Anyone else got two-monitor issues with LC9 on Mac?

[Paul Hibbert]

Just to add to the mix, I have been using a two monitor system for many years, I now have an iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017) connected to an Eizo ColorEdge CG 241W, the iMac is 4096 x 2304 and the Eizo is 1920 x 1200, both driven by the same Radeon Pro 560 4 GB card. Both monitors are set to default scaling and I do normally keep the top edges aligned with the menubar on the iMac screen.

I didn’t see too many problems until I upgraded the iMac from a 2009 model. With the new iMac, initially I tried using 2 adaptors to connect the 2nd monitor, going from USB-C (Thunderbolt) to Display-Port and then Display-Port to DVI, not surprisingly that didn’t work too well. Now I have an after-market USB-C to DVI adapter and it has improved no end, looking through the reviews on Amazon it seems the quality of the adapter can make a difference. AFAIK Apple don’t produce/sell a USB-C to DVI adapter.

I have seen problems with bad alignment of LC stacks if the tops of the screens are not aligned in the Display Prefs and I had all sorts of minor problems with many different apps if I moved the menu bar to the Eizo or didn’t align the tops of the displays, to the point where I almost gave up using a second monitor.

Now I keep the tops of the displays aligned and the system MenuBar and LC toolbar/toolbox on the iMac and I tend to keep the stack windows on the iMac (although not always), I use the Eizo mainly for the Script Editor and Dictionary along with the Project Browser and I haven’t seen any major problems lately. Occasionally the cursor just disappears, but comes back if I move it to the iMac Display or manage to hit the dock at the bottom of the screen, that’s not just in LC though.

Problems are definitely not limited to LiveCode, some apps will not work well if I attempt to use the second monitor, so I suspect there are some underlying OS issues,  possibly from mixing the two different types of display. One of the worst apps is Flux 7, it’s almost unusable without some major adjustments to the app windows.

After seeing Mark’s last response in this thread I tried a few tests with the display arrangements and switching the MenuBar around, everything was working as expected until I arranged the bottom of both displays and then tried to re-arrange so the tops of the displays aligned (approx the 7th arrangement), then the LC revMenuBar ended up in the middle of the iMac display and I couldn’t see any response from clicking on the stack, LC toolbox/toolbar or any open palette. As soon as I used the message box to reset the position of the revMenuBar everything started working again. Then I re-started LC, the positions were screwed up again, so I trashed the prefs and all is fine again.

My thought are; from my experience this isn’t just a LC issue, the quality/type of adapter may help, keeping the Mac MenuBar on the Mac seems to be more stable and it doesn’t seem to affect the way most apps work AFAICS, keeping the tops of the Displays aligned in the Prefs pane also helps especially in LC, some apps just don’t support dual/multiple monitors well. My final observation is switching the display options around with LC open can really screw up it's prefs!

Paul