Visualization Tools User's Guide

Advanced Hiding and Unhiding

  1. Double-click the fileMenu line a third time, to redisplay the components of the fileMenu.
  2. Highlight the first three items indented under fileMenu, that is: armBlock, configureBlock, and disarmBlock. (You may click the first item and drag through to the last, or control-click on the three individual items).
  3. From the Hide menu, select Hide Selected Items. (Or, press control+h).

    The three lines vanish from the display. A marker appears by fileMenu, indicating that it has hidden children. (Depending on which platform you are using, the marker might be a right-pointing triangle, an exclamation mark, or some other symbol.)
    Hiding and Unhiding window

  4. From the Hide menu, select Reveal Hidden Items. The three lines reappear, as shown in ***.
  5. Repeat step 3 to hide the three lines.

    Hiding items is independent of contracting/expanding them. Once an item has been hidden, it will stay hidden until it is revealed.

  6. Double-click the fileMenu line once to contract it, and then double-click it again to re-expand it. Note that the three hidden items are still hidden.

    If you have many things hidden, Reveal Hidden Items redisplays them all. If you want finer control, you can reveal only a few hidden items.

  7. Select the fileMenu line. From the Hide menu, select Reveal+Expand Selected (or press control+r).

    The three hidden lines reappear, returning the display to its appearance as shown in ***.

    You may hide particular instance variables, so that they do not show for any object.

  8. Select the armBlock, configureBlock , and disarmBlock lines.
  9. From the Hide menu, select Hide Selected Names. (Or, press control+n). The three lines are hidden, as in ***.
  10. Double-click the editMenu line.

    Note that the editMenu is another CwMenu, and so it has an armBlock, configureBlock, and disarmBlock. But they are hidden, because their names are hidden.

    This is convenient for reducing clutter when exploring complicated structures. It is often the case, e.g. when exploring VisualAge parts, that there are a large number of instance variables, many of which are not of interest at a given time.
    editMenu and fileMenu expanded, first three lines of each hidden

    The hidden lines may be unhidden as in step 7. However, this can only be used to reveal hidden items for objects which have already been expanded. The Snooper will continue to hide the named instance variables any time it subsequently expands an object. If you want to make the three instance variables be visible by default again, use the Edit Automatically Hidden Names selection in the Hide menu.

  11. From the Hide menu, select Edit Automatically Hidden Names. A window listing the hidden names will appear.
    Edit Hidden Names window
  12. Control-click the three names in the window to unselect them. Press OK.
  13. In the snoop window, the three instance variables have reappeared. If you expand textMenu, you will notice that they are no longer hidden.


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