How to make a frame/dialog/window always on top?

alexmojaki

show_modal will keep the WebDialog on top of the SketchUp window under OSX. But not on top of all other child windows of SketchUp.

Well, for me it's not even showing on top of the main Sketchup window. I have no other dialogs open, the only other window is Sketchup itself. And when I click on it, the dialog disappears right behind it.

@tig said:

Your test
if #the selection is appropriate# and sel.length>0
???
Presumably you have some 'real code' in there... otherwise the line is
if
as everything after the first # is ignored ?
Then you'll always get 'b'...

Yes, I replaced the real code with the comment.

@tig said:

Also [incidentally] the
path = Sketchup.find_support_file("scale.html",#...#)
would be better as
path = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "scale.html")
assuming it's in the same folder as the ruby script itself...

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

@chris fullmer said:

No, you can draw it to the screen if you make your own 'tool'. Use the view.draw method of your tool class and you can do some pretty interesting things.

BUT, that requires the user to be using your tool so they can see the info you've written to the screen. Once they switch to rotate or pan or select, move, etc the data disappears. So it is also flawed.

Thanks, I'll consider that. But still not ideal, of course. Is that all then?

thomthom

@alexmojaki said:

Well, for me it's not even showing on top of the main Sketchup window. I have no other dialogs open, the only other window is Sketchup itself. And when I click on it, the dialog disappears right behind it.

hm... you sure you didn't use show()?

If you try this base bone example:
w=UI::WebDialog.new('test').show_modal

If that doesn't produce a WebDialog that keep on top of SketchUp; what OSX do you have?

Btw, while on topic of Webdialogs, have you seen this thread: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=23445#p198883
?

alexmojaki

Yes, I've seen the lost manual. What was critical to me at the beginning of the thread was that show in Windows kept the dialog on top (which isn't obvious), maybe add that to the manual.

OK, I edited the wrong file when I was testing show_modal. So it works correctly. Then I discovered that the problem with my code is that for some reason when I reclick on the object to put Sketchup in focus, for some reason onSelectionCleared gets called, and then immediately after onSelectionBulkChange. I have no idea why: as far as I can see the selection never gets cleared. So the dialog was actually being closed, and then it wasn't opened again because I didn't edit @prevSelection when the selection was cleared. But now that I've done that, I'm back to the original problem: each time I click on the object to try and put Sketchup in focus, the dialog is closed and reopened and so regains focus.

So now it seems my main problem is that the selection is momentarily cleared unnecessarily. In fact, I tested a bit more and found that it seems to get cleared pretty much all the time. It hasn't even got anything to do with the dialog or reclicking, onSelectionCleared gets called whenever I change my selection at all. I need to keep the definition because onSelectionBulkChange doesn't react to clicking an empty space. So I need a way to distinguish between the selection being genuinely cleared and this quirk. I considered InputPoint, but I've never used that before and I don't see how it can be used from the context of a SelectionObserver.

thomthom

hm... I've noticed that the Selection observers misbehaves: http://www.thomthom.net/software/sketchup/observers/

(Btw - I have other observations I've not published yet. Available in the BitBucket repo: https://bitbucket.org/thomthom/sketchup-observers/issues?status=new&status=open)

driven

on the mac show_modal and bring_to_front appears on top of everything, so they're really the same except one returns 'true' and the other returns the object.

> webdialog=UI;;WebDialog.new('blur_focus')

#<UI;;WebDialog;0x110e2a48>
> webdialog.show
true
> webdialog.show_modal
true
> webdialog.bring_to_front
#<UI;;WebDialog;0x110e2a48>
> webdialog.execute_script('window.focus()')
true
> webdialog.show_modal
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true
> webdialog.close
nil

'window.focus()' and 'window.blur()' work with 'show', 'show_modal' or 'bring_to_front', so you can do stuff like

> webdialog.set_html("Hi!")
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true
> webdialog.set_html("Bye!")
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true
> webdialog.set_html("Hi!")
webdialog.bring_to_front
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true
> webdialog.set_html("I'm going to hide!")
webdialog.close
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true
> webdialog.show
true

just say if I'm 'barking up the wrong tree'
john

Dan Rathbun

@alexmojaki said:

OK, I edited the wrong file when I was testing show_modal. So it works correctly.
Yup! Been there, done that, just yesterday, in fact (edited the wrong Js function and wondered why things did not change.)

