preferences... menu command.
Even though the MDI interface is the default, this manual will usually show single windows in figures in order to show more detail for the specific LispWorks tool under discussion.
Most of the common features in the environment can be found under the File, Edit, Works, History, Windows and Help menus. Other menus may also be available depending on the current tool. If you are using the MDI LispWorks interface for Windows, these menus are located in the single main MDI window. (Remember, you can toggle between multiple LispWorks windows and the MDI interface using Tools > Preferences... > Environment > General > Window Options.) Using the commands available under these menus you can:
Each menu command operates on the window associated with the menu. In LispWorks for Windows in "All windows contained within a single main window" (MDI) mode or "Separate windows sharing a menu bar" mode, there is a single menu bar on the podium and one window is always the "Active Window". The menu commands act on the Active Window. Its name is displayed at the bottom of the podium. The Active Window can be any window within the LispWorks IDE: even the podium itself.
In addition, some other conventions have been adopted throughout the LispWorks IDE:
These features are described in full in this chapter. Please note that subsequent descriptions of individual tools in the environment do not include a description of these menus, unless a feature specific to the individual tool is described.
Online help is also available from the Help menu in any window. These facilities are described in 4 Getting Help.
Many tools allow you to display information in the form of a graph. These graph views behave consistently throughout the environment, and a description of the graph features offered is given in 6 Manipulating Graphs.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Windows version) - 01 Dec 2021 19:37:50
