Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 2:06 am Post subject: Popupmenus appear as normal windows
Hi!
Sorry for my bad english, I'm not a native speaker.
Since a few weeks I have a problem with the Popupmenus used in the toolbar. E.g. the popupmenu for the fontcolor in the main toolbar. Normally I make a long click (mouse pressed an not released) on the symbol in the main toolbar and a popupmenu appear with the possible choices. But since a few weeks there is no popupmenu, instead of this, a small normal window (with normal window controls, no floating window) appears presenting the possible choices.
These choices (in the window, normally in the popupmenu) are working as normal, but I have to close the window after using the function manually.
Does somebody know how I revert to the normal state?
This is a bug in OOo 1.1.x on the Mac; I have never been able to get those palettes to pop open and closed like they used to in OOo 1.0.x and Neo/J 0.x. Instead, they always become windows as you have seen--both in Neo/J 1.1 and OOo 1.1.x. Even removing my user folder and letting Neo/J start with default settings does not fix it, so I'm sure it's a bug.
I filed OOo bug 48427 about the problem, but other than it being reassigned twice, no one has taken a look at it (much like many of the Mac bugs I and others file against OOo...).
Sorry there's not better news.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 9:36 am Post subject:
Yup, this was a design decision made at Sun between OOo 1.0 and OOo 1.1.x. Prior to this the floating windows used to be rendered directly within the document window. While this was great for things like the little popup button menus off of the toolbars, it did suck for other things. The Stylist, for example, was limited to being positioned solely within the document window and couldn't be moved off to the side at all. On other platforms (e.g. Linux), the Stylist wasn't available to window managers for minimization/maximization and the like. Very annoying.
They decided to make them full-fledged windows so other window managers could use them, they could be minimized to the Dock in Apple X11, etc.
Unfortunately, instead of doing this only for the "complex" windows like Stylist or Navigator, it was done in such a way that *all* of those little utility windows became full-fledged windows.
I loathe this design decision, and, given the work Patrick's had to do as a result to do the repositioning & refocusing of palettes, I don't think the benefits it provides were worth it. Unfortunately it wasn't our call and we just have to live with the consequences.
Yup, this was a design decision made at Sun between OOo 1.0 and OOo 1.1.x. Prior to this the floating windows used to be rendered directly within the document window.
I figured it was that switch that was the cause. OTOH, somehow they engineered it so the palettes like the font color still work the same way under Windows. I checked on a Win 98 and a Win XP system before I filed that bug. Dunno if the *NIX systems do it "right" and it's only on the Mac, or if all the *NIX systems have these palettes becoming windows on a single click... And we may never know....
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 8:50 pm Post subject:
The only "fix" I found was to remove all of the changes Sun made for 1.1.x with regard to the floatwin.cxx stuff. Only way to get back the nicer 1.0.x behaviour on Mac OS X. Unfortunately, we can't keep reverting since that'll break forward compatibility with future OOo versions. It's like a dog chasing its tail. Sigh.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 8:28 am Post subject:
The functionality won't ever be corrected because it's actually seen by OOo as the "correct" behaviour. The making of palettes into full blown windows was a fix for the multiple bugs reported where floating palettes were ignored by users' window managers and that the floating palettes couldn't be themed. It's the solution that's here to stay in OOo even though a minority of old-time SO/OOo users can't stand it.
You could go try to file it in IZ in the OOo project, but it'll most likely be closed as "not a bug" or "feature".
Ed, you seem to be missing at least parts of my posts
OPENSTEP wrote:
The functionality won't ever be corrected because it's actually seen by OOo as the "correct" behaviour.
In 1.1.4 under Windows, the text/background/highlight color buttons still work the same way they did under 1.0.x: click and hold pops the palette down (not as a separate window), and it goes away once you release the mouse over the color you've selected.
It never becomes a separate window unless you drag it away from where it pops down (just like tear off palettes in AppleWorks or Photoshop or whatever on the Mac).
