eWriter Window Title and Menu

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Marc
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eWriter Window Title and Menu

Unread post by Marc »

Either I am missing something important, or there are a number of issues related to the configuration and display of the eWriter format:

Window Title
In one project I tested, the window title constantly equals the help title set in the project configuration. It NEVER changes. In another project, after hiding and showing the window (and only then), the window title matches the current topic. When I open another topic, the old title remains visible.
I suppose the refresh does not work correctly here? Shouldn’t it be refreshed when the window is shown for the first time and each time another topic is opened? Why do both projects behave differently?

Application menu can't be hidden
In the eWriter configuration, there is an option labeled “Include an Application Menu”. If you deselect this option, the menu items disappear in the output, but the menu itself does not. This looks like an error and does not make sense. I do not want to have any menu or text here. In another post you suggested as a workaround to enter some sort of "help title" here. However, if it doesnt work, why do you provide the “Include an Application Menu” option after all?

Application menu command removes entry
When I add an item to the application menu and assign to this item the type of entry “Command” and the command “:home” the item does not appear in the menu. (As a workaround, I can select the type of entry to be “Page link” and the corresponding page.) However, if the “:home” command does not work, why is it available? Am I missing something?

Icon and text alignment
In the title bar of the window, the (default or custom) icon, the menu text, and the "go back" and "go forward" icons seem to be not properly aligned on the same axis. I guess there is nothing I can do about this?
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Last edited by Marc on Mon Dec 12, 2022 11:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Alexander Halser
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Re: eWriter Window Title and Menu

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

Hello Marc,

You are correct, the "Home" command has been deprecated and the old home button removed from the toolbar. We've got to fix this in the configuration section of Help+Manual.
Window Title
The window title displays the (long) title of the help file/ebook. It does not change when you change the topic. This functionality was implemented in older versions of the viewer, but did not always work - depending on the skin used for publishing, it might have stayed static though. With the MacOS version of the viewer, a change of the window title became generally obsolete. That's counter-intuitive on MacOS and unusual on Windows with other formats as well (e.g. CHM files, PDF, etc.). To unify the behavior of the viewer, we've removed the switching title. It often did not work anyway.
Application menu can't be hidden
That's right. Due to the design of the updated viewer, there's always an application button visible. If your app menu contains only 1 entry (which we recommend in this case), it displays the (short) title of the help file/ebook. If there is more than one item in the app menu, it displays a dropdown arrow as well and clicking on that displays the app menu. Either case, the button is visible and cannot be hidden.
Application menu command removes entry
This is for the "Home" command only, because that has been depricated.
Icon and text alignment
This is the Windows application icon, that (almost) every window on Windows has. The OS displays this at 16 x 16 pixels by default and neither the size nor the placement can be changed. This icon is linked to the system menu, also displayed by Windows. The application button next to it and the adjacent toolbar buttons are higher than 16 pixels and fill the higher-than-normal caption bar. By the way, this behavior works on Windows 8+ only and only if there is no "high-contrast" system setting in place. On older Windows versions, or Windows 10/11 with high-contrast settings, it reverts to a normal caption height and puts the application button below the caption bar.


Using eViewer 2.5 instead of 3.x

If you don't like the new look & feel, you can still use the older eWriter viewer 2.5, which is still available from this link:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/download/ ... -winxp.exe

To create an EXE-book directly from Help+Manual 9, you must change the "eviewer.exe" that is being delivered with H&M and placed in the \Tools folder of the H&M installation directory. Replace the file "eviewer.exe" with an older version and you are good to go. The (new) configuration in Help+Manual for eWriter export should be sufficiently compatible. (For the 2.5 version, the "Home" command in the app menu still makes sense, it's perhaps a good idea to keep this for the time being.)
Alexander Halser
Senior Software Architect, EC Software GmbH
Marc
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Re: eWriter Window Title and Menu

Unread post by Marc »

Thanks for shedding some light on this :-)
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