Can't see full pattern piece window

Hello!

I just downloaded Seamly a couple of days ago and now I am trying to figure out how everything works! I successfully made my first draft and now I am trying to turn it into a pattern piece. However, after I successfully select all of my points and I hit enter, the pattern piece box/window pops up, but not the whole box. The screen cuts off the bottom portion of the box, so I cannot save my pattern piece. Is there a way that I can adjust the size of the box so that I can see the whole thing?

I tried to add a picture, but I don’t think the picture is downloading right. The top of the pattern piece window/box also does not give me any options for minimizing/maximizing the window. It only provides a cancel X in the top right corner.

1 Like

Hey @autumnmmae,

Welcome to the Seamly community!

I don’t have time for a full write-up at the moment, but in short the problem when this happens is likely that somewhere your display settings have everything sized up over 100%, probably somewhere in your OS Accessibility settings.

I hope that helps. If not, someone like @Douglas will be around, or I’ll be back in a few hours.

I do wonder if just hitting Enter will work to at least have it saved.

Best wishes!

:unicorn:

1 Like

Welcome here, @autumnmmae

Can’t you move the window either?

I just tried it, I can resize the window and move it. For moving the window I move the mouse pointer to the window bar, it becomes a cross. I then can move the window around.

For resizing I move the mouse pointer to an edge or a corner, it becomes a dart with a line or a dart with a corner like in the picture. If I hold the primary mouse key then, I can resize the window.

1 Like

That is a good possibility. The dialog form probably has a minimum height policy set… which is fine for most display settings. For smaller resolution screen settings when viewed at 125% or 150% it could be an issue.

I’ll check the form and see what I can do. There’s definitely an art & science to get ui forms to look good, while being able to adjust. And sometimes you have to decide for example - is it worth it to make it adapt to outdated resolutions like 640x400?

Would if the OK button is highlighted. I forget if the ok cancel buttons use the alt selection… like alt-O to highlight Ok, after which you could press enter. There would be an underscore under the Ok in the ok button… but of course in this case we cant see the button. The other option is to use the Tab key, which will cycle to the next widget… eventually you’d reach the Ok button, but right after that is Cancel.

2 Likes

The only thing that I can do with the window is move it down (but I need it moved up so I can see the bottom). It won’t let me adjust the size or move it around any other way

1 Like

It does work to just hit enter for now. Thank you!

2 Likes

Since I’m currently working on improving the Pattern Piece dialog, I checked the minimum height for the dialog and it’s set at 630… which if the screen resolution is 640 (or maybe even 900 at 125% or 150%?) there aint enough room to display the full dialog. I’ll rework the dialog to be able to resize smaller if necessary.

1 Like

There’s no way that you can set it to say… 90% of screen size?

1 Like

Don’t have to. By removing or setting the Minimum height policy to a smaller value - say 500, it should allow the Dialog window to resize automatically depending on screen resolution. That may mean that scroll bars get added to see all the contents - which I prefer to not see. A user shouldn’t haver to scroll in a dialog to find all the buttons / text boxes / etc. Also, the question would be “What” screen size? Everyone’s can be different.

That being said… yes, the dialog size could be programmatically sized based on the screen size VS being set in the form via Creator, but that adds more maintenance and defeats the purpose of the WSYWIG design of ui forms in Creator. In other words you can’t design and see what a form looks like unless you build and run the app. In the real world it’s most likely one team is coding while another is designing forms. For example… since I already have the form loaded - here’s a preview of the SA dialog:

I prefer to only add code for a form when it can’t be done in Creator.

1 Like

Well, rather scroll than a not functioning dialog. I have an office program that on the print dialog always runs out of the screen when I want to print more than one copy (they have a drop down therefor and the window becomes higher if I use that). I have no clue why the window is so high already, there’s a lot of white space. It works because I can close the drop down and have original height again; in some former versions it was not possible to print on my screen.

2 Likes

Rather than a fixed minimum size, I would prefer a percental size of the screen (50%). This would cover situations like having two virtual machine screens to compare different operationg systems and so on.

1 Like

Well, besides doing a major overhaul of the Pattern Piece Dialog, I’m happy to report - I did just that over the weekend. Albeit I used 80%. I also changed the min height policy in the doc, but I just added 1 line of code in the dialog constructor that will use which ever is less- the ui form minimum or 80% of the current screen resolution. I even checked it with a screen resolution of 800 x 600 (the smallest my laptop will do) - which I don’t recommend using… ouch - and the dialog resized to fit ok. Of course scroll bars appeared, but at least the OK / Cancel buttons should always be visible. I may add this to a couple of the other large dialogs, like the Variables and History ones.

3 Likes