Disappearing sliders and wasted space at full screen

Two requests:

  1. The settings and particularly Font Size and Velocity sometimes appear and sometimes not. Particularly Font Size only rarely appears. It would be better if the basic ones always appear, particularly Font Size, Velocity and Step Speed. Other settings, such as Opacity, Line Height, Paragraph Spacing, Word Spacing, Letter Spacing are less critical and may appear only on request.
  2. The fullscreen format leaves some space on the sides, in the portrait position. It would be better if the text width is a bit larger, covering all the screen. In addition, on the right side there is a lost column that is only used to contain the blue circle to start the prompter. Perhaps the blue circle may be placed in some corner and made semi transparent to avoid hidden the text. This way the right column may be used to display text

Many thanks again for your awesome effort.
Best

  1. The settings and particularly Font Size and Velocity sometimes appear and sometimes not. Particularly Font Size only rarely appears. It would be better if the basic ones always appear, particularly Font Size, Velocity and Step Speed. Other settings, such as Opacity, Line Height, Paragraph Spacing, Word Spacing, Letter Spacing are less critical and may appear only on request.

Some toolbar items are hidden, shown, or replaced with smaller equivalents according to the width of your window. This is done to ensure the toolbar’s height remains consistent across a wide range of widths and while toggling prompter’s states.

Font Size in particular is programmed to hide only when not in edit mode. It should not auto hide because of screen width. If you see a different behavior than what Ive described, then you might not be using one of the two latest versions of QPrompt, or you may have discovered a bug; in which case I ask that you please take note of details such as QPrompt version, operating system, window size, screen resolution, screen scaling, and prompter state when Font Size is hidden or shown, and report them for me to replicate the issue.

  1. The fullscreen format leaves some space on the sides, in the portrait position. It would be better if the text width is a bit larger, covering all the screen. In addition, on the right side there is a lost column that is only used to contain the blue circle to start the prompter. Perhaps the blue circle may be placed in some corner and made semi transparent to avoid hidden the text. This way the right column may be used to display text

I cannot control the placement of the blue circle and the buttons to its sides it because that part is managed by the Kirigami framework. There are two alternatives:

  1. We could have the text show behind those buttons, but that may cause text to be covered by the buttons in some screen resolutions, but users would be able to to prevent that by dragging the vertical lines, which would be an inconvenient default for users in that edge case.

  2. We could force use of the desktop UI, which removes the buttons and adds a toolbar at the opposite side, which would be more distracting in my opinion and may take more space.

To change the button’s placement, you can try changing your screen’s orientation at the operating system level. You’d then be able to leave the orientation at “Don’t rotate” and the rounded button would show at the bottom of the screen, leaving all width available for the text.

What mobile desktop environment are you using? Does it provide a way to rotate the entire screen?

Blockquote
then you might not be using one of the two latest versions of QPrompt, or you may have discovered a bug; in which case I ask that you please take note of details such as QPrompt version, operating system, window size, screen resolution, screen scaling, and prompter state when Font Size is hidden or shown, and report them for me to replicate the issue.

version is 1,1,2 (v1.1/072f0a7), arch Linux, windows size 12", screen res 1366x768 (16:9), screen scaling?, prompter state: just started.

Yesterday Font size appeared all day long, but velocity was hidden. Today velocity appeared and font size disappeared, Opacity seems always present and also Step speed and Step acceleration seem always present.

In Orientation settings “Don’t rotate is shadowed” . The only setting I use is vertical mirror, because without the mirror the text cannot be read on the teleprompter glass. I can change screen orientation at OS level simply clicking on the hard button on the side of the tablet, but the width of the text is the same.

But of course all that are minor problems which can be easily faced. Many thanks

prompter state: just started. […] Today velocity appeared and font size disappeared

That’s how it’s programmed to behave on smaller screen sizes.

Yesterday Font size appeared all day long, but velocity was hidden.

I find it very odd that this happened.

arch Linux

What installation method did you use? The AUR package is the only Linux package that I know of that isn’t made and maintained by me, so I cannot guarantee its consistency with other versions. If problems persist, try the AppImage, the Flatpak, or the Snap package.

Each of those uses a version of Qt that has been tested to work correctly and not manifest any known Qt bugs. However, since Arch delivers recent versions of Qt 5 with KDE’s Patch Collection, I don’t expect those issues to be present, but new ones may appear. In fact this is the reason why I officially only provide support for universal packages, with the exception of a Deb package with limited support for Debian.

In Orientation settings “Don’t rotate is shadowed”

That means the setting is selected. Maybe I should use a checkbox for consistency… I avoid it because it takes much space.

I can change screen orientation at OS level simply clicking on the hard button on the side of the tablet, but the width of the text is the same.

Could you upload some pictures of the before (90 deg software rotation) and after (OS screen orientation)? I’d particularly like to see the aforementioned wasted space, to see what could be done to make use of it.

Once more, if problems with disappearing sliders persist, try using the AppImage, the Flatpak, or the Snap package instead.

