Partial PT8 window cannot be aligned with edge of screen

Question

I am PT8 in a partial window, so that I can have part of my screen show the Greek text in BART (the L&N dictionary links are much better in BART than in PT SLT and so are the glosses).
On Windows 7 this was never a problem, but in Windows 10 PT always opens in a slightly reduced window size compared to when I closed it and leaves about 2-3mm of screen space unused to its side and below. As a result, vertical and horizontal scroll bars appear in PT and cover part of the windows in PT.
I cannot drag the edge of PT to extend it/snap it to the edge of the screen, irrespective of whether snap windows is turned on or off in Multiple tasks view.
I always have to resize PT on the side and at the bottom of the window, then move the whole thing over just a tad too far, so I don’t lose precious screen space and resize the windows inside PT manually.
Multiple desktops in Windows 10 is nice to keep this layout going and switch between applications (to TW Folio), while I don’t turn off the machine, but if I do, all is lost again.
So I was looking for a solution. I get the impression that this is a windows 10 problem.
Does anyone know of a method for saving multiple desktops, so I can open them next time I start my machine? I researched it online and can’t seem to find a specific solution.
Any ideas? Anyone has the same problem and found a solution?

On a related topic, TW Logos does not scroll with PT if I use it on another Windows 10 multiple desktop, whereas TW Folio does. Logos only scrolls with PT, if it is only ever started on the same desktop and has not been open in another desktop that same session.

Answer 1

ChrDre:

…in Windows 10 PT always opens in a slightly reduced window size compared to when I closed it and leaves about 2-3mm of screen space unused to its side and below. As a result, vertical and horizontal scroll bars appear in PT and cover part of the windows in PT.

If you are talking about the gaps in the following screenshot, then this is, unfortunately, a problem with the way that Microsoft implemented the thin window borders in Windows 10. The border of the window actually expands about 5 pixels outside of what looks like the window (it includes the window shadow) so that the user has something to grab onto to resize it. Applications, then think that the window is at the location and size that they specify, but to the user, it looks like there is a gap.

image.jpg1920×1200 505 KB

Note that other applications that do window “snapping” have the same problem in Windows 10 (e.g. Skype).
It doesn’t happen in previous versions of Windows because they all had borders that were 3-5 pixels wide. So, if it helps, you aren’t actually wasting any more screen space that previous versions of Windows.

Comments

Is there a setting in Windows 10 to turn off the shadow? Maybe the high contrast visually impaired setting?

Answer 2

This probably isn’t a perfect solution, but are you using the Windows-Left and Windows-Right combinations to snap your PT and BART windows to half-screen? Those are handy shortcuts and keep you from needing to move borders manually. (Also, Windows-Up is full screen and Windows-Down is minimized.)

Comments

Yes, thanks, I know of using that method. But it just halves the screen irrespective of the content, while I want a small section only of the screen to go to BART and most of it to PT . Doesn’t improve my perception of Windows 10:-(

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ChrDre:

But [Windows-Left / Windows-Right] just halves the screen irrespective of the content

What @anon291708 said has already been mentioned somewhere else on this site. But Windows 10 does have a redeeming feature for situations like yours …

• First, note that Windows+Left/Right sizes the window to half of the screen without the gap that you and I hate with equal measure;
• The redeeming feature: if you set up e.g. PT and BART to each be half of the screen, you can drag the border between them to the left or right so that BART has only a small section of the screen as you desire .

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Wow, thanks, I didn’t realize that! So now, all I need to do to fix the situation is, have a BLANK PT Windows layout with which to close it down, so that I don’t have to reload my very full screen twice, before and after snapping and resizing. That makes it a lot less cumbersome. Not as simple and straightforward as in Windows 7, but at least doable without a major headache each time:-) Thank you!!

Answer 3

ChrDre:

…in Windows 10 PT always opens in a slightly reduced window size compared to when I closed it and leaves about 2-3mm of screen space unused to its side and below. As a result, vertical and horizontal scroll bars appear in PT and cover part of the windows in PT.

