InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by william_wicker on 2010/11/02 15:21

I'm running 0.9.25C and have a few gripes about data entry into the grid. These are not fatal, but every time I hit one, I'm reminded that this is not yet commercial-duty software. In no particular order:

1) When caps lock is on and I begin entering data into a blank cell, the first letter is converted to lower case. llIKE THIS. Backspacing and retyping lets me get the all-caps I want. At first I thought this was an over-enthusiastic auto-capitalizer, but there is no corresponding auto-uppercasing of data entered in all lower case.

2) Pushing F2 to edit a highlighted cell puts the cursor in a random place. Actually, I think it's the place it was in the last cell edited. Putting the cursor all the way to one end or the other every time would be much better.

3) Clicking on text in a cell inconsistently either highlights the cell or enters text-editing mode. Clicking in a cell, but not on the text does seem to reliably just select the cell. Slow double-clicking a cell does enter text-editing mode. Double-clicking opens an Explorer window. (I'm guessing this last is a feature, not a bug?)

4) Conditional formats are not reliably applied to next rows in the grid as they are entered. Closing and re-opening the grid makes everything show up. Maybe I need to define more "push" formatting rules? Manually forcing a refresh (F5) does get things where they need to be.

5) When a cell that already contains text is selected, and I start typing, (without already being in text-editing mode) the new text is appended to the existing text. I normally would expect the new text to replace the existing text. Maybe there's an option that can be set somewhere to govern this behavior?

Comments

Luckily for you, almost all of these these (except the conditional formatting, maybe) might be easy to fix.

>1) When caps lock is on and I begin entering data into a blank cell, the first letter is converted to lower case. llIKE THIS. Backspacing and retyping lets me get the all-caps I want. At first I thought this was an over-enthusiastic auto-capitalizer, but there is no corresponding auto-uppercasing of data entered in all lower case.

Weird, never noticed that as I never use Caps Lock. You're right.

> 2) Pushing F2 to edit a highlighted cell puts the cursor in a random place.

It's a very recent behaviour, and I really don't think it's a bug. It used to be place the cursor at the beginning of the editable area. I'm not sure why Pierre changed this. Maybe to allow ore natural editing when you go down from cell to cell. Some users might want the cursor to follow the same path.

Maybe Pierre can explain...?

>3) Clicking on text in a cell inconsistently either highlights the cell or enters text-editing mode. Clicking in a cell, but not on the text does seem to reliably just select the cell. Slow double-clicking a cell does enter text-editing mode. Double-clicking opens an Explorer window. (I'm guessing this last is a feature, not a bug?)

I know others had problems with that. Behaviour is consistent here : when the mouse cursor shows a caret, clicking cell brings the editing mode. When you click outside the editable area and mouse cursor is an arrow, you're in selection mode instead. Maybe this could be made more robust, but, as I said, I'm not having any problems here... if I follow the convention.

Double clickin doesn't open any Explorer window here. So there must be something with your installation. Or your double clicking on some file link....

>4) Conditional formats are not reliably applied to next rows in the grid as they are entered. Closing and re-opening the grid makes everything show up. Maybe I need to define more "push" formatting rules? Manually forcing a refresh (F5) does get things where they need to be.

There are a few issues with conditional formatting :

1- if you create a new one, the grid needs to effectively be closed and reopened.

2- If you base your conditional formatting on some SQL requests fields (like nbchildren or nbparents : these fields don't "contain" any data, they just show data), it takes a grid refresh for the conditional formatting to be applied.

I've seen other issues lately, but I haven't been able to put my finger on the cause. Seems that it's related to particular fields, like date fields, but I'll have to double check.

>5) When a cell that already contains text is selected, and I start typing, (without already being in text-editing mode) the new text is appended to the existing text. I normally would expect the new text to replace the existing text. Maybe there's an option that can be set somewhere to govern this behavior?

I would actually hate it if that was the default behaviour and love the current default one... ;)

However, you're in luck as you can select the Overstrike option in the edit menu.

HTH

P.S. : Personally, I don't know many software where data entry is as easy and quick as IQ (can even paste multiple lines in different cells, split, join, etc.)... Which ones do you find extraordinary ?

Thanks for your reply.

Some of these things still aren't right.

#1) Do I need to file a more official bug report?

#2) I guess I could see the cursor-following behavior as making sense if I was keyboarding from cell to cell in the same column. Column-to-column doesn't make as much sense. Maybe I should request a setting flag to optionally force the cursor to the start (or end) of the cell on edit?

#3) Even if the cursor shows a caret, it still does not always go into text-entry/edit mode. Most of the time, yes, but not always. I went back and double-checked after your comments. I wonder if there is some micro-mouse-motion during the click that fools the grid into thinking I'm dragging? Hard to say. (I'm not trying to move the mouse)

#3a) Double-clicking. These are not file links, just plain text. What might cause this to happen? I haven't made massive customizations in my install -- should be pretty much out of the box.

#4) I already knew about the new formats need to re-open the grid. This is for existing formats. It does seem that the issue is the SQL-related formats don't automatically update. In particular, I'm formatting based on NbChildren and NbParents. I guess a manual refresh every once in a while isn't too big a deal. Maybe at some future point value dependencies can become more intelligent. (I can imagine that this is non-trivial)

#5) I tried overstrike. That is closer to what I expect, but now there are new problems. If I turn overstrike on, none of the cursor movement keys move the caret in the text field. Instead, they move focus to different cells. That can't be right.

