Shell

resources/layouts/main.xml is the process-lifetime root. It never closes. One host window is sized to visible chrome (not the whole desktop). Grids and zones are regions on that surface, not extra windows.

Piece	XML	Role
Root page	main (master="true")	Dock Main / Hide and Sleep zones, plus drawer and quit grids
Drawer grid	drawer	Keyboard, Speak, Mouse, Gamepad, Assist, More, Settings, Close All, Pause dwell, Quit
Quit grid	quit	Yes exits; No returns to the drawer

Drawer (layer 2) and quit (layer 3) start hidden; the page opens on layer 1. Main shows the drawer (ShowLayers 2); Hide returns to layer 1; Quit switches to layers 1,3. Opening Keyboard / Speak / Mouse / Gamepad / Assist / Settings / More attaches that page on the same host, then the drawer auto-collapses (unless you turned that off).

• Main is shown only while no master grid is up. Dwell it to grow the drawer from the bottom.
• Sleep stays available while the drawer is open. Shell zones and grids paint and hit above other boards.
• Rescue (next to Sleep) stops loops, releases keys, turns off assist tools, closes pages, and docks. Use it when a board or sticky input has you stuck.
• Gaze on the drawer or the dock chips counts as using the shell, so the drawer idle timer does not fire while you look at Sleep.
• The host window stays above the Windows taskbar.

First session

1. Start Gazer. A splash tour walks the dock (Settings → Setup → Play tour to replay). Unless start docked is on, the drawer opens after the tour.
2. Dwell a cell until progress completes.
3. Open Keyboard, Speak, Mouse, Gamepad, Assist, or Settings as extra pages. They stay up after the drawer collapses.
4. Hide hides the drawer. Close All closes other pages and then collapses.
5. Tray: show layout (raise host), show head-pose preview, quit.

Tray

The tray icon owns the process:

• Show layout — raise the host window
• Head-pose preview — 3D head model from the tracker (openPreview)
• Page editor
• Quit

Closing overlay pages does not exit. quitApp (Quit → Yes) does.

If Gazer freezes

The installed copy starts a tiny guard (Gazer.exe --guard) at logon. If the host hangs, launching Gazer again (or the Pause key) kills the hung process and brings a new one up. After three crashes in two minutes the guard shows Restart / Mouse pointer / Quit. A second Gazer.exe --action waits for an ACK; if the host does not answer, that second process takes over.

UAC, the lock screen, and Ctrl+Alt+Del sit on a Secure Desktop Gazer cannot draw on. Inject pauses until you return. Exclusive-mode fullscreen games can cover Gazer until they yield (borderless windowed is the reliable setting); the guard can offer Show desktop.

Hardware backups: a USB switch or Xbox Adaptive Controller mapped to launch Gazer.exe, or Windows Eye Control.

Shipped pages

Catalog id = filename stem under resources/layouts/. User copies in %AppData%\Gazer\layouts override the same id.

Id	Kind
main	Root dock + drawer + quit
main_settings / main_settings_*	Settings hub and tabs (Dwell, Zoom, Place, Gaze, Head, Speak, Theme, Setup). Done closes settings.
compose	Gaze composer (phrase, chips, soundboard, keyboard)
example_keyboard	Compact keyboard (layers: letters, shift, symbols, symbols+shift)
example_mouse	Mouse pad
example_gamepad	Xbox-layout virtual pad (ViGEm)
example_assist	Assist tools
qwerty_main	Full QWERTY + edge strips
uw_qwerty	Wide QWERTY

OpenPage / ClosePage / CloseAllPages / CloseOtherPages / TogglePage attach or remove a Page. ShowLayers sets which grid/zone layers are visible on a page. Closing a page removes all of its elements with it.

Idle auto-close: boards with autoClose="true" dismiss after Settings layoutAutoCloseIdleMs with no dwell. The master root never destroys itself. suspendDwell stops the idle timer; resumeDwell restarts it from zero.