Disappearing Control Panel window on second display

[Travis]

I'm working with two displays. To take advantage of the screen real estate, I decided undock the Control Panel window and move it to the second display. I used the following steps:

1. Use the mouse to grab the top part of the docked palette and started dragging.
2. As soon as I passed into the second display, the drag stopped and CP was not undocked.

Fine, I could see that somehow not working perfectly. So then I tried:

1. Use the mouse to grab the top of the palette.
2. Drag a bit to undock and release on the main display. This worked as expected – CP was undocked.
3. Then I moved the new floating Control Panel to the second display.
4. As a click and drag the CP window moves to the second display (as expected) but, upon releasing the drag, the CP window disappears. Just gone.

I can click the CP toolbar button (twice; assume once to hide then a second time to bring back), but then the CP window shows up on the main display, no the second display. One possible Debug hint: After click the toolbar button twice, I think the CP window shows up on the main display at the coordinates that I placed it on the second display. So I think there is some information from the drag/drop on the second display that is registering.

macOS 14.6.1
Vensim 10.2.1

[aliakhavan89]

The only workaround I’ve found for this is to move the CP window to the 2nd display. After it disappears, go to Mission Control (Swipe up with 3/4 figures on trackpad) and drag and drop the CP window to the Desktop space on the 2nd display. Note that the CP window only becomes a separate entity and can be moved between spaces when it disappears by drag and drop in the first place. I think this behavior is unusual and should be improved in the source code.

Screenshot 2024-08-19 at 1.57.14 PM 2.png (1.33 MiB) Viewed 3122 times

[aliakhavan89]

FYI, the workaround I just described does not work for 'Preferences...' (Vensim Settings) at all. You should kill the app entirely if you accidentally move the preferences window to a 2nd display. This is because you get stuck, and the main Vensim window and all menus are irresponsive.

[Travis]

Another bit of strange behavior with two displays, but not exactly related to the disappearing window:

I'm working on an external monitor with my laptop open (as opposed to two external displays with laptop closed, as above).

The main Vensim window is on the external display. When I select a variable and click the Causes analysis tool, it opens on my laptop display. Visible, but not where I'm working. I move that window to the display I'm working on, but the next time I use the tool it still opens on the laptop display.

[aliakhavan89]

I have another feedback about the workflow on the same display and the same desktop space. When a graph/table is activated in Vensim, as soon as I switch to another app (for example, Excel) to double-check something, the graph/table window disappears. This is really critical, and users should be able to multitask. The behavior doesn't happen with other Vensim windows like Settings or Equation Editor. But these are not used for any comparative analysis.

On another somehow related note, I mentioned above earlier that windows can be programmed to be considered as unique entities. I am here showing the example of the Notes.app where the Settings can be selected and moved to other spaces separately from the main window. It also doesn't disappear when other app sessions are activated (the example below is a screenshot from the Mission Control and the blue area indicates that the window can be moved individually).

Screenshot 2024-08-19 at 2.11.59 PM copy.png (1.83 MiB) Viewed 2729 times

Thank you so much for considering this feedback!

[Administrator]

I'll look into this at some point over the next few days.

[Administrator]

Hmm. This is bizarre.

If I move the Vensim main window onto the other monitor, the dialog re-appears.

I'll need time to investigate this.

[Administrator]

For the control panel, if I toggle it on/off again, it appears back on the main screen.

[Travis]

Yes, this one is definitely weird. I don't want to make this too broad of an issue, but the windowing on macOS has always been a bit whacky. Something that has been raised in the past (either conversation or maybe another forum thread) is that "focus" isn't handled as expected on the platform. When a new window is opened, like the Run Info Output window (the one with "loaded changes from ABC.CIN", it should have focus. It doesn't and I *daily* close the main model window because my fingers hit cmd-W before I even think that it won't close the foremost window (like it should). Then I have to start over and open the model again.

So, maybe the bug in this thread is related to the windowing and focus. Of course, the dual displays adds to the windowing complexity.