Windows PC-Basic Does not open entirely on-screen

[Anonymous]

From: Mark Coffman
To: Rob Hagesman

I wonder if you could find out if there is any way to have PC-Basic open with its entire
terminal Window on-screen. My Windows 10 is 1920X1080 video format so about 1/8"
borders at the top and bottom of the screen would do. The problem of course is
that MS Windows randomly origins the starting window which usually causes the last two
or three text lines plus those ugly white function key headers to be invisible off the screen.
When you are seriously using PC-Basic the cursor will then drift down there and
eventually drops off the screen. Then you have to find the cursor is not there and
deduce that the Basic screen requires relocation.Which then reveals those function key
headers. If you can't specify it directly I wonder if it's possible to either automatically
relocate the screen or perhaps put an invisible sub-window at the bottom so that MS
Windows thinks that there is something important there that should be placed onscreen
initially.

Thanks, Mark

​

[Rob Hagemans]

I don't think this is possible - as far as I know the positioning of the window is determined by the operating system. PC-BASIC scales the window to a size that fits on the screen while maintaining the correct aspect ratio, but if Windows decides to show it partially off screen then there isn't much I can do about that. (You should be able to see it's not the whole window though, given that the window frame would be incomplete. Or does Windows 10 not have window frames?)

You could try using the F11+F key combination or the fullscreen option to set PC-BASIC to full screen, which will avoid the issue. Or you could start with a smaller window by using the dimensions option. See http://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/doc/#settings for documentation on these options.

The PyGame library that PC-BASIC uses does not allow opening more than one window at a time so trickery with 'invisible' windows is not possible - and even if it were, I'm frankly not willing to go there: it would be incredibly time-consuming to get right and test on multiple operating systems and screen dimensions, and be totally unmaintainable.

[Anonymous]

Hi Mark, I think the screen positioning might be better with the latest version 15.08.11 as I've made some changes to how the window is opened. On the Windows versions I've tried, it now opens in the moddle of the screen.

Rob