notes naughtiness and nuisances

[skiwi]

This is a thread to discuss some minor, but irritating, features of the implementation of notes, rather than having a thread per irritant.

See also

• http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1260337122
• http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1258670980
• http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1253174739
• http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1251707915
• http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1236595843

[skiwi]

Cutting text from cells, rows, or columns from a table and pasting into a notes field.
The paste looks good (formatted and everything), but we know that some formatting is stripped on save (why not on paste).


Afterward save is a different - and buggy - story.
Why is the HTML not stripped from the pasted text?

[skiwi]

When generating a document which includes notes the consistency of use of a newlines at the end of a note makes a difference to the layout (and professionalism) of a document.

Although its just a small thing an option in the RTF document generator to ensure there is exactly one newline character at the end of notes (and perhaps other objects) would seem to me to be extremely useful.

In fact why make it an option, just do it, there is no real call for formatting by the use of multiple newline characters in notes.
This would work by stripping all white pace (newlines, spaces) from the end of notes and adding exactly one newline.

What do you think?

[skiwi]

Where text in notes is bulletted or numbered in the generated RTF document the wrapping of the text is wrong if the text takes up more than one line.
There is no indentation of the second and subsequent lines of text.

This situation could be improved by adding a style (CSS class) to the formatting for this text so that formatting can be applied based on normal.rtf.

Good idea, yes?

[fwoolz]

Ski,

Yes; good ideas, all. I have pretty much abandoned notes for anything more than plain text and brief, single line lists since linked documents can do so much more and can be included in generated RTF reports. However, this does nothing but display a little italicized "A" in the lower right corner of the element glyph on a diagram...
 
An option to use a linked document as the "note" for an element might be a good thing, or maybe the notes editor could be replaced completely by the linked document editor? In the latter case, each element would have 0..1 "inherent" linked documents attached to it (0 if the element has nothing in its "notes" field, 1 if it has something or, alternatively, 0 if only "plain old notes" are used, 1 if "rich notes" are used). The details need to be thought out, but allowing a linked document to replace the notes field of an element would make it possible to have much more sophisticated element documentation than currently permitted by the current notes implementation. Rendering on a diagram would require embedding an RTF document control in the element display for those elements using a linked document as their notes...

Cheers,
Fred W

[skiwi]

Cutting text from cells, rows, or columns from a table and pasting into a notes field.
The paste looks good (formatted and everything), but we know that some formatting is stripped on save (why not on paste).

Afterward save is a different - and buggy - story.
Why is the HTML not stripped from the pasted text?

This one not fixed in 858 at all

[beginner]

This one not fixed in 858 at all

No wonder. Wrong concepts can't be fixed by new builds.

The problem here is likely another design flaw in EA. They use an internal format which they transfer to HTML and RTF. Of course this will never work correctly for any kind text. Having simple but W3C HTML and nothing else would save a lot trouble. Sparx will not dare, you know.

b.

b.

[skiwi]

Mostly still not fixed in 11

[skiwi]

No better in 12.

In word:
As pasted:
What is left after the note is saved!