The Ant Visualization plugin provides a context menu entry entitled Ant Visualizations to the Eclipse Navigator and Java Package Explorer views, which is visible only when a .xml file is selected. The context menu entry has two submenus:
The facilities provided by the Ant Visualization plugin are implemented using Eclipse command actions. They may be activated through a number of mechanisms, e.g. toolbar, keyboard etc. The available command actions are as follows:
Toolbar | Keyboard | Context / Mouse | Command | Action Performed |
---|---|---|---|---|
Yes | F5 | Context | Reload | Fetches the file from disk again, and redraws |
F6 | Context | Redraw | The loaded file is re layed out. Use after targets and/or dependencies have been deleted. | |
Arrow Up/Down/Left/Right | Move Up/Down/Left/Right | Scrolls image inside viewport as required. | ||
Ctrl-Arrow Up/Down/Left/Right | Scale Up/Down/Left/Right | Adjusts image canvas size as required. | ||
Yes | Page Up/Down | Zoom In/Out | Adjusts image viewport perspective as required. | |
Enter | Double-click | Open | Opens Ant Editor on selected file positioned at selected target. | |
Del | Delete | When a target or dependency is selected, removes them from view. N.B. does not alter underlying file. | ||
D | Descriptions toggle | Show/hide all targets' description field. | ||
Yes | Linked | Subsequent opening/closing of Ant editor automatically updates Ant view. | ||
Yes | Layout | Pull-down to choose an alternate layout algorithm. | ||
X | Export image | Show standard file save dialog to export visualization to .png file. | ||
Ctrl-C | Copy image | Send image visualization to clipboard: it may then be pasted into Word, GIMP etc. | ||
Yes | Clear | Remove image visualization. |
As can be seen, the method of access to commands is not fully comprehensive and consistent, but should be acceptable in practice.
In the view window, Ant target nodes may be selected with the mouse and dragged to new locations to clarify relationships. However, their original positions will be restored in the event of a reload or redraw action. Note also multiple items may be selected via successive ctrl-click mouse operations.
The Ant Visualization plugin has a preference page, accessible via menu Window → Preferences → Ant → Visualization. On that page, the program and argument syntax are specified for the External visualization context menu entry (see above). The token string %f is substituted by the selected file's fully qualified path and filename.