Hi Cyrille, thanks for your help.
you're using windows?
Yep.
have you try the [topmost $1< message to the gemwin? ($1 = 0 or 1) if it work, then it's probably easier than an external "switcher"
I didn't know about the topmost message! However, I'm afraid I still need the "switcher". Turning GEM's "topmost" on and off would be "weaker", i.e. I would need to ensure that "just behind" GEM is the Flash Player; with the "switcher", I always bring to front the needed application no matter who was on front before; it is more reliable and more inmediate to launch everything (without having to click on windows in a certain order to make sure they are where they need to be)
anyway, what's happen if you don't close the gemwin? you can close / reload your patch, but having the gemwin in an other patch so you don't have to close it.
The fact is that I don't need to reload the patch while I DO really need to close the GEM window (i.e. destroy the gemwin) between one rehearsal and another. Consider that the GEM window is fullscreen, so I can't move it; also, if it was the last one to be brought to front before the switcher was closed, the GEM window remains "permanently" topmost, i.e. "always on front": unless I close it I can't see anything else (e.g. the patch gui window, the windows desktop, etc.). When I stop a rehearsal and start a new one I tipically need to check out things on the patch GUI, and/or browse Windows folder and edit text files that are later read by the patch. That's why I stop the rehearsal at all: otherwise I would simply "go to" the beginning of the performance (or to whichever part) which I can do without restarting things at all.
I have oversimplified my setup in the description, in order not to bother people with irrelevant details, but the "switcher" is indeed an application that is doing other things as well; there are other computers with other projections and with audio; and whenever I have to restart the central "master" computer that controls the whole system (which is not the computer we were talking about), I have to restart the switcher and the flash player. In such situations, I don't mind closing and reopening the GEM window (which I usually need as I mentioned in order to "see and access" other things) but I wouldn't need to restart/reload the patch and GEM, were it not for this double-gem-window issue. So I'd like to avoid having to restart gem, in order to reduce the number of operations needed to restart the system to a minimum (switcher and flash player automatically quit when the master quits, for example).
That's why I'm trying to figure out what's the reason of this double-gem-window weirdness, in case there's a solution.
Thanks again m.