Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials /

Chapter 4 - Window Manager

About the Window Manager

The Window Manager provides a complete set of routines for creating, moving, resizing, and otherwise manipulating windows. It also provides lower-level support by managing the layering of windows on the desktop and by alerting your application to desktop changes that affect its windows. Your application and the Window Manager work together to provide the user with a consistent window interface.

When, for example, the user presses the mouse button while the cursor is in the drag region of a window's title bar, you can call the DragWindow procedure, which moves a dotted outline of the window around the screen in response to mouse movements. When the user releases the mouse button, DragWindow calls the MoveWindow procedure, which redraws the window in its new location. If part or all of an inactive window belonging to your application is exposed by the move, the Window Manager triggers an update event that tells your application to redraw the exposed region.

Similarly, if the user clicks in an inactive window, you can call the SelectWindow procedure. SelectWindow adjusts the window highlighting and layering and
also generates activate events that tell your application which windows to activate
and deactivate.

The Window Manager has built-in support for the nine basic window types described in "Types of Windows" beginning on page 4-7. When you are using one of these window types, the Window Manager draws the window's frame, determines what region of the window the cursor is in, calculates the window's structure and content regions, draws the window's size box, draws the window's close box and zoom box, and performs any special initialization or disposal tasks. If necessary, you can write your own window definition function to handle other types of windows.

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Subtopics

Graphics Ports

Window Records

Color Windows

Events in Windows