Changing Sizes of Each Area

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In most xmh windows, close to the right-hand side of each border (horizontal line), there's a small solid square, a grip. A grip moves a border and changes the size of one or more areas without changing the size of the whole xmh window. This is useful if, say, you want to stretch the Table of Contents to see a lot of messages. How about some practice? See the next Figure.

Figure: Master xmh window before using grips to change sizes

mxwbugcs.gif

Here's a list of what the mouse buttons do when you point to a grip:

Button 1
Adjusts the size of the area above the border. xmh will adjust the areas below the border to compensate.
Button 2
Moves only the border that the grip is on. Because xmh won't let you make areas larger or smaller than a certain size, this button usually doesn't help much.
Button 3
Adjusts the size of the area below the border. xmh will change areas above the border to compensate.
In the Figure below, the Table of Contents could be shortened a little to show more of the viewed message area. Point to the grip on the border between the Table of Contents and the message. (In the Figure above, this is the border just above the title inbox:4.) Hold down Button 1 on your mouse and drag the border up. See how the message window gets bigger, while the areas above the border adjust to make up for it? Because the Table of Contents area got too small to show all of its lines, it has a scrollbar now, too. After you've adjusted that grip, your window should look something like the Figure below.

Figure: Master xmh window after increasing viewed message area

mxwaivma.gif

When you adjust a grip, xmh will try to adjust all of the areas in the window but it won't let you make any area too small. In this case, the area it shrank was the Table of Contents. Try adjusting other grips, too, if you'd like. You can change the default size of an area with the tocPercentage resource; the Table xmh Resources has a summary.

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Last change $Date: 1996/06/06 15:09:07 $

This file is from the third edition of the book MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers, ISBN 1-56592-093-7, by Jerry Peek. Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. This file is freely-available; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see the file copying.htm.

Suggestions are welcome: Jerry Peek <jpeek@jpeek.com>