RM Window Focus

[St1ngr4y]

Just looking at the title, a lot of people will wonder what on earth I am going on about. It's just that there are a few minor niggling faults which, in themselves, are trivial compared with other faults, but when you encounter a lot of them in a RM session, can be most annoying. I thought I would describe one or two of these here (a) to see if anyone else has noticed them and (b) whether you think them important enough to report through the system, detracting HRMS from their efforts with more important things.

1. I have created lierally dozens of programs to run my trains, and a list of these appears in the dropdown combo box at the top of the RM main screen. There are so many that I need to use the scroll bar on this list to locate the program I want to run. More often than not, during the process of scrolling down the list, the dropdown list will close up, and I have to start again. The same thing happens when I use a similar list inside the program editor. At first I thought it was because I was allowing the mouse cursor to move off the scrollbar, but after careful experimentation I now know that this is not the case. It's as if RM has decided that the main window needs to be refreshed, and in doing so causes the dropdown list to close.

2. When editing a program, quite often I use the "clock" button at the bottom of the screen to add or subtract a number of seconds to/from a block of instructions. To do this, you select the first line of the block of instructions, then press the button with the clock on it. This opens up a new, very samll window at the top left corner of the monitor screen. In here you enter the number of seconds to change the timings and whether you want to add or subtract (move time forward or backward), then you press a tick button in this small window to carry out the change. More often than not, as well as this small window closing, the RM editor window disappears from view. It hasn't closed - it is just that the main window which shows your layout, has taken the "Focus" and the program editor window has moved behind it.

These are the two that happen to me the most, and slow me down the most. Has anyone encountered the same or similar? Should they be reported?

Ray

[RB51]

You are one of the most prolific programming RM'ers Ray and I would hazard a guess that it is unlikely that many of us will have come across this set of problems. It sounds as though it is an error and I would think it best to log it with HRMS. It doesn't necessarily have to have a high priority. R-

[AncientMariner]

Window focus is a bit of a thorny problem in RM. The one which always catches me is the double header window popping under the loco control windows, I can follow the logic, but the windows on top of the double header cannot be moved until the double header is closed, which is under the top ones ... catch 22. In fact a bit of juggling with the lower window will expose the tick/cross and it can be closed. But it still catches me.

[PJ_model_trains]

Hello Ray

 

First if I may say so, you are far ahead than most of us with programs so you may find things some of us have not got to yet.  

 

1 - I have about 50 items in the program drop down list. I have just spent 4-5 minutes scrolling the drop down menu and have no issues with it closing up or similar. Could it be something on your computer that is refreshing the screen Ray?  Do you have another PC or aptop you could move to to test it?

 

2 - I have not got to this stage yet, could this be the same as above or, did you touch the main screen at any time which would bring it to the front. I am sure you would have know if you had.

 

Sorry I cannot be of more help with this.

 

PJ

[MetmanUK]

I always find the loco window 'always on top' to be most annoying.  I think it very presumptious that any software designer should think their window is more important than any other window you wish to display.  I have found it useful to display a pdf of the loco decoder settings alongside the loco windows but Hornby make it very difficult.

[Teedoubleudee]

I always find the loco window 'always on top' to be most annoying.  I think it very presumptious that any software designer should think their window is more important than any other window you wish to display.  I have found it useful to display a pdf of the loco decoder settings alongside the loco windows but Hornby make it very difficult.

 

I've had exactly the same problem today. Having to use Alt+Tab to focus on the pdf file, then the loco and cv windows are centre stage so you have to move them constantly out the way to read the pdf then drag them back to update them - frustrating.

[St1ngr4y]

Another window "funny" which I had a couple of times recently, was when reading loco cv's. On another thread in the Hornby DCC section, there is discussion of a decoder called MyLocoSound. This isn't present in the RM database of decoders, so if you ask RM to read a block of cv's, and one or two of these aren't supported by this decoder, RM displays a message box to tell you it can't read a particular cv, and asks you if you want to carry on reading cv's. I find that if you answer with the green tick, it tries to read the next cv, but the decoder cv's window disappears to the back and you need to use Alt+Tab to get it back in focus.

Ray