3.4. Output Window

The Output Window displays the information related to the process of SCE, such as logged status, diagnostic and error output of background commands. The Output Window is displayed in Section 3.4. The Output Window contains three tabs: Compile, Refinement and Shell. The Compile tab displays the log messages generated during preprocessing and parsing of SpecC code when opening, loading and importing design files. The Refinement tab displays the log messages generated by the command line tools spawned by the main application GUI during design refinement. Finally, the Shell tab contains an instance of the interactive SCE shell interpreter (see Section 2.2.1).

The Output Window is mainly for informational purposes and doesn't contain any button that users can click. Only the Shell tab allows to enter SCE commands interactively to be executed by the embedded scripting interpreter. In addition, all tabs support a context menu through which the user can save the contents of the tab to a file, cut, copy and paste text between a tab and other applications, toggle line wrapping, and clear or completely reset the tab. Furthermore, the Shell tab supports history substitution of previously entered commands via Undo and Redo context menu entries.

The Output Window can be detached or docked. Users can drag the window (by its title bar or handle) to the desired place. If the Output Window is detached, it can be floating and displayed anywhere on the desktop. If the Output Window is docked, it has to be attached to any of the borders of the Main Window.