A quick look at all windows? (Mac OS X)

I use Igor Pro on Mac OS 10.10.4 and love to hit F10 ("Application windows") to take a quick look at all windows in order to search for a certain one. But when there are 100 windows in an Packed Experiment File, I couldn't recognize each of them when they are all displayed side by side in a 21.5" screen. Is there any utility which can distribute 100 windows uniformly into, say, 5 groups, with each group located in a different Mac Space (desktop), so that I can examine only ~20 windows at time?
Well, you might try the Graph Browser in the Misc menu.

As for Spaces, we find it confusing and suspect that Igor is too complex to play nicely with Spaces, at least for it to play nicely in an intelligent way. When I have tried to debug user problems with Spaces it always seemed like windows were sliding away and disappearing, or appearing on the wrong monitor or in the wrong place.

Maybe you can convince me otherwise.

John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
johnweeks wrote:
... When I have tried to debug user problems with Spaces it always seemed like windows were sliding away and disappearing, or appearing on the wrong monitor or in the wrong place.


I find this happens with other "simple" apps too (e.g. Curio). IOW, the problem is not unique to Igor Pro. I might fatuously say ... Using Spaces is a juggling act. Windows will be dropped and not always appear where you hope they should. Using Spaces on more than one monitor is a knife throwing contest. Entire slices of work will be cut off in to oblivion.

I do recommend the Window Desktops Package to help administer multiple windows within Igor Pro.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH
I keep forgetting about Window Desktops, even though Adam wrote it! Good suggestion.

I'm also interested to hear what you say about Spaces, especially coming from you- I consider you to be an enthusiastic adopter of any new technology, so to hear you be critical of it is interesting. Thanks.

John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
johnweeks wrote:
I keep forgetting about Window Desktops, even though Adam wrote it! Good suggestion.


Yep! AFAIR, this was one of the early package contributions to IgorExchange before Adam joined Wavemetrics. I cut my teeth on the code and learned a few good tricks for managing what I was doing behind-the-scenes in SpXZeigR.

Perhaps Adam could incorporate Window Desktops natively in to IP 7? (I'd wager some time in my upcoming sabbatical on a race to modernize key parts of SpXZeigR, though I suspect Adam would win that wager hands down. :-))

johnweeks wrote:
I'm also interested to hear what you say about Spaces, especially coming from you- I consider you to be an enthusiastic adopter of any new technology, so to hear you be critical of it is interesting. Thanks.


Thanks for the compliment on the adoption of technology. I've gotten a bit slower though as I get older. I'm a bit more on the "just after the first wave" now. It's due to a growth in caution, the desire for stability and consistency, and the diversions of other fun things instead (nothing beats taking the grandkids out to play).

It is not that I dislike Spaces. I use them extensively and find them a great boon to my workflow. I have however since realized, Spaces has to be used with the clear expectation that, when an app has more than one window open, things will get very scattered very quickly.

So, what you and others see in Igor Pro is not any different than what I see in Curio once I start opening more than one project or I start trying to open the editing panels. The windows float off, disappear, and/or just do not work well. The developer of Curio has said ... this seems to be a common problem with other developers too.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH
jjweimer wrote:
johnweeks wrote:
I keep forgetting about Window Desktops, even though Adam wrote it! Good suggestion.


Yep! AFAIR, this was one of the early package contributions to IgorExchange before Adam joined Wavemetrics. I cut my teeth on the code and learned a few good tricks for managing what I was doing behind-the-scenes in SpXZeigR.

Perhaps Adam could incorporate Window Desktops natively in to IP 7? (I'd wager some time in my upcoming sabbatical on a race to modernize key parts of SpXZeigR, though I suspect Adam would win that wager hands down. :-))


It's on the todo list, but not for Igor Pro 7.
johnweeks wrote:
Well, you might try the Graph Browser in the Misc menu.


Thank you, John. I didn't know about Graph Browser. That really helps.