ABOUT
A very useful plug-in to give you a bit of control (and peace of mind) when opening new windows in the IDE. With this plug-in, no longer will you have to resize the edit window every time you open a new project; no longer will you have to hunt for the project manager and package manager windows when you try to open them.
The IDE Form Layout Manager allows you to save and restore the layouts used for selected windows in the IDE.
FEATURES
This plug-in registers two new functions in CodeRush; these are ILMSaveFormLayout and ILMRestoreFormLayout. Note that there are two other registered functions, ILMSaveWorkSpace and ILMRestoreWorkSpace, which are not yet implemented.
Simply bind a keystroke to ILMSaveFormLayout and you will have the ability to store the active layout for selected windows. When invoked, the following dialog appears:
The majority of the dialog consists of a list of all available window Layouts you can save. In addition, when you save an IDE form's layout, you may specify two options:
- Auto-restore the form when it is first shown - When this is checked, the plug-in *should* automatically restore the IDE form to its saved layout. This may not work with certain windows that delay their "sizing" to the last possible moment. In particular, CodeRush's "Search Files" form seems to exhibit this behavior. It appears that the second time the "Search Files" form is focused, it is restored correctly.
- Apply layout to all forms of the selected class - When this is checked, the plug-in will restore any IDE form that matches the class of the form selected. This option should be used for most IDE forms. In particular, use this option for the editor window, package manager, etc. If you uncheck this option, the plug-in will only restore an IDE form that matches BOTH the selected class name AND caption.
For reference, layouts are stored in the registry under the following section:
(Substituting the correct CodeRush version in place of "5.0", as appropriate)
Each layout key is built by using the IDE form's class name and caption. For example, if you have the file 'Unit1.pas' open in the editor window, the layout key would be: TEditWindow(Unit1.pas)
If you check the "Apply layout to all forms..." option, the caption portion is removed from the key, so the resulting key would be:
TEditWindow
CAUTION!: This plug-in was not designed for, nor was it tested with, docked windows. Unpredictable results may occur when saving layouts for windows that are docked.
Binding a keystroke to ILMRestoreFormLayout allows you to selectively choose from a list of previously saved layouts to restore. When invoked, the following dialog appears:
Simply select the form who's layout you wish to restore and click OK. No more hunting for windows!
Note that if you saved your form layouts with the Auto-Restore feature enabled, you should not need this option. The saved layout should be applied automatically when the form is displayed.
