Force window to iconise

I would like to find a way for one program to tell another program to iconise its window.

Im my complex software system, which you might recall me mentioning before, some of the networked computers start up with no mouse or keyboard. However the code contains a lot of *report commands. While I can turn these off, whenever a BASIC error occurs it gets reported, which causes the reporter window to re-open if it has been closed. If !Reporter is not running then the *report commands produce their own error and those programs then quit.

(There’s one part of the code which uses a combination of ON ERROR LOCAL and ON ERROR OFF to tolerate an error which is expected, as it is testing whether a variable exists.)

I have two possible solutions:

1 Don’t run !Reporter at startup, and go through about 25 programs and about 20 libraries and replace all the “*report” commands with “*X report”

2 Iconise the !Reporter window

However without a mouse present there doesn’t seem a way to do option 2 without using VNC. Can part of my software startup cause !Reporter to iconise? (Or I suppose, force its window off-screen or behind the backdrop)

Forcing offscreen should be as simple as sending a redraw window message with the new position set.

I’m pettry sure I’ve done this before – I think it’s a WindowOpen message. Just checked one thing – when !Reporter updates its window, it doeesn’t pull it back on-screen, which would have beeen a problem.

*Set Alias$Report X %Report %*0

I think it’s a WindowOpen message.

I know how to identify a task by name, but not how to find the window handle for it’s (only) window.

*Set Alias$Report X Report %*0

Brilliantly simple, except I need to do that for all the reporter commands, e.g. reportmem, reporterror etc.
Initial tests locked up the computer after an “abort on data transfer”. More testing needed I think.

First test: Having aliased report, it encountered a X report which it definitely didn’t like.
Having removed those, it’s still aborting. The trigger is "*report \V menufile$"

*Set Alias$Report X Report %*0

Does that not end up in a loop?

Maybe: *Set Alias$Report X %Report %*0

Thanks – edited the original in case droids from the future come back and do some AI CopyPasta

Maybe: *Set Alias$Report X %Report %*0

That’s fixed it. Thanks guys

Now using

*set alias$report X %report %*0
*set alias$reportmem X %reportmem %*0
*set alias$reporterror X %reporterror %*0
*set alias$reportdump X %reportdump %*0
*set alias$reportstack X %reportstack %*0

The reportmem command now displays in the Reporter window an error “not in BASIC”, but I can live with that. It doesn’t stop the program, and if Reporter isn’t running (which is the purpose of all this) nothing adverse happens.

It’s rather fortunate that I agreed to talk to WROCC about this setup this week, because I want to demo it without all the diagnostic output (which slows it down).

Without the talk, in a month when it goes live at a competition, I might have hit this at a very inconvenient point.

Serendipity-doo-dah-day

I wrote too soon. The fact that the reportmem command when aliased said “not in BASIC” should have alerted me to the fact that that Reporter does some very devious stuff.

It turns out that normally *report A$ would display As="test message" for example.

When aliased *report A$" returns A$ without returning its value.

So it seems that when aliased, Reporter is looking in the alias environment, not in the BASIC one, so doesn’t work.

So a new version of the question: How do I get StrongED to do a search and replace on all the BASIC files in a folder, replacing “*report” with “*X report” ?

Use !Zap or !Edit. StrongED always confused me.

I’ve never used Zap. I don’t think Edit can do a batch operation like this.

In StrongED I could drop all the files onto StrongED and it will open all of them. Then use shift-F4 to open search and replace on the first, set it up and do replace-all, then close and save. Then use shift-F4 again, choose previous (to get the previously used search and rellace items) and repeat.

For over 50 files.

Notepad++ on Windows makes it easier, but obviously can’t handle BASIC files on RISC OS.

So it seems that when aliased, Reporter is looking in the alias environment, not in the BASIC one, so doesn’t work

There isn’t an environment in which an alias runs – it is always expanded to text and then that is run instead of the original command. The problem with *Report here is that it’s not expecting to have been run from the X utility, so that global replace in BASIC won’t help.

