Running latest RM8 on Windows 10
I open two databases DBa and DBb on separate monitors.
I click PUBLISH on DBa
I then try to click PUBLISH on DBb. It just pings and won’t allow it.
Sounds like the way it’s designed?
I want to compare charts run on each of the databases.
I could do a chart for DBa and save it and then do the same for DBb.
But it’s clumsy if I want to keep regenerating the charts.
Or maybe two PCs!!!
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I don’t have dual monitors, so I can’t duplicate your experiment. But it sounds like the problem is that report windows under the Publish tab uses modal windows and that there can only be one modal window open at a time. When you try to do anything else with a modal window open, RM8 just pings.
I do have a similar problem with Publish even though I don’t have dual monitors. Sometimes I do a Publish and Save a DOCX file to view the report in Microsoft Word. Sometimes after viewing the report and closing Microsoft Word, the modal report window under Publish will have disappeared and all attempts to click on RM just pings. I am a Windows user. The only way I have found to get out of this situation is Alt-Tab which is a Windows thing to bring up a list of all my open windows. If I cycle through my windows with Alt-Tab to the RM8 window and choose it, RM8 will come up with the modal repot window under Publish back on top. What has really happened is not that the modal report window under Publish has really disappeared. Rather, it has popped under. There are no tools in RM8 itself to identify and get to such popped under windows.
There is a similar situation with the Edit Person window. It’s hard to describe the exact circumstances, but sometimes when I switch to a window outside of RM8 with the non-modal Edit Person window open and then switch back to RM8, the non-modal Edit Person window will have popped under. The difference is that RM8 doesn’t ping when the popped under window is non-modal. Also, there are sort of little tabs down at the bottom of the main RM8 window which at this point will have a list of your Edit Person windows that are open. So you can click there and get your Edit Person window back. “Tabs” is probably not the right word for the list of open Edit Person windows, but that’s kind of the way the list of Edit Person windows works. The list really needs to be much more visible, and in particular needs to be at the top of the window like actual tabs rather than being at the bottom.
It’s hard to know what the best solution for these kinds of windows management problems actually is for RM8, but I definitely think that RM8 needs much better window management tools for both its modal windows and its non-modal windows. For example, if RM8 actually had a true menu system, then one of the main menu items could be Windows or something like that. Even absent a full blown true menu system, I think there needs to something like “top of the window tabs” for open windows. And in the case of your Publish situation with two databases and two monitors, the solution is probably going to involve making the report window under Publish being non-modal instead of modal.
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Thank you for all those comments Gerry. That about sums it up.
Just a minor point, but I don’t think the dual monitors are an issue - I only mentioned them to illustrate what I was doing and how it would be be great if I could see the two charts at once on full screen.
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I agree that two monitors are not the source of the problem. I just now recreated the problem on one monitor. I just had to open two RM8 databases at the same time and shrink both windows down to less than half a screen. I then went through your scenario, and my symptoms are identical to yours.
The two non-modal RM8 windows for two different databases are not really independent. For example, they do not show up as separate windows in the Windows taskbar and they do not show up as two separate windows using the Windows Alt-Tab function. Even if the RM developers wish to address the problem, it may or may not be very easy to do because Mac window management may be different than Windows window management. I’m not a Mac user, so I don’t know how this issue looks on a Mac.
I suppose it’s not a major issue but I had thought that the movement away from using modal windows was the essence of RM8.
If anyone from RM monitors this forum (?), perhaps they would care to comment.
I couldn’t bear to raise the issue in the fetid swamp that is FB.
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Non-modal windows are the exception, not the rule, in RM8.
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