@alexmojaki said:

Then I discovered that the problem with my code is that for some reason when I reclick on the object to put Sketchup in focus, for some reason onSelectionCleared gets called, and then immediately after onSelectionBulkChange. I have no idea why ... So now it seems my main problem is that the selection is momentarily cleared unnecessarily. ... onSelectionCleared gets called whenever I change my selection at all.
This is expected. The selection must be cleared in order to receive the elements for the new selection, regardless of whether they are the same as the old selection.

@alexmojaki said:

So I need a way to distinguish between the selection being genuinely cleared and this quirk.
Sketchup::ToolsObserver
The SelectionTool is tool id #21022
You might get some benefit from watching the tool state (integer) changes.

Also the Sketchup::Tools collection, might help.
But be sure you always check that active_tool_id != 0 before attempting to access active_tool_name() (if active tool is undefined, trying to get a name string can BugSplat! SketchUp.)

@alexmojaki said:

Is wxSU my only option?
Not for Mac, which is where you had the Z-order problem. AFAIK, it is still MS Windows only. (Unless they've gotten it working on the Mac now?)

thomthom

@driven said:

on the mac show_modal and bring_to_front appears on top of everything, so they're really the same except one returns 'true' and the other returns the object.

Not the same. If you have a dialog opened with show then call bring_to_front then it will put the window at the top of the stack. But if you click the SketchUp window it'll appear above the WebDialog.
If you use show_modal then the webdialog will never drop behind the sketchup window.

driven

@thomthom said:

Not the same. If you have a dialog opened with show then call bring_to_front then it will put the window at the top of the stack. But if you click the SketchUp window it'll appear above the WebDialog.

I stand corrected... if acting on a previously show_modal, then bring_to_front will stay on top.

` > webdialog=UI::WebDialog.new('blur_focus')
webdialog.set_html("You'll only see me flash!
but I'll exist in a 'show_modal' state")
webdialog.show_modal
webdialog.close
nil

webdialog.set_html("You'll see me, and because I was 'show_modal' to start with, I'll behave like a 'show_modal' dialog!
However, I won't have focus, because 'window.blur()' has been called")
webdialog.bring_to_front
webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()')
true`

My main point was that blur and focus can be set independently of the show-status.
john

alexmojaki

webdialog.execute_script('window.blur()') solves everything instantly. Did not know I could do that. Thanks a lot, driven!

Thanks also to others for staying with my problem for so long.

And yes, wxSU is available for Mac.

Incidentally, I haven't tested any of this on Windows yet, so we'll see what happens when I try there. This might not be over yet.

driven

@alexmojaki said:

[Thanks a lot, driven!

Glad to assist, I'm not a rubyist, but I do alot of mac testing, and ('window.blur()') buggered something up recently, so I tested ('window.focus()') to try to fix that and it was fresh in my mind... chance

@unknownuser said:

And yes, wxSU is available for Mac.

whenever I've tested anything to do with wxSU it plays havoc on the mac, it can work, but little else will after installing it, I now treat it with the same contempt as a lot of people treat MacPorts... use at your own peril.

john

alexmojaki

@alexmojaki said:

Incidentally, I haven't tested any of this on Windows yet, so we'll see what happens when I try there. This might not be over yet.

Aaaand...I'm back! Indeed, this solution doesn't really work on Windows, because as soon as window.blur() is called, it doesn't just remove focus from the dialog, but from the whole Sketchup application! Sketchup goes into the background, yet somehow it is the window that is open according to the taskbar, and if you click on it in the taskbar to try and reopen it it minimises it.