@ChrDre, Could you post a screenshot of what you are talking about?

Answer 4

Thanks to anon291708 for solving the “mystery of the gap”.

I have a different but related issue:

On my computers I am using two screens each, to run PT and other need-a-lot-of-space programs etc. Not at the same time of course.

I found help and adapted a nice AutoIt-Script to pull my very-full PT window over two entire full-HD screens.

But on the office computer, I always see that ghastly gap. On my own computer (notebook with an external USB-secondary-screen) it works very nicely. Details about the script for those who ask, maybe in another thread.

In the script I position the PT-window at -8, -8 so that the “shadow gap thing” is off the screen where it belongs. On the office computer there is this “snapping” happening. And even when I turn off the snap in Windows > Settings > System > Multitasking > “docking or whatever it is called in English”, it still shows me the gap. I can edit into my script any value like x 0 or -8 or -1, I always get the same gap.

So after a long pre-amble: Where can I turn off the snapping which sabotages my script’s precise placing?
The line in my AutoIt looks like this, do not worry about -1544, here on my own machine the external screen counts as “off-to-the-left” and I got 125% zoom for my old eyes:

WinMove($MyWin,"",-1544,-8,3104,880) (setting x, y, width and height of the PT window)

Any ideas welcome. Need more space to zoom that Greek stuff…

Answer 5

Tim:

Where can I turn off the snapping which sabotages my script’s precise placing?

Unfortunately, Paratext does its own snapping and there is currently no way to turn it off.

Although, I would have expected both machines to act the same way because of that…

Are both machines Windows 10?

Comments

Yes both machines are Win 10 64bit with almost all updates. Different
languages and different histories. And since I always apply more tweaks
to my personal machine, things are hardly entirely different.

The difference is in the graphics “cards”: On my machine the external
screen is connected by USB3 only and I believe it has its own “virtual
graphics card” or equivalent. So I had a hard time finding a method to
automatically stretch PT (or any program) over both screens (excluding
the not-enjoyable option to drag and position by hand every time I start
PT).

So maybe my “exotic” external screen is preventing PT to do its
unwelcome “snapping”. (It is an ASUS MB168B+ and I love it for language
work and DTP. I guess I would also love 4K but not on a notebook-size
screen; rather 1 notebook plus 3 hovering-around extra screens…)

Still good to hear that the PT-snapping is “a feature”, because I need
no longer to search all over Windows settings how to turn it off. So
thank you anon291708.

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Windows 10 seems to do the snapping of programs differently on different machines. In our team of 3, 2 machines show the eternal gap next to PT in a partial screen, one doesn’t. And as far as I’m aware, the software versions and settings are the same on all three machines (though the machines are 0,1 and 2 years old respectively). It is really weird!

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anon291708:

Unfortunately, Paratext does its own snapping and there is currently no way to turn it off.

1. Why does PT not use the O/S’s snapping?

2. Could there be an option in PT to turn this off?

3. New topic: why does PT sometimes move subwindows and/or the placeholders for minimised subwindows by a few pixels after PT is restarted? If you have windows that touch the right-hand and bottom edges of the parent window, this results in both horizontal and vertical scroll bars appearing. Moving the mispositioned window/placeholder back to where it was does not get rid of the scroll bars. Why? because there’s a vicious circle* whereby the presence of one scroll bar causes the other one to appear: a vertical scroll bar covers part of windows on the right, necessitating a horizontal scroll bar so that the user can see the hidden bit on the right – and vice versa. You can get rid of the bars, but only with more jiggling of windows.

* I assume Windows handles the switching on and off of scroll bars, not PT. Is this vicious circle a bug? I’d say that it is: Windows should be intelligent enough to realise that none of the subwindows would spill off the edge of the parent if it simultaneously removed both scroll bars.