Organizing and customizing perspectives
Rational Application Developer allows you to open, customize, reset, save, and close perspectives. These actions can be found in the Window menu.
To customize the commands and shortcuts available within a perspective, select Window Æ Customize Perspective. The Customize Perspective dialog opens.
Figure 4-4 Customize Perspective dialog
The Shortcuts tab provides the facility to specify which options are shown on the New, Open Perspective, and Show View menu options within the current perspective. Select the menu that you want to customize from the Submenus drop-down window and check the boxes for whichever options you want to appear. Note that items you do not select are still accessible by clicking the Other menu option, which is always present for these options.
The Commands tab of the dialog allows you to select command groups that will be added to the menu bar or tool bar for Rational Application Developer in this perspective.
In addition to customizing the commands and options available as shortcuts, it is also possible to reposition any of the views and editors and to add or remove other editors as desired. The following features are available to do this:
| Adding and Removing Views-To add a view to the perspective, select Window Æ Show View and select the view you would like to add to the currently open perspective. To remove a view, simply close it from its title bar.
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| Move-You can move a view to another pane by using drag and drop. To do this, select its title bar and drag the view to another place on the workspace. While you drag the view, the mouse cursor changes into a drop cursor, which indicates where the view will appear when it is released. In each case, the area that is filled with the dragged view is highlighted with a rectangular outline.
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The drop cursor will look like one of the following icons:
 The view will dock below the view under the cursor.
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 The view will dock to the left of the view under the cursor.
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 The view will dock to the right of the view under the cursor.
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 The view will dock above the view under the cursor.
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 The view will appear as a tab in the same pane as the view under the cursor.
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 The view will dock in the status bar (at the bottom of the Rational Application Developer window) and become a Fast View (see next). This icon will appear when a view is dragged to the bottom left corner of a work-space.
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 The view becomes a separate child window of the main Rational Application Developer window. This icon will appear when you drag a view to an area outside the work-space. To return the view back into the work-space, right click its title bar and clear the Detached menu item.
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| Fast View-A Fast View appears as a button in the status bar of Rational Application Developer in the bottom left corner of the workspace. Clicking the button will toggle whether or not the view is displayed on top of the other views in the perspective.
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| Maximize and minimize a view-To maximize a view to fill the whole working area of the Workbench, you can double-click the title bar of the view, press Ctrl+M, or click the Maximize icon ( )in the view's toolbar. To restore the view double-click the title bar, select the restore button ( ) or press Ctrl+M again. The Minimize button in the toolbar of a view minimizes the tab group so that only the tabs are visible; click the Restore button or one of the view tabs to restore the tab group.
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| Save-After you have configured the perspective to your preferences, you can save it as your own perspective by selecting Window Æ Save Perspective As and type a new name. The new perspective now appears as an option on the Open Perspective window.
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| Restore-To restore the currently open perspective to its original layout, select Window Æ Reset Perspective.
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