These M-files are a collection of utilities for managing groups of figures. The concept of a figure group is introduced as a collection of figures which may be treated as a single group. A figure group can be tiled on the screen with any desired layout. New groups can be created or a group or can be formed from figures already created. A figure group can also be simply brought to the front of the display screen. Figure groups will work with multiple monitor displays, also known as the extended desktop, though figure groups do not span more than one monitor. Figure groups are defined and accessed by a variable which is an array of the figure handles in the group. Thus for example to close the entire figure group, use close(a) where a is the array of figure handles (i.e. [1,3,4,6,7,9]). Actions such as tiling, creating, and viewing can create figure groups. 

Two versions are provided for MAXFIG, NEWFIG, and TILEFIG in the folders "Windows" and "Platform Independent" to provide support for multiple monitors. The "Windows" versions use the root property "MonitorPositions" and thus may not work properly on all platforms and will not work for Matlab versions prior to version 7 (R14). The "Platform Independent" versions should work on earlier releases and all platforms.

INSTALLATION:
Combine or preferably copy the m-files in the root folder and the m-files in only ONE of the subfolders, "Platform Independent" or "Windows" to a new folder. For example these files might be copied to the folder "Figure_Management". Add this folder to your path in Matlab.

I would recommend trying to use the "Windows" files first as this provides the greatest flexibility in working with multiple monitors.

HELP:
Help is available in html format. Switch to the help folder and view help.html.
More details are available in the comments field of each m-file.

Feel free to email me with your comments and/or suggestions. The files were developed in a Windows environment, so your experience on other platforms would be useful. In particular it would be useful to know whether the root property "MonitorPositions" behaves the same on other platforms (see GETMONDIM.M).

mhrovat@email.com

Acknowledgements:
MAXFIG inspired by MAXFIGSIZE by Duane Hanselman.
TILEFIG inspired by TILEFIGS by Charles Plum.
Html HELP was created with initial help files generated by WG_PUBLISH by Wolfgang Garn.
For a collection of utilities for working with cascaded folders, see "Useful Trivial Graphics Utilities" by Scott Hirsch.