[Ticket#: 2006040510000641] Re: [OT] Articles to read

Alex Tweedly alex at tweedly.net
Thu Apr 6 20:10:11 EDT 2006


J. Landman Gay wrote:

>
>> For instance, straight off the top of my head:
>>
>> 1.  I open a script and do nothing to the script, I then close the  
>> script and it gives me the "Do you want to save?" dialog.
>
>
> I'm not sure this is really a bug. It is more a by-product of one of 
> the features. Revolution saves not only your script, but also the 
> location of the insertion point so that the next time you open the 
> script it will  scroll automatically to where you were last working. 
> This is a nice feature. So, if you close the script editor without 
> clicking anywhere, you won't get the "save" warning. If you do click, 
> it marks the script as dirty, stores the current cursor location, and 
> asks if you want to save it.
>
> Once you understand what's happening, it may not seem so terrible any 
> more.
>
No, actually that would make it even worse.

If it was just a bug, then it would be (merely) annoying that no one had 
got around to fixing it . But if it's deliberate choice, than it's a 
terrible choice.

The reason it's so bad is that the "extra" question isn't just an extra 
step you need to go through - it's a chance to either lose changes you 
had intended to make, or a chance to make changes you didn't intend. 
I've had both happen .....

You open a script, intending only to look for some problem - but while 
doing that you notice a bug in the code, unrelated to what you're 
looking for (e.g. a typo in a name). So you fix that and go on looking 
for the original problem. Then you try to close the window, you get this 
annoying window that you're used to seeing all the time - so you just 
hit "Discard". Oops.

Or, on the other hand, you accidentally type a character into the wrong 
window. But you "know" that you didn't make changes, so you just hit 
"return" which (by default) will apply the change.

However, as David says, that isn't the real problem. Sometimes, the 
script editor opens a script with the "Apply" button already enabled, 
and closing that window - without ever clicking anywhere within it - 
will give the dialog.

Now created as BZ 3503, with a stack attached that reliably (on my PC) 
demonstrates the problem.

>> 2.  The script colorization doesn't work consistently.
>> 3.  Sometimes the script editor/debugger loses it's mind and when 
>> you  click on the error it opens the *same* script in another window. 
>> If  you then edit this window and close it, then notice that the 
>> other  window is still open and close that one, you lose your changes!
>> 4.  The debugger sometimes just plain refuses to breakpoint, even  
>> when you insert a "breakpoint" command into the script.
>> 5.  The Menu Builder tool is really flakey.
>
>
> These are mostly valid and I've also seen some of them. I can't 
> comment on colorization because I abhor it and always turn it off. (It 
> also increases the size of your stack on disk because Rev must store a 
> duplicate htmltext copy.) 

I'd say that too is a bug. Colorization is (or should be) trivial enough 
to redo it when the script is opened in the editor (or even "on the 
fly"). Saving a colorized copy of a script is poorly thought-out bloat.

> Note also that the team uses Rev and all its features daily to develop 
> Rev's IDE, among other things. Therefore, if you are having a problem 
> it is likely localized to either your setup or your work style. They 
> need to know. For example, one reason my copy of the debugger would 
> not break was because of a file path issue that existed only on my 
> hard drive. No one else could reproduce it; I finally figured it out 
> when I changed the name of a folder. Then I reported it.
>
Sometimes you get so used to problems that you no longer notice them, or 
develop work-arounds that become so ingrained that you forget you're 
doing them.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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