GridMove/packing/GridMoveHelp_EN.txt

GridMove v1.19.x
Welcome to the GridMove help file.
This file contains all the information you need about this program.
Please go to http://jgpaiva.donationcoder.com/gridmove.html for more
information about gridmove and for the latest releases.
If you have any doubt, don't think twice, just to go by its forum 
section:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=3824 


Index:
  1 - (line  30) Introduction
  2 - (line  44) Interaction
    2.1 - LButton Drag
    2.2 - Middle Mouse Button Drag 
    2.3 - Edge Drag 
  3 - (line  73) Templates
    3.1 - Selecting a grid
    3.2 - Grid elements
    3.3 - Cicling Through Grids
  4 - (line 117) Keyboard Hotkeys
    4.1 - The Command mode
    4.2 - FastMove
  5 - (line 122) Options
  6 - (line 151) Creating custom grids
    6.1 - Basic Custom Grids
    6.2 - Inserting Special Grid elements 
  7 - (line 230) Credits

**********************************************************************
   1 - Introduction

  GridMove is a program destined at making windows management easier.
  It helps you with this task by defining a layout similar to a grid
on your desktop, to which you can easily snap windows. 
  This program comes bundled with some predifined grid templates 
(which should be about enought for everyone), but also has ways of 
creating your own grid or using other people's grids.
  While this file is close to complete, don't forget to visit
gridmove's forum topic where you can discuss upcoming features, or
find better explanations for the workings of the program.  


**********************************************************************
  2 - Interaction

  This section will show you how to interact with the program, i.e.
how to make the windows snap to the grid.
  The whole concept of GridMove revolves around the drop-zone mode.
This is when the grid is up and you can select the places where to
snap the active window. Just hover over the area you'd like to
activate and drop the window. 
  There are 3 ways to go into drop zone mode.
  
  2.1 - LButton Drag
  This method consists of dragging the window by its title. When you
drag a window by a place close to the left on its titlebar (the 
default is a rectangle 100 pixels wide, but it can be customized), 
you'll go into drop zone mode. 

  2.2 - MButton Drag
  This method consists of dragging a window using the middle mouse
button.
  It's that simple, just press the middle mouse button, and drag the
window. This will make the drop zone come up, and you can drop the
window where you like.

  2.3 - Edge Drag
  This method consists of grabbing a window by it's title, dragging
it to the edge of the screen and keeping it there for a (customizable) 
period of time. This will take you to drop zone mode. 

**********************************************************************
  3 - Templates
  
  3.1 - Selecting a grid
  Now that you know how to use the basics of the program, you're ready
to learn it's best potentials. If you've never changed any option of
the program, you should be using a simple grid made out of 3 parts.
That's not very useful, right?
  But GridMove currently comes packed with 6 default grids. To select
any of them, just right click it's tray icon and select "templates"
from the menu .
  Of course, if you're bored with the default grids, you can always
create you're own or use other people's grids. This is possible
because grids can be stored in .grid files and loaded through the
"browse" option on the templates menu. Also, if the .grid files are
placed in the Grids folder, they are loaded at the start of the
script, and will be displayed in the templates menu. 

  3.2 - Grid elements 
  While the first 4 grids are quite simple, the "edge grid" has some
special elements that are worth mentioning. If you hover over the grid
element on the top (6), you'll notice that it doesn't work like the
other elements do. That's because it is used to maximize vertically a
window. The element on the left of the screen (7) has a similar
behaviour: it maximizes horizontally. On the middle of the screen,
below the element 5, there's "on top", "maximize" and "last size".
While "on top" and maximize are quite straight-forward (the first
toggled the "on top" state of a window and the later maximizes it),
the "last size" is a special element. It's used to make the window
be moved to the size it had before being moved by gridmove. This is 
specially useful if you snapped a window inadvertedly and wanted to 
get back to the previous state.

  3.3 - Cicling Through Grids
  Most probably, you'd like to use parts of 2 or more grids. You can
acomplish this in 2 ways: either by creating your own grid (see
section 6) or by switching constantly through them.
  To switch the grid you're currently using, you could right-click the
tray icon and select another one from the templates menu, but this
isn't very practical. So, you can use the fast switch method. Just
right-click when on drop zone mode, and GridMove will switch to the
next grid on it's list. (see section 5 for info on how to change the
list). This is also a practical way to avoid having a cluttered grid!

**********************************************************************
  4 - Keyboard Hotkeys

  The following hotkeys can be configured through the tray menu -> 
hotkeys.

  4.1 - The command mode
  By pressing WIN+G (g for Grid/GridMove), you'll make GridMove go into
Command mode. The grid will come up, and you'll have a small box in
the middle of the screen. GridMove will now wait for you to press
something. If you press esc, it'll quit Command mode.
  Command mode is very useful for moving a window somewhere real fast,
or for cicling grids using the keyboard. 
  If you press a number, the window will be moved to the corresponding
grid part.
  If you press N GridMove will switch to the next grid on its list.
  If you press M, the window's maximize state will be toggled.
  If you press 0, the window will be minimized.  
  If you press R, the script will be reloaded.

