Selection of Display Objects and Gadgets

In Design Mode, representatives of the Display Objects can be moved and resized whenever they appear on the screen. In Reader Mode, these objects objects occupy fixed positions on the screen.

In order to control the flow of traffic of information in an intuitive way we have implemented the notion of selection for all Display Objects and Gadgets. If several objects of the same type appear on a client screen, then a click (left mouse button) in the client area of any one of them selects it. There is often no immediate visual indication that it is "selected" except that it receives the focus. If the selected window is a graphics window, then the next graphical output is automatically directed to it. If it is a text field, then the next text output (through a print command, say) is directed to it. If it is a MathEdit window, then the next output is directed to it.

Sometimes it is desirable to select a window under program control, by name. The Select command, if it is given the name of a object will do that. Many commands, such as "graph" or "curve" allow you to select the object simply by including the phrase: in "windowname" in the command statement. For example, if "Mywin" is a Graph2D window, then: Graph sin in "Mywin" causes Mywin to be selected, and the graph to be drawn in it.