Anjuta Manual version 0.1

Copyright (c) Kh. Naba Kumar Singh

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Getting familier with the GUI.

Menus:

The top most part of the anjuta IDE is the menu bar. Almost all of the functionalities are available by activating the appropriate menu item. The functionalities have been grouped according to their type of operations. For instance, most of the file and project operations have been grouped in the sub-menu 'File'. Similarly, The other sub-menus contain the operations they are grouped to.

The main menu is detachable. Drag it from the main window using the handle at the extreme right. Once it is detached, it will become a floating menu.

All the Submenus in the main menu are detachable. You can detach it by clicking the detach bar on the submenu (just above the first item). Once the submenu is detached, it will be shown as an independent window. A detached menu is shown as an illustration.

Toolbars:

To make the life easier, all those operations which are performed very often are made available in the toolbars. There are basically four toolbars on the main window. They are:

  1. Main toolbar.
  2. Extended toolbar.
  3. Browser toolbar.
  4. Debug toolbar.

It would be worth spending some time getting familier with the toolbar buttons. Tool tips describing the function of the toolbar buttons will appear as soon as you move the mouse over the buttons. Read and remember them carefully. Toolbars avoid the unnecessary selection of menu items which are used very often.

You will find some combo (entry) boxes on the toolbars. They are explained in the later section.

Similarly, to make the life still more easier, short cuts are available for those operations that are performed very often. All the keyboard short cuts are given along with their corrosponding menu item. You must remember some of them, for they become handy while you are typing into the editor and you don't want to leave the keyboard.

Main Window:

In the main window, there are three frames that you must be familier with, before you start doing anything (All of them may not be visible when you start anjuta). They are called:

  1. Editor window.
  2. Project window.
  3. Message window.

The frame on the left is the Project window, on the right is the Editor window and the one at the bottom is the Message window. The project window and the message window can be detached into seperate windows instead of docking them into the main window. You can detach them by clicking the the detach button (You will find them along with the frames: the small buttons with the undocking icon). Similarly, you can hide them, by clicking the hide buttons (small buttons with the red cross). You can make them visible anytime by activating the menu items View/Project listing and View/Message, respectively, or by clicking the corrosponding toolbar buttons in the main toolbar.

  1. Editor window is the part of the main window, so you can neither detach nor hide it. But, you can always detach the individual documents, which are shown as pages in the editor window. Editor window will have one document active at a time (if there is any file opened). All the file commands are meant for this active document. You can switch to any page by clicking on the page tag. You can do the same by right clicking on the page tags and selecting the document from the pop up menu that will appear. This is especially usefull when you have many files opened and all the files not visible in the page tag area.

  2. Project window shows the project files if you have a project opened. Otherwise, the project window is usally hidden. Double clicking on any item in the project window will open that file.

  3. Message window will list all the messages (both stdout and stderr outputs) when an external command is executed. Message window is usually hiden, but appears as soon as the external command is executed, such as during file or project compilation or building, during debugging session, searching in files and many other operations requiring external commands. Anjuta also adds its own messages whenever it becomes necessary.

    The colors with which the messages are displayed in the message window is very important to note. Messages displayed in normal color (usually black) are normal messages. Those one displayed in Blue are usually important messages such as error messages or some important information. And messages shown in Red color are Hot linked. That is double clicking on such a message will take you to the perticular file and line number specified in the message.

    For example, when you compile a buggy file, some messages in red will appear in the message window which tell where is the error and what sort of error is that. Double clicking on such messages will open the file and hilite the line containing the error.

All these three frames are resizable. Try adjusting them by draging the handle bars seperating them.

Things to note:

One last thing I should tell you in this section is that, all the settings, including all the window sizes and window positions, are saved when you exit anjuta. And they are all set again when you next restart anjuta. Session management is still under development. So you should not exit anjuta with any usaved document. Of course, anjuta will display a warning if you try to exit anjuta with usaved document(s) still opened.