New windows (split horizontal/vertical) don't have a background

General Discussion Support
1

Environment Information

Avogadro version: 1.99.0 Nightly Build 11/4/2024
Operating system and version: Windows 11 Pro Version 10.0.22631

Expected Behavior

Using the ‘Split Horizontal’ or ‘Split Vertical’ option should create a window that has a background (and potentially inherits the rendering options from the main window)

Actual Behavior

New windows have no background (transparent, can see whatever application is open beneath it)

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image1920×1032 106 KB

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Download Nightly Build from two.avogadro.cc
  2. Unzip and install Avogadro 2
  3. Launch Avogadro 2
  4. Marvel at the beautiful UI
  5. Click ‘Split Horizontal’ or ‘Split Vertical’
  6. Select ‘3D View’
  7. Get Rick Rolled
  8. Profit.
2

Yeah, there’s already a bug report: Background in split view appears transparent · Issue #1729 · OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs · GitHub

I’m not sure what’s happening yet. Not sure if it’s not copying options from the previous pane or not properly creating the OpenGL renderer properly.

3

At the moment, this seems like it’s going to take a bunch of work to fix.

So here’s my question… how high on the priority list should this be?

I know it’s nice to view from multiple angles, but is that more important than say the auto-optimize tool?

4

Honestly I would be ruthless and axe it (for now at least).

If it was used much then someone would have reported it broken much sooner. And I personally have never seen reason to use it.

As you say, your effort is better spent elsewhere.

If someone pops up to ask where it’s gone then it can be taken as a sign of demand and be put on the list to be reimplemented later.

But if things are buggy and non-essential then better to take the opportunity to slim down IMO and decrease your maintenance burden.

5

I actually find myself using that feature nearly every day. I’d say that you should keep it on the list, but it definitely isn’t top priority.

6

I think I need to understand. It works for you, but has a translucent background?

I’ve never seen it work on my Mac…

If it works for you, I can probably fix the background color…

7

Yeah, splitting my screen works fine, but it has a transparent background. All it needs is for the background color to default to black. It would be nice if it could just inherit the display settings from the existing screen, but tbh all I really want is the background.

1 Like
8

Oops. Fair enough, consider me humbled! What do you use it for, out of interest?

9

It’s usually comparing reactant and product structures for NEB calculations. A critical part of that is making sure that the ordering of the atoms in the coordinate file is the same for both, otherwise the calculation fails. By opening up two windows and coloring the atoms in the molecule by their atomic index, I can align the structures and verify that everything is in the right order before I start a calculation. I just so happened to have been doing this not too long ago, so here you can see how it looks.

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I also use it to verify that, in the case of the calculations I run, that the reactant and product structures are symmetric, so I pull up the reactant structure in one window and the product in the other and can rotate the product until it matches the reactant. Here you can see that while the colors are the opposite, the geometry is identical.

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1 Like
10

Huh. Well, this should hopefully do the trick: