I love this facility to open 2 or more Quick Reference panels and then choose Window > Merge Windows and have them appear in one window, each panel in a separate tab.
However, and I am hoping this is a bug, if I merge QR panels, Float Quick Reference Panels is then grayed out.
Which means if I choose Merge Windows, I CANNOT make the QR Panels window float. This seems to make the tabbing of multiple QR panels rather worthtless since I cannot view the panels while I am writing in the main editor.
I thank Bookter for working through this with me, but since I was not able to make it work as he had (with merged tabbed QR panels AND floating the window), I’m making this new post to see if anyone else is having the same problem I am.
I’ve been after fixing this for 3 nights, and I refuse to give up.
Could you try the steps in EXACTLY this order please? Start with Scrivener closed completely.
Open a single Scrivener project.
Create 2 or three independent QR windows.
Window > Float Quick Reference Panels
Click in one of the QR windows so that it has the focus. This step is essential – if you don’t do this then the merge windows feature will be greyed out
Invoke Windows > Merge All Windows.
This works for me every time – I have a tabbed floating QR window at the end of it.
I suspect that the reason it’s not working for you is that you don’t have a QR window focused, so that Merge all Windows is referring to the Project Window — if you have more than one Project Window it will merge them, or if you’ve already done that or if you only have one project window open, Scrivener thinks there’s nothing to do. So you have to force it to refer to QR windows by focusing one of them.
That’s what I thinks going on anyway — if you follow those steps and it’s still not working or if other people find it doesn’t work, then there’s something going on I can’t reproduce.
I give up. I have copied your instructions and showed what happened:
Open a single Scrivener project. YES
Create 2 or three independent QR windows. YES
Window > Float Quick Reference Panels YES - and the windows now float
Click in one of the QR windows so that it has the focus. This step is essential – if you don’t do this then the merge windows feature will be greyed out YES
Invoke Windows > Merge All Windows. It is still grayed out.
I don’t know what else to suggest, because I can’t replicate the problem. It just works for me. There must be something in your setup up preventing it working, but I don’t know what it is.
I haven’t tried this at all and can’t right now. You might want to experiment with different system settings at:
Finder Preferences > General > check and uncheck, Open folders in tabs instead of new windows
And: System Preferences > Dock > Prefer tabs when opening documents (there’s three options in the adjoining menu)
Try the preference settings alone and in different combinations. The above settings are in 10.12.6. Whichever OS you’re on, the settings themselves and their locations are probably the same or similar.
This is a deliberate limitation - or rather, it’s a limitation imposed by the fact that tabs do not work well with floating windows, which seems to be an Apple bug. For instance, if you have a tabbed floating window and switch apps, returning to the app with the tabbed window will show the windows as if they are separate again until you click on them. Apple automatically disables the ability to merge floating windows. So the fact that “Merge” is disabled for floating windows is an Apple thing, and the fact that “Float Quick Reference Panels” is disabled for tabbed windows is done in my code to avoid the Apple bugs and to stay consistent with Apple’s limitations. If Apple fixes the bug or improves the behaviour, I will remove the limitation.
@Keith: you write, “For instance, if you have a tabbed floating window and switch apps, returning to the app with the tabbed window will show the windows as if they are separate again until you click on them.”
I could live with that, personally. The idea of tabbed floating windows is very appealing, and the inconvenience of having to click on the windows again is a minor inconvenience. And, it’s not that often, I click away to other apps while in Scrivener anyway.
But if you choose to leave it disabled, I understand. As I said before, the idea of tabbling QR panels is not very usable unless they float.
If I Merge Windows for several Quick Ref panels, I can minimize the window containing those QR panel tabs after viewing or grabbing some text within one of the panels.
However, if I have project windows also tabbed, I lose the minimized QR tabbed panels when I switch between projects.
As you can see, the QR window is both tabbed and floating. You can’t add any more, of course, without recreating the steps.
What I hadn’t done is cmd-tab to another program and back — when I do that, I get the Apple bug Keith mentions of having to click in the QR window.
In other words, you can have them if you’re happy to put up with this Apple bug — it’s not that there isn’t a way to have the tabs in QR windows at all.
Actually, I never use tabs anyway, so it’s all academic to me…
Once I upgraded to the latest version of High Sierra 10.13.2, I too am able to do exactly what Brookter mentions, I can have tabbed QR panels and floating windows.
