Analysis window and Fancy Zones

AmiBroker
1

Hello All,

I just became aware that Microsoft has made available an updated version of Power Toys. One of its offerings is a lightweight window management utility named Fancy Zones. This is useful to me and works well with my Windows 10 applications, including the main Amibroker, but unfortunately does not seem compatible with the separate Analysis windows, neither normal or floating. Does anyone know why this may be the case or have a solution involving a setting change or a tweak to the Registry?

Russell

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I think Fancy zones wont see the child windows within AB frame. Yet to try it out.

There are two parts to this.
Chart windows and Analysis Windows.

For analysis windows, it is an ongoing discussion long before I used AB and may be available in future versions. Currently, these windows states in terms of positions and size are not saved.

Chart windows can use the in-built features like Tiling vertical / horizontally or your own preference of arranging them even if they overlap.
Create as many as you want and each time save them under "Layouts".

In one click, you can get whatever Layout that you like.
Layouts can further be Global or Local to specific DB
It seems to do more than Fancy Zones.

Again certain limitations do exist, as mentioned about Analysis windows and Chart windows when they are floating. Just try each combination, because I had once written to Tomasz and he told me certain things can be done in future versions and some they could not address because of limitations of 3rd Party UI library.

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nsm51,

Well your message did not provide a fix that would allow Fancy Zones to control the size and location of Analysis windows, but your comments did give me some incentive to experiment with Layouts in order to find additional ways in which they might prove useful. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

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if your aim is to organize your windows including the "undocked" or "floating" windows of Amibroker I use a little free tool called "Winsplit Revolution". It has not been updated since 2011. I believe I downloaded it from here. Last version is 11.4: https://winsplit-revolution.nl.softonic.com/

there seems to be an update here: https://maxto.net/compare/winsplit_revolution/

i am not sure if the update (which is not free) is written by the same people but the free version works great in Windows 10. Does all I need and is really simple to use. I tried a couple of other programs but also had problems with the floating/undocked windows and found them quit difficult to use. I Also use Winsplit Revolution to organize my floating IB windows.

In the layout settings you can set up all the positions you like. 1 tip is that these layout settings are saved inside a file called layout in the hidden directory:
C:\Users\ComputerName\AppData\Roaming\Winsplit Revolution

I find it easier to edit all the layouts directly in an editor but it is not needed

there are also a couple of youtube videos about "Winsplit Revolution"

4 Likes
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@empottasch, an alternative to that utility is WiLMA, but this tool also is quite old (2010), and I do not know if it works on recent OS version (I have it on an old Win7 PC, and I see that I put the application in a non-default "Program ..." folder so probably there was some write permission rights issue).
Anyway, it had a lot of advanced features to control windows on multiple monitors.
The main limitation was that it did not run the applications; in the case of AB, this means you have to open/float all your windows manually (analysis, charts, batches, etc.) before using the layout configuration created to reposition/resize them.

So I played a bit with AutoHotkey, a scripting based tool that may come handy also for many other tasks!

After some trial and error (in part due to the unusual syntax), I was able to achieve what I had in mind.

With it, I can launch AmiBroker and some related apps, open/float its windows (essentially "sending" to the app's menu items some keystrokes and mouse clicks), before automatically repositioning/resizing them.

I found that for my needs, it was best to start with an "empty" AmiBroker frame. Then control the open dialog to load one by one all the needed "windows" files (.apx, .abb, .charts) sending, where required, additional keystrokes before using a mouse click/keys sequence to float them, and finally move/resize each window on my monitors.

The "Spy" utility installed by AutoHotkey greatly helps to get the windows titles, control classes, processes, and exact coordinates to incorporate in the script (there are different modes: screen, window, client).

To edit the script, I recommend using SciTE4AutoHotkey, a Scintilla based editor, that you'll find very familiar!

We all know that a native AmiBroker solution would be far superior; in any case, I believe that some "layout" commands could be considered, in a future version, as new "Batch" features.

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Thanks for such a nice write-up.

There is a bridge utility for punching orders written by someone else that uses AutoIT and it is very useful.
Most brokers dont provide APIs and if they do, its not worth the cost.
I will give that a try over this weekend.
Basically, we have to program/simulate the mouse interaction with the user interface.

1 Like
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empottasch Your suggestion of winsplit-revolution seems like it might be just what I was looking for. I tried 5 other window management utilities (including MaxTo, the supposed replacement) and found them all lacking and ineffective in controlling Amibroker's Analysis windows. I still need to spend more time getting up to speed on Winsplit-revolution's full capablilities and the YouTube videos you mentioned were quite helpful in that regard. Thanks a bunch.

beppe Your comments, even though directed to Ed, were beneficial to me also since they pointed out a possible alternate solution. And for reminding me about AutoHotKey, which for quite some time I have been meaning to see how it might speed up my daily repetitive tasks.

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thanks, for now I am fine with this little Winsplit Revolution tool, but I will remember this thread and return if I need something else. The Winsplit tool also allows you to define hotkeys. I use this little pop-up window myself but you can also use CTL-ALt Numpad, or whatever you define yourself. I find it a great little tool.

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I am still using Winsplit even in Windows 11. But last week I installed a program called "Input Director" that allows you to control multiple computers (each with multiple screens) with 1 mouse and 1 keyboard, see: Input Director - Software KVM to Control Multiple Computers

There are a couple of similar tools. Microsoft also has a free tool for this but that 1 does not work well. "Input director" is great, works perfect.

But it seems that after installing "Input director" "Winsplit" is no longer working on the client computer :frowning_face:

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Hello Russman,

Divvy is working with W10 / W11 also in AB "Floating Mode" :smiley: ... , Hot-key and Position-management ...

Best regards,
Peter

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Divvy looks like a nice little tool. Will also try it out. I have Winsplit working again also on the Client machine (so it is running while simultaneously running "Input Director"). Not sure what fixed it but it is working

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Thanks a Lot empottasch , it is helping me.

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DisplayFusion quite good if you only have one screen like me (laptop connected monitor).