Preferences

[MikeD]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and finding PI to be a worthy adversary.

Working on a trial license and immediately ran into my first skirmish.

On a small laptop while traveling the image scaling was so small it was unusable.

I tried auto scaling by following the recommendation found here.

http://pixinsight.com.ar/en/info/articles/43/screen-resolution.html

But did not achieve a swift nor decisive victory.

The problem I ran into initially is that the video shows the auto scaling changing dynamically without going through the apply global and restart process which I have since discovered is necessary.  Very confusing.  I resorted to nuclear weapons by deselecting auto scaling and  adjusting the UI scaling factor but have since discovered that PI is a wiley adversary and a simple Apply Global/Restart is the diversionary tactic required to get it to accept the changes made to auto scaling.

The main problem which still exists is the failure of the preferences to retain the settings after changes made in serial.  The problem only manifests if I access the Preferences through the PROCESS/All Processes menu then select "Preferences".  If I edit "Global Preferences" through the EDIT menu then the problem does not occur.

For example, With default settings on initial startup I need to scale the interface to make it usable and I also get the Risky Temp Folder warning.  The first battle I chose to fight was to adjust the scaling and then apply global/restart.

This fixes the scaling problem so now I have to contend with the Risky Folder.  No problem right?  Go back to the PROCESS/All Processes menu and select preferences.  Directories and Network.  Define New Temp Location.  Apply Global/Restart.  Victory is mine... not so fast.  On restart I get the scaling factor back to default i.e. tiny fonts.  Fix the scaling and it resets the Folder. Fix the folder and it resets the scaling.  Back and forth. I can change both in the same iteration and it fixes both but I don't think this is the behavior that is intended.  If it is then I'm rendered speechless and I think even Clausewitz  and Sun Tzu would admit defeat.

Again, I DON'T get this behavior if I access the preferences by accessing through the EDIT/Global Preferences menu option. 

Very strange behavior. 

I have not attempted editing one parameter through the PROCESS menu then the other through the EDIT menu.  Nor have I explored settings other than the two mentioned above.  I'll leave the troubleshooting to the PI team.

I've since had pretty good success and look forward to exploring some of the more powerful tools in PixInsight.  It's obvious a ton of work has gone into this but please please please PI team, find the time to write a user manual.

Mike

PS - Windows 10 Home
       Dell XPS 13
       Intel Core i7
       Intel UHD 620 Graphics

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Mike,

As noted on the official release announcement:

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=14562.0

this is a known problem on Windows. Excerpted form the announcement post:

* On some laptops with nonstandard screen resolutions, such as the Microsoft Surface, PixInsight cannot find valid screen scaling factors automatically. On these machines, you may have to run the PixInsight core application with the --ui-scaling command line argument. For example, to apply a UI scaling factor of 2:

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --ui-scaling=2

You only have to do this once, since the scaling factor will be stored in application preferences automatically. Of course, if you already are using version 1.8.6 or later and the interface looks correct, then you don't need to do this; this is only required for new installations.

The difference you are observing between PROCESS > All Processes > Preferences and EDIT > Global Preferences is perfectly normal behavior. When you execute the Preferences process from Process Explorer, or from the Process main menu, the Preferences tool loads a default process instance, i.e. a default set of parameters.

This happens with every process and tool in PixInsight. This behavior owns to the fact that PixInsight follows an object-oriented architecture, where processes, images and the objects on which processes are executed (including the global set of preferences settings) are completely independent, self-sufficient objects. This object-oriented design pervades the whole PixInsight platform, from its core to the most exposed aspects of its user interface. In other words, the Preferences process, by itself, knows nothing at all about global preferences. It acts just as a pattern where preferences can be defined. This pattern can be executed, or stored, copied, used to replace other instances, etc.

As a convenience feature, you can click the Load Current Settings button on the Preferences tool to load the current set of preferences settings. This does exactly the same as when you launch Preferences by selecting Edit > Global Preferences from the main menu. Both actions are equivalent.

On restart I get the scaling factor back to default i.e. tiny fonts.

We cannot reproduce this. Preferences settings are always remembered under normal working conditions. Similarly, once you execute the application with the --ui-scaling command line argument, as described above, the corresponding setting will also be remembered.

[MikeD]

Juan,

Thanks for your thoughtful, timely and thorough reply.  It makes sense now but is really not intuitive to a new user. Can't quite get my mind around why you would want preferences to behave this way.  I'll just accept it as part of PI's charm and get on with it.

The automatic UI scaling is working properly. It was just the misleading tutorial video that led me to believe that apply global/restart was not required.

Mike