saving parts with multiple monitors

[waynej]

We are on VA 8.0.0, developing on Windows XP mostly.

I discovered a problem in that I couldn't visual edit (#abtBrowse) several of our visual classes. Then a teammate pointed out the window is kind of stuck minimized in the task bar, and you can select it and click Maximize and then see it. But a person unfamiliar with this workaround might panic as I had.

We now believe what happened is that team members using PCs with two monitors saved the part on their secondary monitor. When they re-open the part, it appears on their second monitor. But for me with one monitor, the window comes up minimized.

I thought others out there might hit the problem, so posted here. Not sure if Instantiations could fix it.

[jtuchel]

Wayne,

the same problem arises if you open a part which has been edited and saved by somebody with a much bigger monitor than you have. You'll get a composition editor that's much bigger than your screen...

There should be a little bit more logic in opening the editors that checks whether the saved dimensions and screen number are possible on the current machine and resizes the window accordingly.

Joachim

[TriSebastian]

Hi!

I think totaly objects have a goodies for this on their site. Maybe this could be a codebase for an own fix.

Sebastian

[Ralf]

Hmm, can you not use Alt+Space to move or change size of the "outrunning" window?

[jtuchel]

Ralf,

you sure could. But you always are faced with surprising behaviour when you open a part and "nothing happens". I'd prefer the IDE to handle that for me whenever it is obvious that my screen resolution and/or hardware setup (number of monitors) is insufficient.

I also must admit that I don't have alt+space in my mental toolbox .

Taking a little detour:
Most of this stuff would go away in an environment like Eclipse. If everything was a frame within a perspective, the perspective would be the context for display. There'd be no sense in saving a window size if everything just took the space that it was assigned by an inidividual context. I am not saying I want Eclipse for Smalltalk, but I think most Smalltalks should adapt some of the GUI behaviour of eclipse. There is, for example, not necessarily a need for every single Browser to bring its own navigation component (Hierarchy, Application, Senders/Implementers), a central, context-aware navigation pane that switches its context every time an editor is selected, would be a much better thing, especially if it provided options like a history and back/forward buttons. This could both save real estate and improve developer productivity.
Instantiations has (had) the perfect set of knowlegde to work in this field, since they've built some top of the breed Eclipse plugins...

Joachim