You can open all the files in Edit in the same fashion as StrongEd (hardly doing it as a batch properly, is it?)
1) do F4 to search and replace in first file, End of File replace
2) save that file
3) next file
4) do F4 again, press F2 to recall previous parameters (or click Previous), Enter, Enter (or click Go)
5) save that file
6) goto 3

The problem with *Report here is that it’s not expecting to have been run from the X utility, so that global replace in BASIC won’t help.

Ah. I hadn’t appreciated that X was a utility. At least you’ve saved me trying to do a global edit without messing anything up.

Back to the “push the window out of the way” method.

Iconise the !Reporter window

Surely that doesn’t help as it will keep reappearing?

Would Reporter > Config > Hide window help?

It does stay iconised while receiving updates – that’s how I often run it.

Would Reporter > Config > Hide window help?

Hiding it’s too easy – I’d missed that one. Thanks again. I can set that in a boot script.

It does stay iconised while receiving updates – that’s how I often run it.

So it does! That’s useful to know, as I usually close the Reporter window and it pops up again a bit later. Told you I didn’t use iconise ever…

Told you I didn’t use iconise ever…

I’ve turned it off entirely on my machines
A window that’s open but not open… no thanks.

I’ve turned it off entirely on my machines
A window that’s open but not open… no thanks.

Normally I’d agree.

But the situation here is that I am using Reporter to produce debugging information. In production operation I turn most (but unfortunetely not all) debugging output off, and I don’t want it visible to users. Nor do I want the empty window visible on screen, even if no debugging is being sent.

If Reporter isn’t running then any debug output produces errors that quit my application, which again I don’t want. If I close the Reporter window, the next output to it pops it up at the front of the stack.

Putting the window out of sight is the best compromise. I can’t find a way to force the window to iconise without using the mouse (and some computers don’t have a mouse attached), so I either force it off-screen, which is possible, or use the facility in Reporter to hide the window.

On a computer where I am able to use the mouse, iconising works perfectly well, but I can’t get the computer to start up like that.

Perhaps it’s a suggestion to Andrew R for Pinboard 2 development? *Iconise <window title> (hopefully wildcardable)

If it is for the purpose of demonstrating the software, why not use a computer with a local mouse and keyboard, so they are present at startup?

It showed up while I was preparing a demonstration, but the real problem will come when it’s being used in anger.

I want to show 5 separate demos of part of the system, and they take time to get going. The idea was to set up each on a different rPi, and use preconnected VNC sessions, then screen sharing in Zoom to show the selected screen. Because VNC is pre-connected, I can sort out the unwanted window in advance, but it’s a headache I don’t need at the actual event.

The rPi’s don’t have screen, mouse or keyboard, because there isn’t space for all that here. I’m using this as an opportunity to get an image of the rPi SD card so I can easily clone the cards, which for the actual event, will be used in at least 8 rPi’s.

I am away from home atm (hence my late arrival to this), so only have VRPC to run RISC OS.
The best way to close a Reporter window until specifically wanted is certainly *ReportOpt Hide
Using X with Reporter commands generally works, but there are obviously some issues. In BASIC the Basic-only commands seem to get confused, though I have never seen aborts.
I admit I have never tried aliasing Reporter commands with the added X command, which may cause issues.
These issues will be investigated when I get home, but that will be no help for Adam’s talk.
When I did my WROCC talk, I used VNC viewer to show each one of two RPis, one running headless. The one being used was shared with Zoom. I found that unused connections may timeout, but they reconnected quickly enough not to be a problem.

I found that unused connections may timeout, but they reconnected quickly enough not to be a problem.

Most systems use keep-alive packets to prevent that kind of thing.

If you still want to move windows off screen my WindOpen module is probably the easiest way.

If you still want to move windows off screen my WindOpen module is probably the easiest way.

I’ll try to remember that next time a need arises.

though I have never seen aborts.
I admit I have never tried aliasing Reporter commands with the added X command, which may cause issues.

The issue arose because of 2 mistakes in tandem:

I had used *Set Alias$Report X Report %*0 – which loops
I also had in the BASIC X report ... which of course ends up as *X *X report ...

The combination needed alt-break to stop the looping “abort on data transfer” messages.

If I had RTFMed more closely, the questions would not have arisen. The hide option solves my problem.