3 Common Features

3.11 Linking tools together

You can link together pairs of tools, so that changing the information displayed in one tool automatically updates the other. This can be done for virtually any tools in the environment, and provides a simple way for you to browse information and see how the state of the environment changes as you run your code. For instance, you can link the inspector to the class browser so that every time you choose a class in the class browser, it is automatically inspected. Linking an editor window to the class browser is a good way of studying the implementation and design of a series of classes.

You can also link two copies of the same tool. This can be a very useful way of seeing two views of a tool at once. For instance, you could create a copy of the class browser by choosing Works > Clone, and then link them together. By keeping one browser in the graph view, and the other in the slots view, you can automatically see both the subclasses and superclasses and the available slots for a given class.

Linked tools have a master-slave relationship. One tool (the slave) gets updated automatically, and the other tool (the master) controls the linking process. To link together any two tools:

: 1. Choose Edit > Link > Make Link in the master tool.
: 2. Choose Edit > Link > Attach Link in the slave tool.

Thus, to link the class browser and the inspector so as to get the behavior described above:

: 1. Choose Edit > Link > Make Link in the class browser.
: 2. Choose Edit > Link > Attach Link in the inspector.

Now, every time you make a change to the class browser, the relevant class is inspected in the inspector.

For more details about the class browser and the inspector, see Chapter 9, "The Class Browser" and Chapter 11, "The Inspector".

Choose Edit > Link > Remove Link from the slave tool to remove a link.

Common LispWorks User Guide, Liquid Common Lisp Version 5.0 - 18 OCT 1996

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