Re: st: Disappearing variable/results window in Stata 12 for Mac

[cnguyen@stata.com (Chinh Nguyen)]

Malcolm Wardlaw <malcolm.wardlaw@utdallas.edu> wrote:

> I'm having a serious windowing problem in Stata 12 for Mac OS X.  Whenever I
> resize my variable/review window all the way to the edge, the window
> completely disappears and the resizing behavior then resizes the results
> window only.  I can't seem to make the variable/review window reappear.  I've
> tried activating it via the drop-down menu and keyboard, dragging various
> parts of the screen, and moving the windowing scheme from combined to
> widescreen and back again, but nothing seems to bring the windows back.  The
> behavior seems to reset itself after a restart or a change in display
> resolution, but I can't really tell.

In previous versions of Stata for Mac, the Results, Command, Review, and
Variables windows were contained within separate windows.  Not all users
found the Review or Variables windows useful so they would just close them
to hide them.  To bring those windows back, you would select them from the
Window menu.

In Stata 12 for Mac, we introduced what we call the unified interface.  This
combined the Results, Command, Review, and Variables windows into one main
window.  Instead of windows, we refer to the Results, Command, Review, and
Variables interface elements as views.

Since the Review and Variables views are no longer contained within their own
window, you resize them by dragging their adjacent divider or thumb control.
If you resize a view small enough, it will "collapse" and is hidden.  Again,
to bring a hidden view back, just select it from the Window menu.  If that's
what you mean by selecting it from the drop-down menu and it not coming back,
please contact technical support at tech-support@stata.com, because that
should work.

Rather than require that a view be resized all the way to the edge of the main
window to collapse it, you can just drag the divider near an edge of the main
window until it collapses and hides.  Instead of hiding the view, we could have
collapsed a view to a thin vertical line so that it could be resized back into
view again but our feeling was that most people aren't collapsing a view
temporarily, they really mean to hide it.  Leaving a thin vertical line on an
edge of the main Stata to denote a collapsed view that can be resized doesn't
look very good and most users will never use it.

"Airey, David C" <david.airey@vanderbilt.edu> wrote:

> When I resize the window to be smaller some of the components eventually drop
> out (review and variables), leaving the results and command components, and
> review and variables don't reappear upon resizing larger. I have to add them
> back in manually via the windows menu. THis works for me and I'm using OS X
> 10.7.4.

When you resize the main Stata window, the Results view is resized while the
Review and Variables views stay fixed.  There is a minimum size requirement
for the Results view so that once the main window becomes too small, the
Review and Variables views are forced to resize while the Results view stays
at its minimum size.  Because there is a tolerance for how small you can
resize the Review and Variables views before they're automatically collapsed
and hidden, you can resize the main Stata window to a small enough size that
the Review and Variables views will automatically collapse.  Making the main
window bigger after that won't unhide those views because Stata doesn't know
that's how the views were hidden so yes, you do have to manually bring them
back via the Window menu.

> Another thing to try from the menu is factory window settings under
> preferences. That should definitely work.

Always good advice.


--Chinh
cnguyen@stata.com

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