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Closing the tooldrawer

Posted: 2004-07-10 18:12:53
by cchapin
Under certain circumstances, when I close the tooldrawer, the document window jumps to the right. (The tooldrawer, incidentally, appears on the right. I imagine the document window would jump left if the tooldrawer were on that side.) I think the document window is keeping itself centered on the same spot.

This happens when the document window opens with the tooldrawer already open. It doesn't happen if I open it later. (I'm using version 1.1.2 of NWE, but the same thing happened under 1.1.1.) I'm new to the Macintosh world, so for all I know, this is standard behavior in OS X. (I'm using Panther 10.3.4, but the same thing happened under 10.3.3.)

It's not a big deal, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.

On the subject of the tooldrawer, it would be nice to be able to set its default state: open, closed or (as at present) last position.

Jump To The Right

Posted: 2004-07-14 15:10:57
by dshan
As far as I'm aware this is deliberate, and I for one like it working this way. I often have two docs open at once in NWX (and I don't want their windows overlapping) but only the left one needs to have the tool drawer open (e.g. right one is an outline for the left one). I load the right window doc first, close it's tooldraw (which shifts it to the right of the screen) thus giving me enough space on the left to open the other doc with it's drawer open and not have it overlap the first document.

I do wish that NWX would remember the tooldrawer setting for each document when it's closed or NWX is quit however so I didn't have to keep closing the tooldrawer for the right window document after loading it and then open the drawer for the left window document after loading it. And sometimes it doesn't jump the full tooldrawer width to the right when the drawer is closed, leaving a gap between the right side of the window and the screen edge. Other times it does leap all the way, I'm not sure why.

Posted: 2004-07-14 15:34:24
by charles
Hi:

When you first open a Nisus Writer Express document is has a certain window size. If it then tries to open the tooldrawer and there is no space between the window and the edge of the screen for the tooldrawer, it will move the window to make room. If the window is too big to simply move it, it will also resize the window.

The application saves the original location and size of the window though so that if you close the tooldrawer again it will return its original size and location UNLESS you have moved or resized the window since opening the tooldrawer.

When you open a document and it opens the tooldrawer right away, this same thing happens, which is why you see the jumping some times. The intention is to try to maintain your state the way you set it up as much as possible. Sometimes however, this behavior can do things in a way that seem less than obvious though.

The best way to work around this is to open a new document, close the drawer and then resize and position the window so there is enough space for the tooldrawer. Then reopen the tooldrawer and then close the document. This should save your window size and location so that it will not jump around anymore.

I like your ideas of both saving the tooldrawer state on a per document basis and setting a state for new documents. I will add this to our list of things to do!

Cheers,
-Charles

Posted: 2004-07-14 20:16:08
by cchapin
charles wrote:I like your ideas of both saving the tooldrawer state on a per document basis and setting a state for new documents. I will add this to our list of things to do!
If you can work those two things in, dshan and I should both be happy. The jumping window is a very minor peeve on my part, but I thought it was worth asking about. Thanks for the explanation of the behavior's rationale and the suggestions for dealing with it.

--Craig

Posted: 2004-08-13 01:06:50
by marc
cchapin wrote:
charles wrote:I like your ideas of both saving the tooldrawer state on a per document basis and setting a state for new documents. I will add this to our list of things to do!
If you can work those two things in, dshan and I should both be happy. The jumping window is a very minor peeve on my part, but I thought it was worth asking about.
Likewise, I'm really happy to hear this; both of these were issues on my wish list, so there's a few more ticks! :)

I would also add that it could be good to have saved states on a per document basis, and by document type, for the toolbar, and page view, as well.

Why? I like the ability to zoom a doc (in page view), by resizing the window, whereas at other times, zooming the text in draft view is more convienient (i.e. when space is at a premium, or when the page wrap is not important.)

I have made NWE my default text reader, and while I want the toolbar, and drawer when I'm editing, I don't want these when I'm simply reading a file, such as 'read me' docs, or plain text files.

One way to achieve this might be to remember the last view used, for a given file type, so that the setting is basically transparent, although another, more explicit approach might be 'saved views'; view settings that could be saved to the 'View' menu, and selected at will, to change multiple view-related settings in one go..?

Posted: 2004-08-13 18:50:32
by charles
Hi:

There is now a preference in 2.0 for you to specify if new documents should have their tooldrawer open, closed, or the same as your most recent setting (which is the behavior in 1.x). Saving of the tooldrawer state with a file will not make it into 2.0, unfortunately.

However, 2.0 WILL save your window size and zoom settings.

-Charles

Posted: 2004-08-13 19:25:54
by cchapin
I didn't expect that for 2.0. Thanks for squeezing that in so quickly!

--Craig