Windowed Mode vs. Full-Screen Mode
By default, LivePrompter displays its lyrics and chords in full-screen mode; no window borders, no resizing… This is by design: a prompter should be just a prompter, no distractions, no multitasking.
But since some users want to run LivePrompter alongside other applications, I have implemented a “windowed” mode. If you add the following line to LivePrompter.ini, song display will open in a resizable window:
FullScreen=no
To avoid nasty side-effects, the main window will be hidden as soon as a song is displayed.
Normally, the song-window will open in “always-on-top”-mode, i.e. it will always stay above all other windows. If you don’t want this behavior, use
AlwaysOnTop=no
Just be aware of one thing: if the song window loses the focus (when you activate a different window), the key commands will not work anymore, so don’t be surprised when this happens. Simply click on the song window and everything will be back to normal.
Saving Window Positions
On exiting, LivePrompter saves the positions of the main window and (if run in windowed mode) of the song display window. When starting again, both windows should remember their previous positions.
For those users working with varying screen setups, you can have different screen layouts (positions of both windows) by using multiple .ini files to start LivePrompters with and changing the setting of “ScreenLayout”.
ScreenLayout=1
You can choose any number to select a different “slot” to save your window positions to (except 0, which is the default layout). So, maybe you have one configuration for a double-screen setup in your studio and one for your laptop on the road. Now you create two .ini files: studio.ini and mobile.ini, which are identical, except for different values for “ScreenLayout”. Simply start Cantabile with these .ini files. The easiest way to do this: create a shortcut with the target:
“C:\path to prompter\LivePrompter.exe” studio.ini
Now, clicking this shortcut will launch LivePrompter with the multi-monitor layout defined in your studio (you define a layout by simply positioning your windows to your likings and closing LivePrompter).
This also works for those of you who want to run multiple instances of LivePrompter in parallel (maybe displaying your lyrics with chords and comments for yourself, while only showing lyrics on your second screen for a sing-along event). Simply launch each instance with a different .ini file with a different value of ScreenLayout – now both will have their window locations saved individually.
Forcing Window Positions
If you want to be absolutely sure that a LivePrompter window always appears at a certain position and size, you can override any saved settings and specify the window positions and sizes in LivePrompter.ini using ScreenX, ScreenY, ScreenW, ScreenH for the main window and SongX, SongY, SongW, SongH for the song display window.
Multi-Monitor Setups
Multi-monitor setups are pretty common nowadays, especially with musicians. So, LivePrompter has ways to customize its display for these setups:
- In its default full-screen mode, LivePrompter will display its song window on the same monitor that contains its main window. So, if you move your main window to a different monitor, the song window will then display there.
- You can change this behavior by defining a specific monitor for the full screen view to show on, independent of the main window (maybe you’ll want to select songs on your main screen and display the song on your secondary window. In this case, put “FullScreenDisplay=x” in your .ini file, with x giving the display number of the selected monitor. You can find the correct number in the Windows display properties (“Identify”).
- In windowed mode, simply push your main and song window to whatever monitor you want them to display on. LivePrompter will remember the positions and restore them on startup
- When you change your monitor configuration (e.g. unplug your second screen on your laptop) and one of the windows suddenly finds itself outside the viewable range, LivePrompter will (on its next start) simply relocate the window to your monitor #1.
Here are all the configuration settings for monitor magic in summary:
| FullScreen | If yes, the song window will show on the full screen, if no,the song window will be a normal, moveable and sizable window. |
| ScreenLayout | This allows you to have different saved window layouts. Simply put a different number (not 0) in any configuration (custom .ini file) and the size and position of windows will be saved and recalled separately |
| FullScreenDisplay | In multi-display configurations, specify the number of the display that you want the full-screen song window to show on. |
| ScreenX | Force horizontal position of the selection window by specifying the x coordinate in pixels here |
| ScreenY | Selection window y coordinate (top to bottom; top = 0) |
| ScreenW | Selection window width |
| ScreenH | Selection window height |
| SongX | Song window x coordinate |
| SongY | Song window y coordinate |
| SongW | Song window width |
| SongH | Song window height |