If those are my only two choices, then I'm with you. Overstrike mode is pretty horrible. I'm expecting behavior more like Excel or Open Office.

#1) guess you could enter it in Mantis (There's a link in the IQ comnunity section)... It should be the right way to do it, but not everybody does. I generally do/did

Pierre ?

#2) A flag (check box) would be good.

Pierre ?

#3) I did some more experiments after my last post. You're not crazy.

Here are my premliminary conclusions :

- When an item is multi-line, and the caret is halfway between the previous cell's separation and the next, click just selects and the cell doesn't go into edit-mode.

This should be fixed

- Double clicking can often happen mistakenly. When you're already in edit mode and you rapidly click on another cell, it'll often switch to edit mode even if the mouse shows an arrow. Probably because of unintentional double click. To be honest though it happens even when I don't think I'm double clicking, but I also know that my touch pad is prone to that type of behavior.

This should be fixed... If it's an issue

#4) I talked a few times about that one. Pierre once said he'd do something about it. Maybe entering it Mantis would help.

Pierre, is that feasible ?

#5) Right... It's not very functional. Maybe could the overstrike mode could be made to be more functional. What would be your main recommendations?

At the moment, you know that when a field is selected, "delete" erases the whole content, right ? That's usually what I do.

1- move (tab, arrow...) to the next cell

2- delete

3- Write.

So it involves one more step. You could also delete a bunch of cells in advance : select all cells : delete.

#2)

"F2 to edit a cell puts the cursor in a random place"

I think this is a bug - it doesnt happen in a clean install with the default sample file - there the caret shows at the beginning of the line when F2 is pressed.

In my working install & file, F2 always places the cursor after the fourth character - odd behaviour really, doesnt seem like that could be intentional (?)

#3)

I experience this occasionally:

~ clicking on text in a cell does *not* go into edit mode

~ occasionally clicking on blank space in cell *does* go into edit mode

Both wrong...

#5)

With overstrike on (again, clean install with the default sample file)

~ Tab key wont move focus from item field but does work in other fields

~ When you press F2, the cell content is selected, then the arrow keys bring you to the next/previous cell - I presume the idea was that as it is 'Overstrike', that you would simply want to type over the selected text with new text - but this doesnt leave you much options to edit the current text, unless you use the mouse - if you go into edit mode by clicking in a cell the arrow keys work as normal.

It would seem to make more sense if F2 simply went into edit mode - without selecting the cell content. Especially seeing as simply typing over a selected cell already replaces the text.

[quote=Tom]

#2)

"F2 to edit a cell puts the cursor in a random place"

I think this is a bug - it doesnt happen in a clean install with the default sample file - there the caret shows at the beginning of the line when F2 is pressed.

In my working install & file, F2 always places the cursor after the fourth character - odd behaviour really, doesnt seem like that could be intentional (?)

[/quote]

It might me a bug, but here the behaviour is predictable. If you left editing while the cursor is at a certain position, F2 puts the cursor at the same position the next time. I don't like it, but it could be useful if you're editing a bunch of cells' content where something needs to be added/edited at exactly the same location.

But, yes... Could be a bug... Let's wait for Pierre's explanations.

[quote=Tom]

#3)

[...]

~ clicking on text in a cell does *not* go into edit mode

~ occasionally clicking on blank space in cell *does* go into edit mode

[...]

[/quote]

I can reproduce the first case easily, but I can't reproduce the second at all -- unless I intentionally/unintentionally double click.

Steps or screencast would be good.

[quote=Tom]
#5)
With overstrike on (again, clean install with the default sample file)
~ Tab key wont move focus from item field but does work in other fields
~ When you press F2, the cell content is selected, then the arrow keys bring you to the next/previous cell - I presume the idea was that as it is 'Overstrike', that you would simply want to type over the selected text with new text - but this doesnt leave you much options to edit the current text, unless you use the mouse - if you go into edit mode by clicking in a cell the arrow keys work as normal.
It would seem to make more sense if F2 simply went into edit mode - without selecting the cell content. Especially seeing as simply typing over a selected cell already replaces the text.
[/quote]

Overstrike definitely needs some work.

[quote=william_wicker]

[/quote]

Hi William,

Thanks for you post !

This is known and I tried again to fix it, but without success. Will try later...
This is fixed. It was added to help editing and scrolling (in auto-edit mode, the cursor keeps it's horizontal position), but being buggy, I'll wait for a better implementation
This is fixed. If a cell is empty, you can click anywhere to edit, otherwise, you must click on some text. Double-click should only open Explorer if the item is a file or "looks" like a file
I was not able to reproduce that. A screencast (Jing works well and is free) would help
This is fixed. If OVR is ON, F2 deselects and moves the cursor to the end, if OVR is OFF, no change (F2 moves to the start, typing adds to the end)

(fixed, means fixed in v0.9.25E)

HTH !

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

4. I was not able to reproduce that. A screencast (Jing works well and is free) would help

[/quote]

He can post a screencast, but as we deduced in previous posts of this thread it's most probably because of thes SQL query fields which aren't updated on the fly but only after a refresh. If a conditional formatting depends on those, it fails. I experience that everyday.

OK I see. The good news is that this grid updating issue is now fixed (

) (v0.9.25E)

Does #1 need to be added to Mantis Pierre?

I'd say it should. (you can add it if you want -- if I don't see it in Mantis tonight, I'll just go ahead and add it...)

[quote=Tom]

Does #1 need to be added to Mantis Pierre?

[/quote]

MANTIS -

1064

CapsLock on: First letter is converted to lower case by IQ