Should the VC hold, control can be passed back to ECLiPSe by pressing the Resume button at the bottom of the VC window, or by setting the auto resume timer. The Resume button and the auto resume timer are disabled when ECLiPSe has control, see Figure 3.2.
Event Triggered by Default hold Alterable viewable creation viewable_create/2 viewable_create/3 viewable_create/4 yes no viewable expansion viewable_expand/3 viewable_expand/4 no yes viewable contraction Backtracked over a viewable expansion no yes viewable destruction Backtracked over a viewable creation yes yes forward update One or more elements in a viewable have been updated, ie. had their domain reduced or have been instantiated no yes backward update A forward update has been backtracked over no yes
Table 3.1: VC default behaviour for visualisation event.
Common to all viewers are the three menus Options, Select and View, the latter two also being accessible by pressing the right mouse button.
Both the network and desktop viewers have an extra item on the view menu, Toggle high quality. This toggles between quick rendering and high quality views, and may help to make the VC more reactive under high load.
Table 3.2 lists the available viewlet actions and indicates for which type the actions are valid.
Name Description Applicable Hold on updates Causes the VC to hold control on forward or backward update events for the selected viewlets. all Fade update history Toggles using the background color of the viewlet to indicate recent update history. This has the effect of fading from green to white in the event of a forward update and from red to white for backward updates. text, node, fade, edge View bounds in detail Pops up a window detailing the original bounds and the current bounds for the single selected viewlet. bound Align bounds Causes the selected viewlets to use the same underlying scale when displaying the bounds. This allows variables whose initial bounds were different to be visually compared. bound Toggle horizontal/vertical range bar Toggles the rotation of the bar for all bounds viewlets bound
Table 3.2: The available viewlet actions and associated types.
At least one selection must be made from each of the dimensions, though it is possible to select multiple values in each dimension.
Higher dimension range selections result in a stacked 2D grid, with progressive dimensions appearing underneath the initially visible grid.