Layouts easily misadjust themselves

[ErikJon]

.
Hello, again.

1. I have had lots of difficulty keeping my layouts fixed and stable. I can them and re-select them from the menu, but, in the meantime, I often find myself re-sizing a window accidentally, or else dragging a window accidentally, and then it becomes hard to put it back just the way I had it. Sometimes I wish that they would simply lock in place. (No screenshot available, as this happens randomly, but often.)

2. Sometimes the program itself opens with my preset layout slightly skewed, such as with some windows in the correct position but others very narrow, leaving a blank gray space in between the two, in which case I have to re-adjust one or more of the windows again, or else minimize it once and maximize it again, to correct it. (No screenshot available, but one of the other screenshots below shows the same result)

3. Using Bible search often skews my layout also, in any of three ways:

A. Sometimes Bible search view completely obliterates my open Bible-view window. (see screenshot)
B. Sometimes it simply skews my layout. (see screenshot)
C. Oftentimes it stretches the preset width of my Bookview windows OR Bibleview windows, instead of conforming to the width already open. (see screenshot)

Below you will see screenshots of "BEFORE" and "AFTER." (i.e., BEFORE clicking on the Bible-search icon and AFTER clicking.) I have uploaded them in order, to illustrate the last three problems mentioned above, but they may not appear in this post in the correct order.

Anyway, my suggestions are these:

1. In a future release, allow different types of user-defined layout "locks", such as these:

A. A lock that could be applied to the user's layout in such a way that windows could be adjusted vertically and horizontally, but never dragged to another part of the screen (such as by stray mouse movements).

B. A lock that would allow windows to be adjusted by buttons, settings, and presets, but not manually in any way. In other words, they could maximize and minimize, locally and globally, open and close, scroll, cascade, tile, etc., but only in response to selections made with the mouse, and not in response to dragging or re-sizing.

2. Regarding Bible-search view, I suggest this: Give 39 lashes to the Bible-search window, until it learns to conform to the active currently-open layouts, rather than allow it to continue to move and squeeze and abuse and terrorize those innocent windows that are already open within preset layouts. (Otherwise you could simply fix the bug, so that Bible-search view will no longer move other windows but merely insert itself within the confines of open windows. Personally, I prefer the 39 lashes)

[JG]

@Costas,

Is it possible to make the two side panels "elastic" so that they resize when the whole program view is being resized width-wise. Currently only top and middle panels do this. It seems to me that this would cure the above issue at the same time.

0001 Jon theWord_2015-12-17_162602.png (22.91 KiB) Viewed 2760 times

[csterg]

2. Regarding Bible-search view, I suggest this: Give 39 lashes to the Bible-search window, until it learns to conform to the active currently-open layouts, rather than allow it to continue to move and squeeze and abuse and terrorize those innocent windows that are already open within preset layouts. (Otherwise you could simply fix the bug, so that Bible-search view will no longer move other windows but merely insert itself within the confines of open windows. Personally, I prefer the 39 lashes)

LOL!

Admission 1: the layout management in theWord is far from perfect
Admission 2: the layout management of theWord is not bad
Admission 3: it is close too impossible to make everything work 'as expected'.

A human eye can very easily look at a layout, and depending on the mood, time of day and need, decide what the best place and size of a new Search window would be: unfortunately, it's not as 'intuitive' for an algorithm. For example, would you prefer a view to save it's previous size and re-demand it when it re-opens or not? Why do you expect a Search view to conform to the current width of the column it docks, instead of forcing the column width to it's previous size? This is just an example of how it is difficult to find the 'best' layout each time.

Concerning the 'gray' areas: i have seen this myself and have not been able to repeat or fix it, sorry. I know it gets fixed with a window resize
Costas

[JG]

A human eye can very easily look at a layout, and depending on the mood, time of day and need, decide what the best place and size of a new Search window would be: unfortunately, it's not as 'intuitive' for an algorithm. For example, would you prefer a view to save it's previous size and re-demand it when it re-opens or not? Why do you expect a Search view to conform to the current width of the column it docks, instead of forcing the column width to it's previous size? This is just an example of how it is difficult to find the 'best' layout each time.

There is currently dual behavior. It depends if you have an "elastic" panel as the one that the search window opens into. So in the Panel SS above, Erik has the panel on the left (marked red) and the centre panel. His search window is on a "fixed" panel and so when the panel is shrunk and the search window opened it forces its size on that panel.
Now try making a new layout with the centre "elastic" panel so it appears at the left, now the behavior is that a search window conforms to that panel (elastic) and shrinks to fit if the view has been reduced in the meantime.

[NB, fixed and elastic, are just my descriptions, and not technical terms. But there must be a setting?]

[ErikJon]

.
Yes, and frankly, the elasticity of the windows is one of the most useful features, when it works.

I have been using eSword a bit lately (only because some premium commentaries were not available for TheWord), and although TheWord is much more versatile, I cannot deny that the push-pin docking feature in eSword--coupled with the instant elasticity of all undocked open windows--is a truly wonderful help, and I have often wished that TheWord would simply adopt that push-pin dockability feature, as well.

The alternative in TheWord is to save and re-open "layouts," back and forth (which also takes longer when one has many modules installed) whereas with the push-pin instant docking, the user can immediately switch from a three-column layout to a two-column layout, instantly hide his notes, his dictionary, or whatever, in order to concentrate on only two columns of text.

In fact, yesterday I was using TheWord with a three-column layout, and when I closed the center column, I was again faced with a blank gray space in the center, in its place, as none of the open windows came together to fill the new void. (see new screenshot) I think you could easily repeat this phenomenon, as it happens to me every time that I have my layout as pictured in the screenshot.

True, it's not the end of the world, but the ability to shift the layout so instantly is a great help when working on a text.
.

[ErikJon]

.
Often when I click the "new bookview window" icon, my layout gets thrown off. See sceenshot below.
.

[ErikJon]

.
Today I noticed that, while I click on the Bible search view icon, my left column expands beyond the limit that I had set, but if I click the Book search view icon, the right column does the same, but only to the right column. All of this is when displaying three columns of windows on the screen. Consequently, the issue is not just with the new-bookview-window icon, nor just with Bible search view, as I had mistakenly concluded above, but also with Book search view.
.

[csterg]

Erik,
thank you for reporting these issues, but unfortunately I cannot do much about it.
The view layout system of theWord is old and does not offer the featrues of more modern such frameworks (such as pinning, etc). Unfortunately it is quite difficult to change that. It would be a great effort at the moment.
Costas