Compressed screens and buttons

[Fab6657]

Morning Dave,

nice this screen. I like to give chance new screens
And of course, more than if that will be the new standard.

So i have already a first problem, in fact two remarks :

- button need to be presse twice (not double click) and the
bitmap is no display (button is black).

- i use for first tests a netbook (with different resolution
from 1024*600 to 1024*768compress) and i see only
the bottom screen change button if i hide the taskbar.

Euh forget this point, in the second start of mach3,
the selection bar appear

I put a screenshot.

Edit : shame on me, i read your release notes and you make mention
of the problem with black button, but i have always the problem,
not only with dialog box opened.

Thank's

Fabrice

[DaveCVI]

Hi,
I'm going to have to think about this a bit...
I don't think that during the alpha testing period that anyone ran the screen set on a PC that was lower resolution than the minimum required 1024x768.

I've only seen the "black button" draw happen in conjunction with the dialog box on top of a button (as described in the errata note).

Some questions:
1) When you change to another page and then back to the page that had the black buttons, do the buttons redraw correctly?
2) Are you using the mach menu general config option "auto screen enlarge" to shrink the screens?
3) does your netbook pc attempt to make a smaller vertical physical screen resolution (600) look like 768 high to windows applications? (I"m wondering if there is a netbook specific layer of software in the windows screen driver that could be causing a problem)

Dave

P.S. I moved your post to a separate topic so that this discussion would be separate from the welcome thread.

[Fab6657]

Dave,

i am a little bit tired

yes i changed the option for the autoenlarge, but i forget to restart.
but in resolution 1024*768, the bottom is hiden by the taskbar,
or i mask the Menu line.

When i change to another page, and came back the black button are redraw.

For the netbook, the 1024*768 can be used as virtual (with scrolling) or in compress
in 1024*600. But in two case the bottom is hiden. To see it i need to use autoenlarge
option from Mach3.

Fabrice

[DaveCVI]

Hi Fabrice,

a) Regular screen sets for mach are created with fixed size bitmaps. MSM (my abbreviated name for MachStdMill) supports two physical screen resolutions: 1024x768 and 1280x1024. In the manual these are referred by the names 10x7 and 12x9.

The 10x7 set is designed to fully use a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768. If one attempts to fit that size bitmap onto a screen that is smaller than 1024x768, the bitmap is taller than what the physical screen can display. On a 600 pixel tall screen you will not be able to see the bottom (768-600) 168 pixels. 168 pixels is actually over 20% of the screen's height.

To squeeze a screen set onto a smaller screen than the screen set was designed for, mach has the "auto-enlarge" option. The option's name is a little misleading as it will both auto enlarge and auto shrink. This does not result in a very nice looking image because Mach either has to throw away lines from the bitmap as it is displayed (auto shrink) or invent and add lines (auto enlarge).
With auto enlarge turned on (to shrink the bitmap to fit the 600 tall screen), you are having mach throw away part of the screen images.

A 1024x768 monitor has just barely enough screen area to hold the controls needed on a page. A early design decision was to make the 10x7 set use the entire 1024x768 screen area and the 10x7 support in MSM is designed to use the entire 1024x768 pixel area of a screen.

For sake of discussion let's assume the windows task bar is 50 pixels tall (the actual size can vary significantly with different windows settings).  For this example, it means that the task bar is using up 50 pixels at the bottom of the screen and so you can't see the bottom 50 pixels of the mach screen with the task bar present. On a 1024x768 physical screen resolution the recommended settings are to set the task bar properties to "auto-hide". This will make the task bar disappear until the mouse cursor is placed over the task bar - you will then be able to see the entire MSM screen.

It is also possible to lock the windows task bar in such a way that mach will "auto shrink" the bitmap to the area left between the task bar top and the top of the screen. This of course makes the visual impact of "throw away lines from the bitmap" effort more pronounced.