The question is, did the Sun folks (re)implement this differently only under Windows, or is the Mac version the only *nix version where the behavior is broken? I'm voting for the latter, because when I filed the bug, I couldn't find any dupes for Linux, and even if it was closed as "Not a bug" or "Feature," I figured I would have seen it.
OPENSTEP wrote:
You could go try to file it in IZ in the OOo project, but it'll most likely be closed as "not a bug" or "feature".
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 10:57 pm Post subject:
OK, I think I understand what's going on now...there's two problems.
When I'm describing "top level window" for the 1.1.x change, I'm actually talking more from a code perspective. In 1.0.x all of the palettes were "faked" in the code and were never really windows at all; they were just drawn straight into the underlying window that was displaying the document and the like. Starting with 1.1.x, these palettes became full-fledged windows from a code perspective. They weren't just drawn any longer; they suddenly had their own independnet VCLFrames.
The second problem is how these VCLFrames are implemented in 1.1.x. Top level windows don't necessarily need to have a titlebar and the like. They can be borderless things like the splashscreen in NeoJ. Only problem is that a lot of times the window manager decides what to do with the frame type, not the underlying application. The window types used aren't fully compatible across all window managers (like quartz-wm) or VCL implementations (like NeoJ).
While it may be another instance of the pot calling the kettle black, it was this fundamental shift in 1.1.x's implementation of floating windows that's been causing all of these issues for OS X X11 and NeoJ. Unfortunately, if it is functional on mainline platforms, I don't believe it'll be addressed just for us
The second problem is how these VCLFrames are implemented in 1.1.x. Top level windows don't necessarily need to have a titlebar and the like. They can be borderless things like the splashscreen in NeoJ. Only problem is that a lot of times the window manager decides what to do with the frame type, not the underlying application. The window types used aren't fully compatible across all window managers (like quartz-wm) or VCL implementations (like NeoJ).
Ah, this is what I was missing. Thanks for the explanation.
OPENSTEP wrote:
While it may be another instance of the pot calling the kettle black, it was this fundamental shift in 1.1.x's implementation of floating windows that's been causing all of these issues for OS X X11 and NeoJ.
That part I gathered from the old posts about the Stylist; it was the technical details of "a top level window is not always a top level window on all platforms/wms" I didn't understand
OPENSTEP wrote:
Unfortunately, if it is functional on mainline platforms, I don't believe it'll be addressed just for us
Oh well. Like I said, I assume it's working on Linux since I didn't see any reports...maybe next time I'm home I'll put OOo on the Sun in the office and see if it works under CDE. Or not.
(When Sun first bought StarDivision and did the free release of StarOffice 5?, we had the office PC and my Powerbook both online on dialup downloading the split set, ftp'd it to the Sun, had a nightmare installing, and finally saw this horrid looking app that couldn't print and had worse MS compatibility than WordPerfect. What a long way OOo has come!)
It would be cool if we could shoehorn the undocked Stylist into an inspector-type thingy, but I imagine Java doesn't give you access to inspector-type thingies, if the code on the OOo end were even possible....
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject:
Yeah, I do agree on the unlocked stylist vs. inspector or the like; I'd prefer styles as drawers. I kind of don't dig the transparant palette approach of office 2004.
Right now as we're going for 1.1 Final we're working only at the lowest level. We're doing changes, but it's very difficult/impossible to do changes based upon the context of a thing. E.g. we can change borders for windows in general, but it's a different beast to do it for one *particular* window.
I hope in the future other developers can come along and start taking the idea to the next level and implement alternative high-level redesigns for Writer, Draw, et. al. Given the custom widget set design of OOo, it's a highly non-trival task and will not be enjoyable, and it will be a full-time task for more than one people as the OOo interfaces themselves are quite dynamic. It's all a chicken and egg thing...too many tasks, not enough talent
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