PI Behaviours

[sreilly]

I have PI installed on 2 desktop machines and one laptop. I've spent most of my time using PI on my home office desktop that has 2 LCD monitors. This computer has Windows 7 Pro 64 bit installed, an Intel E8500 3.1 Ghz Core Duo processor, 8 Gbs of DDR2-800 memory and three 640 Gbs hard drives. Defragmentation is done 24/7 on the fly by Diskkeeper. This computer also has Adobe Photoshop cs4 installed and a Wacom Intuos 6x11" tablet that really helps with fine control on image editing.

That said, what I noticed after several hours of working with PI last night on the above computer is that PI took all the screen realestate on both monitors at full screen. The lower program bar in Windows was inaccessable unless you either used the Tab key or the Windows start key on the keyboard. I know this wasn't the case earlier due to having Harry's videos playing on the 17" monitor while using PI on the 22" monitor. Is there a hot key that causes this that I may have accidently hit? I did see the long list of preferences and did make sure that full screen was not set.

I also noticed that my Wacom tablet no longer worked. A reboot took care of the tablet but the full screen was still an issue. Are there any known hardware/software incompatabilities? My system is scanned daily for malware and ESET's Smart Home Security is installed for virus protection and updated daily as well. I've stayed away from such products as McAfee and Norton due to their continued interferance with perfectly good and well known programs. They are also both very high system resource hogs. ESET's Smart Security and NOD32  products are excellent products which have not caused any issues in the 4 years I've used them.

Any ideas would be great.

Thanks,

[Jack Harvey]

On the top of my PI taskbar about midway across are several screen icons (zoom to fit, full screen, etc).  Have you tried these?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Steve,

The full-screen mode can be toggled with the View > Full Screen main menu command (Ctrl+Alt+U).

The behavior of PixInsight on multiple monitor systems is far from ideal as of version 1.5.9. I have largely improved it in the upcoming version 1.6. In particular, all processing tool windows are now top-level windows that are not tied to the workspace, and the full screen mode restricts PixInsight's main window to the main monitor. The Full Desktop mode is still available in case you want to spread the main window across several monitors, which is useful e.g. to reserve a small space for icon storage.

Unfortunately, the current versions of PixInsight don't make good use of tablets. This will also change in a future version. I plan on implementing also support for gestures on Windows 7 and modern Linux desktop environments.

[sreilly]

Jack,

No I hadn't seen these till you pointed it out. Other than File|Open or Close All, I really haven't used the top layout. All the commands I've used so far have been from the left side Processing Explorer. I'm sure over time I'll get better aquainted with all the possibilities but for now the Process Explorer works well for me. I did try these and they displayed differently than what I had. There was no Minimise, Restore Down or Close option in the upper right corner and the Task Bar was not visible. The icons you mentioned do work as expected now. One of those odd glitches by who knows what computer process. I have recently installed a screen capture program and maybe that's interferring somehow. If it rears it's ugly head again I'll look at un-installing that screen capture program. The only other program installed in a good while other than the normal Windows updates is Everything, a Windows serach program, and .NET 4.0.

Thanks,

[sreilly]

The full-screen mode can be toggled with the View > Full Screen main menu command (Ctrl+Alt+U).

Juan,

If I hit that, it was totally by accident and very unlikely. Maybe something to do with some recent software additions or some quirky behavior of my dual monitors setup. I should have mentioned that they are setup as extended desktop and powered via a NVidia GeForce 8600GTS video card.

As for the tablet, I haven't gotten into PI enough to see a coomand that would take advantage of the tablet but then again I'm so new to this that I haven't scratched the surface so no surprise there!

You mentioned "implementing also support for gestures on Windows 7", what are gestures? Lastly, I've noticed more spelling mistakes I've made than I'm willing to admit to, is there a spell checker that can be used on this forum?

Thanks,

[mmirot]

The full-screen mode can be toggled with the View > Full Screen main menu command (Ctrl+Alt+U).

 is there a spell checker that can be used on this forum?

Thanks,

I started using Firefox. It has spell checking built in.

Max

[Niall Saunders]

I started using Firefox. It has spell checking built in

It does?

I haven't been able to fnid it - does it have to be 'invoked'?

Cheers,

[Nocturnal]

I started using Firefox. It has spell checking built in

It does?

I haven't been able to fnid it - does it have to be 'invoked'?

Cheers,

It's enabled by default but I disable it to improve shoddy FF performance. When you right click in a text box there's a spell check item.