Re: [Pan-users] Deletion or articles

[Duncan]

On Wed 14 May 2003 04:55, Alain Maisonneuve posted as excerpted below:
> Hey all..
>
> Was playing around with the windows version of pan and discovered a
> potential issue.. BTW running on WinXP SP1 on a 450mhz 256MB Ram.
>
> So i subscribed to a group and got all of it's headers.. scanned the
> headers found nothing i liked so i select the first article and SHIFT-Click
> on the last article.. then hit the delete key. Wait.. Wait( Jeopardy music
> starts to play) nothing happens.. so i click on an article to undo the
> selection.. then proceed to press CTRL-a to select all.. then hit the
> delete key again.. only then are all the article deleted..
>
> anyone see this behavior?

I see similar behavior (on Linux) if the current "post" is the name of the 
group, at the top, AND that is selected.  Others may be selected, but if the 
current AND selected post is the group name, certain actions don't occur, 
until I make sure it is either NOT the current post, or NOT selected.  It can 
be one, but not both.  (Thus, you can ctrl-click to unselect it leaving it 
the current "post", and it works, as does making anything ELSE the current 
post, but leaving the group name selected.)

I say SIMILAR to the behavior you describe, because as you describe it, the 
group descriptor may have been selected, but it wouldn't have been the 
current "post".  The bottom one would have been current, as you hit 
shift-click on it to select the range.  However, if you happened to do the 
REVERSE of that and select from bottom to top, it would have triggered the 
no-response problem as I described, because then the top group descriptor 
would have been the current line AND selected.

Anyway, see if treating the group descriptor differently affects the problem.  
Here, Ctrl-A <action> works as it's supposed to, again, UNLESS the current 
line when I hit it was the group name at the top.

If this is the behavior you were describing, yes, I'd call it a bug.  It's 
fairly minor, since at least fairly computer literate folks should grasp what 
the problem is fairly fast, but it's definitely a usability issue that should 
be fixed b4 PAN 1.0, if not sooner, as it wouldn't be all that obvious to 
those that don't understand how a computer processes stuff and grasp that it 
must treat that line differently.  Again, as I understood what was occurring, 
I didn't think anything about it, but now that you pointed it out, yes, it's 
definitely a usability issue.

I'd recommend filing a bug report on it @ bugzilla, to keep the idea from 
getting lost.  Of course, if it isn't the same issue, file a bug report on it 
then as well.  Please post back when you have done so.  If not, I'll attempt 
to remember to do  so in a day or so, but I'll let you have the honor if you 
want it.  When it's fixed you get your name in the credits for that version, 
if you were the reporter, which is kinda fun!  I'd not wish to deprive you of 
that thrill, since it WAS you that mentioned it here.

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin