3. GRAPHICAL
COMPONENTS
Windows and panes
The display layouts are hierarchically organised. The layouts are built using
components called
windows
and
panes
.
screen
Screen
is the topmost display component,
corresponding to the entire pixel area of the
physical screen.
window
Window
is a component that has no parent except
the screen. Typically a window fills up the entire
screen, but there are also smaller (temporary)
windows that take up only a part of the screen,
leaving other parts of the screen visible around
themselves.
Each application runs in a window of it's own.
Applications can also use other temporary windows.
pane
Pane
means a sub-component of a window (
sub-
window
).
A window may contain many panes, and each pane
may contain further sub-panes and so on. A bottom
level component that cannot have a sub-
component, can be called an
element
.
Status pane
Main pane
Control pane
Figure 3-1.
Panes
application window
An
application window
is a principal window filling
up the entire screen. It is usually not used directly
for display, but just as a parent for the various
panes.
A typical application window is divided into the
following panes:
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