The situation is a bit different with the 12x9 screen set support. That set is called 12x9 (instead of 12x10) because the mach window area it requires is approximately 1200x946 (the numbers may not be exact - they are from memory as I write this).  Some of the increased screen area from a 1280x1024 screen was allocated to leaving space for a nominal size task bar. On a 1280x1024 screen the 12x9 screen set will allow you to have the task bar always present on any side of the screen.

By the way, all the mechanisms I have just described are standard windows and mach3 features and are not specific to MSM.

For better or worse, 1024x768 monitors are essentially obsolete. It is becoming hard to find places that sell new 1024x768 LCD monitors. When they are available, they are the same price as 1280x1024 screens. Brand new 1280x1024 monitors are available online starting at around $100. We supported 10x7 because the installed mach3 user base has a lot of 10x7 screens in use, and we supprot 12x9 because that is the least expensive, most easily available new monitor size.

I think that you would have a much better experience by using a 1024x768 or 1280x1024 screen instead of a netbook's 1024x600 screen.  

b) Regarding the "black button" issue: Brian is aware of it and will be looking into it when he gets a chance. Since it is only a visual annoyance (you can actually still click a "black button"), we decided to not hold up the MSM beta release until that bug is found.

c) this leaves one other thing you initially reported. You said that you were having to click twice (not double click) to get a button to activate.  I shrunk a screen resolution to 800x600 and set "auto enlarge" and tested for this here but I have not been able to make this happen for me.
Is this still a problem for you?

Dave

[handsmfg]

This is soooo cool. You guys did a hell of a job. Can't wait for Rev. 4 to be available for beta testing. Any plans for sliders to boost feed rate and RPM on run screen instead of having to type in DRO?

[Fab6657]

Hello Dave,

thanks for all this explanatation. I use a 22" CRT for the control if the CNC with Mach3,
so i havent the problem that i have with the netbook.
But i think some user user this kind of computer with the combination of smoothstepper
to control the cnc, so that can be an alternative.

For the c) question, i cannot reproduce it anymore, i think that was only
on the initial load of the screen just after the installation.

Thank's for the nice work, if i have time tomorrow , i try on the cnc computer,
but, i hope no problem with the developement version of Mach3, this is
my productive computer.

Fabrice

[DaveCVI]

This is soooo cool. You guys did a hell of a job. Can't wait for Rev. 4 to be available for beta testing. Any plans for sliders to boost feed rate and RPM on run screen instead of having to type in DRO?

Hi,
Thanks for the kind words!
In the 10x7 set the sliders are available on the fly out (they would not fit in the 10x7 page space), in the 12x9 set, the sliders are part of the run page.

Dave

[DaveCVI]

Fabrice,
No problem re the explanations - I'm happy to help.

I'm glad to know the double click symptom is gone. I'll not look into that more unless someone else reports the same thing.

Re using mach's dev rev and MSM on your production machine: Only you can decide if that is a risk you want to accept.

I'm using the mach dev rev and MSM but I'm not a production machine shop and I'm sure that there are things done out there by mach users that I don't do. Please remember that the required level of Mach is the development version of mach and that MSM is beta release software.  We won't claim that beta level software is bug free.

If you have a problem on your production machine with MSM, please report it and we'll try to resolve whatever issues may come up. If it all works fine, please also report that.

Dave
 

Hello Dave,

thanks for all this explanatation. I use a 22" CRT for the control if the CNC with Mach3,
so i havent the problem that i have with the netbook.
But i think some user user this kind of computer with the combination of smoothstepper
to control the cnc, so that can be an alternative.

For the c) question, i cannot reproduce it anymore, i think that was only
on the initial load of the screen just after the installation.

Thank's for the nice work, if i have time tomorrow , i try on the cnc computer,
but, i hope no problem with the developement version of Mach3, this is
my productive computer.

Fabrice

[Fab6657]

dont worry, production for me is hobby, no work 

Fabrice

[kencor1]

handsmfg,  

if you hit the tab key the flyout will have the sliders on it.

Edit. Sorry I did not see that your question was answered above.