LabVIEW with desktop managers on Windows7

[ThomasGutzler]

I have a 13" laptop, which I sometimes use to develop on.

To organise my desktop I run the VirtuaWin virtual desktop manager, a great piece of software that lets me distribute my open applications over several virtual desktops. I chose it because it's lightweight, free and has sensible keyboard shortcuts. My Browser can be on one, email on the next and LabVIEW on the third, etc.

 

Running LabVIEW isn't such a great experience though. Everytime I switch to a different desktop and come back to the one with LabVIEW on it all front panels and block diagrams are just white. Usually I can force a redraw of all windows by pressing Windows+D twice to minimise and restore all windows. This is quite annoying and sometimes doesn't work with all windows.

 

What experience do you have with desktop managers for windows and their use together with LabVIEW?

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I have a 13" laptop, which I sometimes use to develop on.

To organise my desktop I run the VirtuaWin virtual desktop manager, a great piece of software that lets me distribute my open applications over several virtual desktops. I chose it because it's lightweight, free and has sensible keyboard shortcuts. My Browser can be on one, email on the next and LabVIEW on the third, etc.

 

Running LabVIEW isn't such a great experience though. Everytime I switch to a different desktop and come back to the one with LabVIEW on it all front panels and block diagrams are just white. Usually I can force a redraw of all windows by pressing Windows+D twice to minimise and restore all windows. This is quite annoying and sometimes doesn't work with all windows.

 

What experience do you have with desktop managers for windows and their use together with LabVIEW?

 

I don't have any experience with them, but it doesn't surprise me that there are issues with that. Such managers would have to hook deep into the Windows graphic subsystem. Since Microsoft never really has planned for such an interface there are many issues to be expected since such a manager will have to intercept various low level windows messages, some of them not even documented anywhere and also with differences between various Windows versions. So they will all have some issues somewhere as they will almost never be able to fully transparently hook into the Windows graphic subsystem.

 

X Windows which has actually a quite clear client server architecture and therefore a well documented interface between the two is also having such issues depending on X server and windows manager version and implementation since even there the servers and clients don't always implement every functionality fully correct. Imagine how harder it must be to create a properly working window manager on a system where most of this interaction is in fact undocumented and officially unexposed.