Submitted by Armando on 2010/11/22 13:11
I've discovered 2 items for which values in the ItemParent and ItemGparent fields don't match values shown in the "parents" section of properties pane.
I.e. : For 2 items, ItemParent and ItemGparent fields show some items names, but these names are no where in the "parents" section of properties pane.
 
I've tried a repair, but it doesn't change anything.
 
(discovered this bug because I use the ItemParent value to do some sorting.)

Comments

Even weirder, maybe : context parent is an item which shouldn't have any children.
 
To recapitulate :
1- for 2 items ItemParent and ItemGparent fields show some items names, but these names are no where in the "parents" section of properties pane.
2- context parent show items which don't have any children. The context parent value is the same as the ItemParent field value. (these are obviously related)
 
In the screenshot, you'll see those 2 items which I mentioned in the previous post.
 
 
Notice that context parent = itemParent value. Fine
 
Notice what the focused item shows in properties pane for children : 0... However, in the grid, it has 2 children.
 

I was able to fix the problem.
 
Here's how :
 
I discovered that none of these items had a "main parent" -- not sure why.
When I assigned a main parent (right click on one of the "true parent" appearing in the "parents" section of the properties pane --> Main parent) to these two items, they lost their dummy values in the itemParent and itemGParent fields, which seems logical.
 
However, why didn't they have a Main parent in the first place ? That I'm not sure.

Ok, shouldn't have said that this is fixable.
 
Well, it is, but... There's still a significant bug here IMO.
 
In certain circumstances, items loose their main parent (i.e. : Parents loose their main parent status, hence there can be many parents without any main one).
Here's one situation and the steps to reproduce it:

Steps to reproduce :

- item has several parents
- click-drag & drop to move item away from its main parent, under another parent.
- In properties pane : item main parent assignation disappears (i.e. the item doesn't have a main parent anymore).
 
There might be other situations (e.g. : removing a parent link when the removed parent is a main parent.)

 
Effects
 
The effect can be pretty disrupting and could cause significant problems :
 
- itemparent field's content is innacurate
- Context parent representation is innacurate and this could cause data organisation problems of different kinds.
- Reassigning item's mainparent is incredibly time consuming (have to do it one by one)
 
 
Questions/suggestions:
 
Appart from fixing the bug, would it be :
- possible to assign a main parent to several items at once? (I have a list of more than 100 items without any main parent... And I have to individually reassign them to a main parent...)
- possible to list all those items without any main parent so that we can fix them?
- possible to automate some kind of repair... (e.g. : last assigned parent becomes main parent?)? But maybe is that absolutely impossible.
 
 
P.S. See first (and other...) post of this thread for more details on the effects.
 

I don't know how difficult this is to fix, but it should probably be addressed in the near future as it can completely disrupts data display and cause users to panic(i.e. : When one uses the context parents feature or "itemPatent" as a filter to display items in a grid). The lengthy fix has been mentioned earlier. Also, as mentioned before it would be great if a same Main parent could be assigned to a bunch of items at the same time. Right now, changing this value on many items is very time consuming operation (e.g. : 1- focus on an item, 2- open properties pane, 3- right click on the right parent, 4- select "Set As Main Parent", 5- go to next item, etc.) But I'm being redundant here... : Please have a look at the posts before, especially the one with highlighted content : I describe everything precisely and make some suggestions.