Appimage

After rebooting your suggestion worked. The blue button appears on the top of the page and the text width is larger enough. So this is solved. But another problem surged: the blue button appears on the tablet, but is hidden on the teleprompter for the physical size. Do you have somewhere a list of keyboard shortcuts? It would be very interesting and perhaps there is one to start prompting.

“velocity” disappeared since a long time, but I am using “step speed” which luckily always appears and it seems to do the same function. Or is there a difference between the two?

I do not know if it is too much burden for you, but a practical solution would be to add a setting section with a list of flag-able sliders, so the user can select which sliders should appear, depending on personal needs, the size of the screen, orientation, etc.

Another detail:
your forum reports the following:

I never received an email alerting that I received a reply. I just return to this page to check it, when I remember.

Anyway Qprompt works superbly and I am very happy with it. Many thanks

Appimage

Excellent! That version is the least likely to have bugs because it almost always uses the same version of Qt as the Windows and Mac versions; meaning bugs are 3 times more likely to get caught during testing.

After rebooting your suggestion worked.

Interesting… If it happens again, try closing QPrompt and opening it again. It may suffice and rebooting may not be totally necessary.

Do you have somewhere a list of keyboard shortcuts? It would be very interesting and perhaps there is one to start prompting.

There is. Go to Main Menu > Control Settings > Keyboard Inputs and you’ll find a list of all keyboard that you can customize. F9 is the default key to Toggle the prompter.

“velocity” disappeared since a long time

This is so strange. And it doesn’t show at any resolution while prompting?

Please send a screenshot of the app, ideally the whole app, in “edit mode”, in which the toolbar can be seen. This will help me replicate your settings to debug why the Velocity slider has disappeared.

but I am using “step speed” which luckily always appears and it seems to do the same function. Or is there a difference between the two?

Using speed works for some people, but it’s not the same. Velocity controls the number of “stepped speed increments in a particular direction”. Speed is the constant number by which each step is multiplied. Acceleration is a (fractional exponent by which your Steps and Speed are elevated to) number which determines how much faster the prompter gets with each step, such that speed increases are larger the more velocity steps you take. The Acceleration setting is there because speed increments are felt less the faster you go. By increasing the velocity by more the faster you’re going, the less steps you need to take to get perceivable changes.

Velocity can be controlled through the keyboard by pressing the Up and Down arrow keys. You can customize these keys like any other. you can also control the velocity using the small buttons to the left and right of the blue circle. If those buttons aren’t visible on screen, there may be a bug with QPrompt’s icon visualization on your system; in which case you could try running the Flatpak followed by the Snap if preferred.

I do not know if it is too much burden for you, but a practical solution would be to add a setting section with a list of flag-able sliders, so the user can select which sliders should appear, depending on personal needs, the size of the screen, orientation, etc.

What I worry is that the interface could get very cluttered and confusing if there are too many customization options. Also, if I give users the option to customize the whole toolbar, they may lay it out in a way in which its height may vary too drastically across screen resolutions and prompter states, which could result in the text jumping up and down when switching prompter states, making QPrompt more frustrating to use.

UI design is one of those things that are easy to code and hard to get right.

I never received an email alerting that I received a reply. I just return to this page to check it, when I remember.

Thank you for letting me know. Yesterday’s e-mail may not have been sent because I proceeded to upgrade the forum software right after after replying. Other e-mails may have been sent to spam. If that is the case, please let me know.

Processing: 20221202_095334.jpg…
Processing: 20221202_095407.jpg…
Processing: 20221202_095435.jpg…

Here are the photos

Regarding the emails, they arrived in the “promotion” folder which I never check

I’m sorry but the pictures didn’t upload. Give them a bit of time to process before pressing the “Reply” or “Save Edit” buttons.

Regarding the emails, they arrived in the “promotion” folder which I never check

That’s likely because QPrompt’s emails are sent through a third party that is also used for advertisement mailing lists. I may need to change providers if this keeps happening, but I’ll leave it for the time being, for a promotions folder is far better than spam.

A few years ago I used to administer my company’s mail server. Keeping accounts secure and preventing e-mails from falling into spam is not a perfect science and takes far more time than it is worth to a small business or, in this case, project. So I’m happy offloading this to a third party.

Even waiting many hours the images do not upload. Size is about 4MB.

I think it’s the image size. The server’s probably set to a 1mb limit and Discourse, the forum software, is not giving feedback that it’s failing. Could you compress into a smaller JPEG? If it’s too much work, you can send them to the email I’ve made public at my Github page: Cuperino (Javier O. Cordero Pérez) · GitHub



I see what you mean about the space… I’ll see what I can do about that, though I doubt there’s much that I can do because if I move the vertical bars too much closer to the corners, they will interfere with the touch gestures to open and close sidebars on touch enabled systems.

With regards to the Velocity slider, it isn’t visible until after the the prompter has entered its prompting state, and the toggle button is saying “Return to edit mode”.
Screen Shot 2022-12-11 at 12.26.13 PM