  4.2 - FastMove
  FastMove is a faster alternative to Command mode.
  /*incomplete*/


***********************************************************************
  5 - Options

  While being a quite simple program, GridMove features quite a few
options. These can be reached by right-clicking the tray icon and
selecting the sub-menu "options".
  In this menu, there are 8 items.
  "Show Grid" is self-explanatory. If this option is active, the grid
is shown when on drop zone mode, if it's inactive, the grid isn't show.
  "Show Numbers On Grid" is also self-explanatory.
  The next three options toggle the use of the 3 interaction methods.
If one isn't active, the corresponding method can't be used.
(sometimes is necessary to turn the MButton drag method off, since
some programs use the Middle Mouse Button for other actions, and
GridMove might interfeer).
  The "Set Edge Time" option asks you to input a value which has to be
in miliseconds and represents the time the cursor needs to rest in the
edge of the screen for the grid to come up, when using the edge drag
method. (see section 2.3 for more info).
  The "Set Title Size" option asks you to input a numeric value, which
represents the number of pixels that will be considered as the
width of the activation rectangle for the LButton Drag. (see section
2.1).
  The "Set Grid Order" option allows you to change the list of grids
that will be used when cicling through templates. (see section 3.3)
This list is a comma-separated value, which means you need to input
several names of grids separated by commas (whithout spaces around
commas). You can use the names of the default templates
(mentioned at the dialog), or the path for .grid files.

***********************************************************************
  6 - Creating Custom Grids

  6.1 - Basic Custom Grids
  For those that aren't happy with the default templates, and want to
improve their experience with the program, there's the option of doing
their own grid.
  As mentioned earlier, the custom grids are made out of files with
the .grid extension. The syntax of these files is very similar to a
.ini file. After it's first run, gridmove unpacks some grids to it's
main directory, and those can be altered and loaded in the program. 
  The first section, [Groups] only contains one key: NumberOfGroups.
This key represets the number of elements that the file contains.
  After that section, there's one section for each grid element. The
section is identified by a number, and the numbers must start in 1 and
to all the way to the number in the NumberOfGroups key.
  In each numbered group, there's 8 keys, divided into 2 groups.
  The Trigger group (TriggerTop, TriggerLeft, TriggerBottom and
TriggerRight) represent the coordinates of the lines that will be
drawn in the screen when the program is in Drop Zone Mode.
  The Grid group represents the coordinates to where the window will
be moved.
  If you look at the bundled .grid files, you'll see that some words
appear on the fields mentioned earlier. These are variables. Since a
.grid file should be able to be shared, it is supposed to not be
dependable of the size of the screen. So, it's possible to use such
variables as [Monitor1Top], which represents the coordinate top of the
first monitor. There are several variables which can be used. Here's
the list:

  [Monitor1Top]
  [Monitor1Left]
  [Monitor1Bottom]
  [Monitor1Right]
  [Monitor1Width]
  [Monitor1Height] 
  The 6 variables above represent the workable area of the screen of
the first monitor. This means that if you have the taskbar at the
bottom of the screen, it won't consider that area as part of the
screen. If you don't want it to work like that, look at the following
variables:

  
  [MonitorReal1Top]
  [MonitorReal1Left]
  [MonitorReal1Bottom]
  [MonitorReal1Right]
  [MonitorReal1Width]
  [MonitorReal1Height] 
  These variables are similar to the ones above, but represent the
whole area of the first screen, including the taskbar and other
similar dockable objects.

  But GridMove has support for multi-monitor. This means that the
grids can also be used in monitors other than the first. This is
obtained by replacing 1 with the number of any other monitor. Also
don't worry if you use a grid that is created for multiple monitors on
a single monitor layout, GridMove will ignore the parts that are
supposed to appear on non-existant monitors.

  6.2 - Inserting Special grid elements
  As mentioned in section 3.2, there are some special grid elemets
that have effects on your windows other than moving them around. These
can also be included on a custom grid.
  If you want to create a grid element that maximizes vertically, like
edge grid's 6th element, set GridTop to [Monitor1Top] and GridBottom
to [Monitor1Bottom], so that the window will be Maximized vertically,
and then set GridLeft and GridRight to "WindowWidth" (without the
quotes), so that the window's width will be unchanged. To have the
Horizontal Maximization, it's a similar process. Set GridTop and
GridBottom to "WindowHeight" (without the quotes), GridLeft to
[Monitor1Left] and GridRight to [Monitor1Right].
  To have the OnTop, the Maximize or the Restore elements, it's even
simpler: just set all the Grid keys to "AlwaysOnTop", "Maximize" or
"Restore", respectively.


***********************************************************************
  7 - Credits
  This program is part of the DonationCoder.com site, and i have to
thank Mouser for getting me the webspace for it, and for setting up
such a great site which lead to the making of this program.
  The creator of the bright original idea was Nudone, to witch i thank
very much, since he invented most of the concepts, helped in all the
phases of development, and along with Mouser, was very patient with
all the testing and bug fixing.
  I'm very glad the people at DonationCoder.com helped me in making
this program, it sure came out fantastic, and it's good to know that
it is useful to it's users!
  Thank you!!