Andrew, is this issue still present in the dev branch?

Andrew, sorry for coming back to this issue late.

Indeed, the test indicates that on your system the widget's state is immediately changed to "floating" when you start dragging it.

Which Qt version are you using?

Andrew, for getting a better insight what is going on, could you please apply the attached patch and report back the output in the command window when the issue happens?

(file #46391)

It looks like a widget goes into the state "floating" as soon as you start dragging. This can be seen by the window deccoration that is added to the widget. In general, the widget is a usual widget (not a top level window with decoration) until it is dropped outside the main window.

Since I can not reproduce this on my system, are you able to build octave from current sources for providing patches for testing?

> There are several extensive bug reports related to this issue.

I wasn't able to find a dupe of this bug report by searching for things like "drag" and "panel". Is there some other term I should be looking for?

> Please be very specific on what platform you are using and what framework.

I'm using macOS and the native framework ("Aqua", I think). I've set the Operating System for this bug report to "Mac OS". Is there other framework info you need?

> Also, investigate if you are able to drop outside the main dock window then

grab and drag back into the main window.  Or is there no way to reattach other than press the upper right button?

Once the Command Window pops out and becomes undocked, I can't drag it back over the main window and have it re-doc. Pressing the upper right button, double-clicking the sub-widget's header, or choosing Window > Reset Default Window Layout are the only ways I've found to restore it to a docked state. Double-clicking the sub-widget's header when it is docked causes it to become undocked.

Torsten, it seems you're right. I just checked with Matlab (r2019a) and while any panel can be dragged to undock it, undocked panels can only be redocked by accessing a tiny drop-down menu in the panel and selecting "Dock".  So one can say that Octave is beautifully Matlab compatible here isn't it :-)

As to the VE widgets / subpanels, they might use some decoration because currently there's no way to resize them by dragging a corner or border (at least not on Windows with 5.0.91).
I might have written that in the long VE bug report where Dan helped out a lot (can't find it now; was it 53046?)

I saw that you entered a bug report for the undocked panel positions, thanks for that.

Torsten, I just wanted to help Andrew with a workaround.

Back to the subject:
On Windows w. octave-5.0.91, I can undock panels by dragging them out of the main GUI, but I cannot re-dock them that way - I need to click the dock button in the panel's toolbar.
BTW However docking AND undocking of *sub*panels of the Variable Editor by just dragging them works.

Again on Windows, I managed to get together what Andrew wants but it isn't easy - the main GUI is very picky as regards exact position and dragging trajectory to accept side-by-side positioning of docked panels. Often several distinct steps are required.

A very minor annoyance is that when undocking, releasing the mouse button moves the undocked panel into another position (i.e., the panel isn't left where a user leaves it). Maybe for another bug report. I personally can live with it.

@Philip, @Dan: The main reason why the "easter egg" provided by is not yet included in its current form, is the hard coding of the shortcuts. Those should be managed by the shortcut manager otherwise they may be chosen by the user for other actions and can then cause other problems.

Dan, could you provide the "easter egg" in the patch tracker, then I can take care of the required update of the shortcut manager.

There are several extensive bug reports related to this issue.  Please be very specific on what platform you are using and what framework.  (For example, KDE's Oxygen was a problematic setup.)

Also, investigate if you are able to drop outside the main dock window then grab and drag back into the main window.  Or is there no way to reattach other than press the upper right button?

There is also double clicking in the sub-widget's header.  That is supposed to automatically float the widget.

Aw, darn. Savannah isn't accepting my upload of the broken case, even if I stick it in a zip-file and rename the file to something unrelated like "broken-case.zip". This happened to me on another bug, too. Anyone know why this might be happening, or have access to the Savannah savane logs to see why the upload is getting rejected?

In Octave 4.4.1 and earlier, I can rearrange the docked panels like the Command Window, Editor, Documentation, and Variable Editor by grabbing their title bar and dragging them around. This allows me to rearrange the Octave GUI so that the Editor and Command Window are simultaneously visible, with Editor on Top and Command Window on the bottom.

This no longer works in Octave 5.0 RC2 (5.0.91). When I do the drag to move the docked Command Window, it pops out to an undocked state, but no matter where I move it around, it never goes back to being a docked panel in a different arrangement.

It seems like in 5.0.91, as soon as the panel is popped out of the docked state, the drag action ends, even though I haven't released the mouse button: I keep moving the mouse pointer, but the panel/window no longer moves with it.

I'm attaching GIFs of both the 4.4.1 and 5.0.91 behavior. This also happened in 5.0.90.