Unresponsive UI on first load (mac)

[duncanparsons]

I have an issue where our PT/AAX Cocoa UI is unresponsive when loaded, but click another window/application then back to the host window, and it works.

Before folk run screaming NDA, this may not be an Avid/Digi problem. Their host passes me a pointer to an NSView, and I work with that - this is so utterly obvious that no amount of NDA can get around it. I won't be posting any of their SDK/internals.

So..

We have a synth object which is wrapped for VST, AU, standalone, and AAX. (There's RTAS as well, but that uses Carbon). When any of them want a UI, the wrapper gets the pointer and it's marshalled to the UI generation code with a objwrapper->OpenEditor((void*)mHost_NSView);

My OpenEditor code:

Code: Select all

bool VSTEditor::OpenEditor ( void* inPtr /* system window */)
{
	AEffEditor::open(inPtr); //Yes, yes, I subclassed VST.. it's just easier!

  
  gfl::GFLSize theSize ( 640, 480 );    
  gfl::gPoint origin;

  gfl::Rectangle theRect ( origin, theSize );
  
/*
>>>> Code to read UI details via LUA removed
*/  
  theSize = mMainView->GetRect().size;
  mRect.left = 0;
  mRect.top = 0;
  mRect.bottom = theSize.height;
  mRect.right = theSize.width;
  
#ifdef MAC_Code
  @autoreleasepool {
	try{
		mGFRootView = new gfl::MacCocoaView ( mMainView->GetRect(), MacCocoaView::AAX );

		if([(id)inPtr isKindOfClass:[NSWindow class]]){
			NSWindow* theWindow = static_cast<NSWindow*>(inPtr);
			NSView* contentView = theWindow.contentView;
			mGFRootView->AddTo ( contentView );
		}else if([(id)inPtr isKindOfClass:[NSView class]]){
			NSView* contentView = static_cast<NSView*>(inPtr);
			mGFRootView->AddTo ( contentView );
		}else{
#ifndef __LP64__
        //32bit Cocoa/Carbon code removed, not relevant here
#endif
		}

		mMainView->SetParent(mGFRootView);
		mGFRootView->AddView(mMainView);
	}catch ( gfl::Exception e )	{
		DBG("Caught exception loading ui...\n");
		return false;
	}
	}
#endif //MAC_Code
  return true;
}

This works fine with VST, AU & standalone.

I have found that overriding -acceptsFirstMouse to return YES on my UI window class means I get the UI working first time; but if I click on the desktop then back to the UI it doesn't respond unless I click the hosting UI container window to give it focus, then all works again.

Does this make sense to anyone? Has anyone encountered something like this before? What should I be looking for? I'm guessing it's something fairly rudimentary that my knowledge of OSX is lacking..!

Thanks
DSP

[LemonLime]

On the Mac side, this issue is usually do to responder status and/or keyWindow for NSWindows.

Sorry about the slight shotgun nature here because I'm not familiar with AAX implementation, but I would try these:
- send a "makeKeyAndOrderFront:" message to your NSWindow instance when it loads.
- send a "makeFirstResponder:nil" message when your window gets focus.
- override "acceptsFirstResponder" to return YES.

[duncanparsons]

I will try those! Thank you..

I'll post back when tried (might be a day or two, looking at the diary..)

[duncanparsons]

well, been a while.. solved it some time back, but not returned to update!

acceptsFirstResponder was the thing that did it. Though, I confess I had quite a bit of head scratching for a few days on why it still wasn't working, until it was pointed out to me that I had used 'acceptFirstResponder' - which explained why the 'overridden' function was never called..

So, thx LemonLime

DSP