Loss of Header While in Prompt Mode

QPrompt
#1

Hello,

Love the app. I’m running QPrompt on a Macbook Pro M1, Ventura 13.4.1 (22F82)

For some reason the header options disappeared into sub menus when earlier they stayed active in the control window. Pic attached.

Screenshot 2023-10-16 at 1.37.26 PM
Screenshot 2023-10-16 at 1.37.26 PM2854×2164 572 KB

When the view is like this I lose all hot key capability. I find that its tied to the reading region, if its set to bottom then all is well but anything higher than middle then I lose the top bar.

Hopefully this makes sense.

#2

Hi @oms,

Sorry for the delay. The top header is hidden intentionally to bring the reading region closer to webcams. Specifically on MacOS, this leaves some blank space above the window. You can drag the window up manually by grabbing and moving up from the bank area of the editor toolbar, or from the name “QPrompt”, at the top left of the window.

As for the top menu, it is moved to a context menu that you can open by clicking on a button at the bottom right of the prompter. Unfortunately, there’s a bug that makes that button invisible until it is clicked for the first time, but you can still click it, even tho it isn’t visible.

You can prevent the top menu from auto hiding by setting the Reading Region to “Free”, then dragging it very close to the top. Once it’s in a position that works for you, fix its position by setting the Reading Region to “Custom”; this will prevent you from dragging it accidentally as you interact with the program.

I haven’t given priority to the hiding of the menu button that opens the context menu because the bug lies in an upstream library and I want to reduce the number of issues within QPrompt’s code first. The issue has been reported to the upstream library and remains to be fixed. I will probably have to deal with it myself and contribute the fix.

As for the hotkeys, that is caused by a different upstream bug that has a few ugly workarounds in place. I’m presently working on a new feature that allows triggering hotkeys even when QPrompt’s windows aren’t in focus. This will bypass the current issue and allow you to use hotkeys normally. If everything goes well, this feature will land in QPrompt v1.2’s beta for December. Nevertheless, the issue will continue to be present for hotkeys that require the window to be in focus. If a “global hotkey” cannot be attached, QPrompt will fall back to regular hotkeys and you might re-experience the issue.

There are a couple of easy workarounds as it is today. This issue is caused by elements in the UI grabbing cursor focus when you interact with them, but failing to give it back to the prompter automatically. Opening a menu and then closing it without making any interactions is an easy way to trigger this issue. You can quickly work around the issue in these three ways:

  1. While prompting, double click anywhere in the prompter’s text. This will enter “Edit while prompting” mode. Then double click on the text again to exit “Edit while prompting” mode. By doing this, the prompter will regain focus and hotkeys will work again.
  2. You can also open a menu and interact with any item. Interacting with an item in the menus will return focus to the prompter after the menu closes.
  3. Opening and closing the context drawer with the hidden button will also restore focus.

I hope this information helps you work around these limitations. I’m looking forward for you to try a release with global hotkeys. It is the most anticipated feature in QPrompt v1.2.

Cheers,
Javier