The window: canvas, docks and views

Blockwright's window is the canvas in the middle with docks around it: the tools on the left, the 1× preview, the palette and the other panels on the right, and the F-key glyphs along the bottom. This page says what each part is, how to move them, and what the View menu changes.

Starting up

Blockwright opens on the start screen when it starts with no file or project named on the command line. The main window comes up when the start screen closes, whichever way it closes; closing it without picking anything leaves a new 80 × 40 canvas.

Part	What it does
New	Width (1 to 400 columns) and Height (1 to 5000 rows) of the new canvas; the 80 × 25, 80 × 40 and 80 × 50 buttons set both. iCE colours (16 background colours, no blink) is ticked to start with. The New button (`N` or `Enter`) makes the canvas.
Open...	An `.ans`, XBIN or BIN file, or a `.bwp` project (`O` or `Ctrl`+`O`).
Open Project Directory...	A project saved as a directory.
Recent	The files opened or saved lately, each with its folder beside the name; a click opens one. A file that is no longer there is greyed out and marked `missing`, with a Remove button that takes it off the list. With no recent files the list reads `Nothing opened or saved yet`.
Show at startup	Untick it to start straight in the main window.

Starting the size and colours of a canvas from the start screen is in What ANSI art is. File > Start Screen... brings the screen back at any time, and closes the open piece to do it. If the piece has unsaved changes, Blockwright asks first whether to save them; Cancel keeps the piece open and shows no start screen. Closing the screen without picking anything leaves a new, blank 80 × 40 untitled.ans, not the piece that was open. File > New (Ctrl+N) makes an 80 × 40 canvas with iCE colours on without the start screen.

The canvas

The canvas is in the middle of the window, centred on a dark background when it is smaller than the space for it. The cell cursor, a frame that shows on any colour, marks where keyboard mode types (Keyboard mode, F-key glyph sets and the pen); a click on a cell puts the cursor there.

Zoom is a whole number from 1× to 8×. A new window starts at 2×.
Pan with the scroll bars or by dragging with the middle mouse button.
Move the active layer by dragging with Alt and the left button, whichever tool is active.
The row meter, beside the canvas, shows each row's size in bytes as an IRC line: a bar as long as the row's share of the IRC byte budget, with the count on it when the row is tall enough to hold it. The bar is red when the row is over the budget and amber when cells were merged to make it fit. Hover over a row for its count against the budget. View > IRC > Row Meter hides and shows it; it starts shown.

The window's title is the file's name (untitled.ans before the first save), with a * while there are unsaved changes.

The status bar

The status bar along the bottom of the window shows, from the left:

The tool, such as Glyph ░: what the active tool is set to, for the tools that say; nothing for the others.
The glyph set, such as F-keys set 6: ░ ▒ ▓ █ ▀ ▄ ▌ ▐ ■ ·: the set the F-keys type now. Its tooltip lists the keys.
The position, such as 12, 3 | 80x40 | 8 px | 2x: the cell cursor's column and row (0, 0 is the top-left cell), the canvas's width and height in cells, the cell width in pixels (8, or 9 with 9 px letter spacing), and the zoom.

Short messages show at its left for a few seconds, such as a key whose character can't be typed (Which keys type).

Docks

Each panel around the canvas is a dock: drag its title bar to move it to another side of the window, onto another dock to share its place as a tab, or off the window to float it. Drag the separator between the canvas and a column of docks to make the column wider or narrower.

Dock	Starts	What it shows	Can close
Toolbox	Left, top	A button for each tool or group of tools in the Tools menu, with the same shortcuts.	Yes
Tool Options	Left, under the Toolbox	The settings of the active tool, under the tool's name.	Yes
Preview (1x)	Right, top	The whole canvas at 1×, as it looks at its real size.	No
Palette	Right	The 16 colours and the pen (Palette, iCE colours and 24-bit colour).	No
Layers	Right	The layer stack of the canvas.	Yes
Library	Right	The stamps and text styles of the library, as thumbnails with a category list and a search box.	No
Lint	Right, bottom, in front	The lint's findings for the canvas, one a row; activating a row puts the cell cursor on its cell.	Yes
IRC View	Right, bottom, behind Lint	The canvas as an IRC client shows the exported lines, with a red bar where a line over the budget is cut.	Yes
Glyphs	Bottom	The current F-key set as ten cells and a list of all 16 sets (Keyboard mode, F-key glyph sets and the pen).	Yes

Lint and IRC View share a place as two tabs; the one at the back updates when it comes to the front.

The Window menu has a checkable item for each dock, in the order of the table above. Untick one to close the dock, tick it to bring it back. The Preview, Palette and Library docks can't be closed: their items are always ticked and greyed out.

Window > Reset Layout puts every dock back where it starts: the left column 360 pixels wide with the Toolbox over Tool Options, the right column 360 pixels wide, and the Glyphs dock along the bottom. The canvas keeps at least 640 pixels of width; on a small screen the columns give way first.

Blockwright saves the window's size and place and the docks' layout when the window closes, and puts them back on the next start.

Views

The View menu:

Item	Shortcut	What it does
Zoom In	`Ctrl`+`=` or `Ctrl`+`+`	One step larger, up to 8×.
Zoom Out	`Ctrl`+`-`	One step smaller, down to 1×.
Actual Size	`Ctrl`+`0`	1×.
iCE Colours		Bright backgrounds as 16 colours; off, they blink (iCE colours). Saved in the file.
9 px Letter Spacing		Cells 9 pixels wide instead of 8, with the line-drawing glyphs 0xC0–0xDF joined across the ninth column as a VGA screen joined them. Saved in the file's SAUCE record.
IRC > Row Meter		Shows or hides the row meter beside the canvas.
IRC > IRC View		Shows or hides the IRC View dock.
Guides		None, 80x25, 80x40 or 80x50: a line after column 80 and after every 25, 40 or 50 rows.

The zoom changes the canvas only; the Preview dock always shows 1×. A canvas too wide or too tall to draw at 9 pixels a cell stays at 8, and the status bar says so.

Guides are drawn over the canvas while you work and never saved. They show where a piece would break across 80 × 25, 80 × 40 or 80 × 50 screens.

The View > IRC submenu also has Budget..., Fit Lines to the Budget, Pad Lines and Swap Shades, which are about IRC export.

Help on the window itself

Help > What's This? (Shift+F1) turns the pointer into a question mark: click any part of the window to be told what it does. Esc leaves the mode. A tool's button shows the tool's whole help. Help > Keyboard Shortcuts... lists every action that has a key, with a search field. Help > Manual... opens the Blockwright Manual window, which needs no network: a section for each tool in the Tools menu's order, with its key, a picture of it at work and its help, then one for each kind of layer. Its Keyboard Shortcuts... button opens the shortcuts list.

Describes Blockwright 0.1.0 (c44974c).