barrygordon

I am new to PTE but not new to the PC/Laptop/Display world. In my Home theater I use a PC to control it and to present certain information on a 20" 4:3 LCD monitor configured at 1024x768. the PC has a villageTronics graphics card (VTbook, PCMCIA cardbus device) installed ina PCMCIA slot. This adapter allows for DVI out (also has a DVI to VGA adapter) and is a true second dsisplay on the PC. Its resolution does not have to be the same as the main display. In fact on my system the secondary display is configured for HiDef TV at 1280x720 60 hz with 32 bits of color depth. Writing to coordinates starting 1024,0 and extending to coordinates (1024+1280,720) puts data on the second display from a programming standpoint. Many newer apps understand the concept of a second monitor. There are API's in windows to allow a program to determine then number of monitors, the coordinates of each, the resolutions and the color depths. It would be great if the PTE system allowed on the Project options/screen dialog a way to specify the monitor (display) to use with a default to the primary display at run time if only one is installed on the system it is running on. Perhaps the best way would be to have a command line parameter for the exe to indicate the monitor it is to run on or the screen coordinates (and display properties if necessary) to use for the running of the exe.

I just found PTE and it does just what I want with one show stopping exception. I have a Theater in my home controlled by a PC. I develop my own software for the PC and the PC runs the entire theater (lighting, component selection, switching, IR control etc.). I have been looking for a good slide show program and PTE fills the bill. It really is superb. The PC, a Notebook, has 2 displays. The main display (display 1 (1024,768)) drives a 20" LCD monitor which shows what is going on control and selection wise. Display 2 is driven by a high resolution PCMCIA video card (1280x720 DVI)) and is fed into the system switcher/scaler (which is conrolled by the PC) and then to the Projector. For example, when I want to display the DVD library I place the text onto display 2, and switch the system so that the PC's Display 2 is the feed to the Projector. I have been trying to figure out a way to have the PTE EXE display on display 2. From what I have determined it can not be done. I have tried putting a shortcut to the PTE exe on display 2, I have tried using ShellExecuteEX in my PC program to launch the PTE exe on display 2 (that is an option). Nothing works. In V4.48 there was a setting for screen size. In my naive mind I thought if there was a setting for the upper left corner of the screen I might be able to do it (1024,0 is the upper left corner of Display 2 on my system). There is a set of API's that allows a program to determine the monitor's charachteristics, given the coordinate of a point on that display. Is there any way to get the exe to show on display N of a multi monitor system? Once that is resolved - Will the PTE exe accept windows messages or SendKeys sequences to allow another application to control the running of the program (Pause, prior, next, terminate). The only thing I have gotten to work is the API to terminate the process, but that has nothing to do with the PTE exe. If the above can not be done now, is there any chance it might be in a future release? Multi Monitor situations are becoming very common in auditoriums, presentation rooms, conference rooms, and Home theaters.