Weird behavior...

[kyriakos876]

Hello, I've posted something similar in the past but turned out a typo was the issue (I still didn't think the outcome of a typo should be like that but whatever). The issue was a Clamp parenthesis was missing and I got errors in the log. That would cause an image included at #@# to open in windows default image viewer (In my case, the one that comes preinstalled with windows).
Now this case is different because there is no syntax error or any error in general showing in the log.

What you wanna do to recreate this is:
1) Install the skin below (It has some other skins too but I didn't touch anything as it could affect stuff) and load the "Launcher" one if you choose not to launch it on installation.
2) After loading the skin you should 4 icons.
3) Now move your mouse ON those icons from left to right and visa versa while continuously scrolling down with your mouse wheel. This refreshes the skin and on some random refresh, you will experience what I'm talking about.

It can take a lot of scrolling but it should happen, mine usually happens in around 40 seconds of fast scrolling and not so fast moving the mouse left to right WHILE scrolling. (I'm suggesting that you move the mouse as it activates the Clamp which I think it's what's causing this.)

About Rainmeter:

Rainmeter 4.3.0.3249 beta (64-bit)
Language: English (1033)
Build time: 2018-09-13 9:33:50
Commit Hash: 996ebcc0
Windows 10 Pro 1803 64-bit (build 17134) - English (1033)
Path: C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\
SkinPath: C:\Users\Kyria\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\
SettingsPath: C:\Users\Kyria\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\
IniFile: C:\Users\Kyria\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.ini

[kyriakos876]

Oh, also I didn't post this on bugs or whatever, because every time it happens it turns out I've missed something. But this time, no errors in the log whatsoever.

[jsmorley]

I'd be hesitant to use scrolling to refresh the skin. This is because different mice, and different mice drivers, handle the "scroll event" in different ways. With many mice, it is difficult to get a scrolling action to send just ONE scroll event, it may in fact send several or many, and Rainmeter is not going to like being told to refresh repeatedly in very quick order. I can imagine that this would be exacerbated by having it reacting to mouse over / off events at the same time.

Some mice have a nice little "one scroll" feedback haptic built into the wheel, and it is easy to get a single scroll event, and some are just a smooth scroll with which it is hard to impossible to get just one event.

[kyriakos876]

I'd be hesitant to use scrolling to refresh the skin. This is because different mice, and different mice drivers, handle the "scroll event" in different ways. With many mice, it is difficult to get a scrolling action to send just ONE scroll event, it may in fact send several or many, and Rainmeter is not going to like being told to refresh repeatedly in very quick order.

You're probably right, but the first time this happened I only scrolled once to refresh my skin to check the changes I had just made in the code, only to come across this thing. I'm using this Scroll to refresh thing since I found out about Rainmeter and I never had an issue. Every time this happens, it's when I'm doing stuff with Clamp and actiontimer. It just so happened that now I can recreate it (well at least randomly) with the scroll to refresh. Maybe even if you even manually refresh several times it occurs, but I don't think I want to try that.

[jsmorley]

You're probably right, but the first time this happened I only scrolled once to refresh my skin to check the changes I had just made in the code, only to come across this thing. I'm using this Scroll to refresh thing since I found out about Rainmeter and I never had an issue. Every time this happens, it's when I'm doing stuff with Clamp and actiontimer. It just so happened that now I can recreate it (well at least randomly) with the scroll to refresh. Maybe even if you even manually refresh several times it occurs, but I don't think I want to try that.

Thing is, you really can't manually refresh anywhere near as quickly as a bang using a scroll action can.

I can imagine that having a skin that has five or ten scrolls actions fired at it, which it is reacting to, or trying to react to, with a refresh of the skin, thus recreating the skin window and all the mouse targets on each refresh, and all of this trying to happen all at once, can't end up well.

[kyriakos876]

Thing is, you really can't manually refresh anywhere near as quickly as a bang using a scroll action can.

That's why I said I'm not going to try that. Maybe just normal clicks to refresh, but still.... Slower.

[jsmorley]

I can imagine that having a skin that has five or ten scrolls actions fired at it, which it is reacting to, or trying to react to, with a refresh of the skin, thus recreating the skin window and all the mouse targets on each refresh, and all of this trying to happen all at once, can't end up well.

[kyriakos876]

This might sound stupid or non-relevant whatsoever, but it might have to do with either the ActionTimer plugin or the Clamp function. More specifically, feels like something is escaping creating a mess in the code... I've done some Script injection which takes advantage of syntax, and a simple " or -- or whatever, depending on the language the code is written, usually C++, can make a mess. And opening a photo included in the #@# file sounds exactly like the mess that could cause. So a certain use of the Clamp in addition to the ActionTimer could cause something like that. I don't want to start any weird mambo-jambo gibberish as I haven't really seen, neither the plugins source code or the Clamp's function so I could be totally wrong, but yea... If you ever find yourself bored, you could figure out something (If there is something to be figured out in the first place of course)

[kyriakos876]

I even tried refreshing other skin without executing any ActionTimer related stuff, and nothing happened even after scrolling for twice the times it took the other skin to fire the Window's photo viewer.

[jsmorley]

I can well imagine that having ActionTimer in the mix, which is not dependent on the skin Update rate, and can execute stuff much faster than the 16ms limit for the normal update, can only make this issue worse.

The long and the short of it for me is that using a scroll action to refresh the skin just can't be a good idea.