Help needed: palette out of reach

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betalogue
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Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by betalogue »

My display prefs were reset yesterday as part of a troubleshooting procedure and now one of my NWP palettes is stuck with its title bar beyond the visible area of the screen it is on. This means that I can no longer move it, because the title bar is out of reach! (I can resize it with the bottom-right corner, but that doesn't help.)

How do I get NWP to move the palette back to a location where I can grab the title bar and do what I want to do with it?

Quitting and relaunching NWP doesn't help. Changing the resolution of the display that the palette is stuck on doesn't help. I can see more of it, but the title bar is still out of reach. The palette can only be moved via its title bar as far as I can tell, and I cannot bring the title bar back into view!

TIA
Vanceone
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Joined: 2013-05-03 07:06:31

Re: Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by Vanceone »

Interesting little problem. There appears to be no way to programmically grab it.

So:

1) try minimizing and unminimizing Nisus Writer Pro to the dock. Upon bringing it back it may redraw in a valid position.

2) Close all of your other floating palettes. Then, in the Window:Palettes menu, click off "Show floating palettes". You can try clicking it back on, see if it redraws in a usable position. If not, make sure it's off then grab another copy of the palette and make it float out of the palette bar. It's possible you'll have to add another copy of the palette in the "customize Palette Dock" dialog to get things going right.

Not ideal, but it will work.
And you may have the nonworking palette still there,but you'll have another usable copy of the palette
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martin
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Re: Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by martin »

I'm sorry you're having trouble with an out of view palette. This is something Nisus Writer shouldn't allow, and I'm surprised to hear this:
betalogue wrote: 2018-12-07 06:46:24 Quitting and relaunching NWP doesn't help.
I consider that a bug and we'll take a look. Nisus Writer should force the palettes to be accessible on screen during relaunch.

As to what you can do to fix this, you'll need to manually delete or edit a preference file on disk. You'll want to find a file called "palettes.plist" that's stored in whichever folder you've set for your sync settings location (in Nisus Writer's General preferences). Once you've found the file you have two potential solutions:

1. Quit Nisus Writer, delete the palettes file, and then relaunch the app. This will completely reset your palettes, losing all settings and customizations.
2. Quit Nisus Writer, open the palettes file for editing, excise the unwanted palette or its incorrect positioning, and then relaunch the app.

Option #2 is nicer because it preserves your other palette customizations, but it's more complicated. If you're comfortable doing that, you'll want to find a key in the plist called "floatingArea". That dict will have an entry "clumps". You'll want to look through that clumps array for the <dict> that represents the misbehaving palette and delete it.

I hope that helps. Please us know if you have any questions or further troubles.
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martin
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Re: Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by martin »

I’m sorry but my first reply gave bad and incomplete advice. In diagnosing the problem where Nisus Writer fails to ensure palettes are on screen, I realized that the palette origins are stored separately in a local settings file that is NOT in the sync settings folder. The reason is that users might have Macs with different screen sizes.

In addition to clearing out the bad entry in the “palettes.plist” file, you’ll also need to do this:

1. Quit Nisus Writer.
2. Delete the file with the following path:

Code: Select all

~/Library/Containers/com.nisus.NisusWriter/Data/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer Pro/Settings/Local/palettes.plist
3. Relaunch Nisus Writer.

That should reset your palette positions.
betalogue
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Re: Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by betalogue »

Thanks Martin. Deleting this one:

~/Library/Containers/com.nisus.NisusWriter/Data/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer Pro/Settings/Local/palettes.plist

and editing this one:

~/Library/Containers/com.nisus.NisusWriter/Data/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer Pro/Settings/palettes.plist

to remove the item for the Styles palette under floating area > clumps did the trick (without losing all my other palette customizations, which deleting the file would have done).

I agree with you that this scenario shouldn't happen :). I had to clear my display prefs as part of an unrelated troubleshooting procedure and NWP relaunched automatically before I had a chance to readjust the display settings. After that, there was nothing I could do with the display settings to force the title bar of palette to move back to a visible area. That's how it happened.

(I would have been able to move the palette if it had been possible to grab it from its edges rather than by the title bar, but that does not seem to be possible. In any case, it would have been a workaround and not a fix.)

Pierre
Nick Sloan
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Re: Help needed: palette out of reach

Post by Nick Sloan »

I had an issue with palettes when I first ran version 3: my floating palettes (same selection, same arrangement as V2) were greyed and it was impossible to interact with them. This problem persisted through restarts of the app (and Mac).

The solution was to choose Window > Palettes > Show Floating Palettes. The greyed palettes disappeared and new active ones replaced them.
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