RE: Bug reports . . . 17 of them . . . .

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Irene.Vatton@inrialpes.fr [SMTP:Irene.Vatton@inrialpes.fr]
> Sent:	Friday, June 11, 1999 1:21 PM
> To:	Robin Whittle
> Cc:	www-amaya@w3.org
> Subject:	Re: Bug reports . . . 17 of them . . . . 
> 
> In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 08 Jun 1999 01:32:44 +1000."
>              <375BE61C.BE49DF77@firstpr.com.au> 
> 
> > My purpose in using Amaya is to make straighforward HTML pages, rather
> > than to conduct research or explore HTML4 and CSS.  HTML 3.2 is fine
> > for what I want to do, and Netscape was generally good, but I am
> > attracted by an open-source WYSIWIG HTML editor - and Amaya is the
> > only one.  I could pay a few hundred dollars for a commercial editor,
> > but I suspect they would have their limitations and might add some
> > strange stuff to the files.
> > 
> > 
> > Some unexpected good points I found in Amaya include:
> > 
> > *  Multiple undo and redo.
> > 
> > *  Recovers a backup file after a crash.  
> > 
> > *  The transform tool and even a language for it.
> > 
> > These are all marvels!
> > 
> > Here are difficulties I encountered:
> > 
> >  1 - Amaya will not display Bold and Italic.  The resulting file
> >      has bold and italic set as part of a SPAN construct, and Netscape
> >      4.6 displays the characters bold and Italic fine.  MSIE4 is fine
> >      too.
> 
> True. Amaya uses a limited set of fonts and cannot display bold and
> italic at the same time.
> 
> >      It did crash at one stage when I was trying to get both by 
> >      pressing the bold and the italic button, but I can't reproduce 
> >      it now.
> 
> I guess that problem is fixed now.
> 
> >  2 - Amaya ignores the <font face="Arial,Helvetica"> tag in a file
> >      generated by Netscape.  It displays Times instead.  Amaya 
> >      preseves the <font face="Arial,Helvetica"> tag in the output 
> >      file, and it correctly interprets the colour part of <font 
> >      face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#FF0000">
> 
> Yes, the face attribute is not implemented. We encourage people to use 
> the attribute style.
> 
> >  3 - Difficulty deleting attributes in the body tag.  I started
> >      editing a file:
> > 
> >        http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/index.html
> >  
> >      which had a black background and for which I had defined
> >      lighter colours for links.  The new document has a white
> >      background, and I wanted to get rid of the link, vlink and
> >      alink attributes.  I could get rid of the numbers they had, but
> >      that did not have the required effect.
> > 
> >      <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="" vlink="" alink="">
> > 
> >      On Amaya the links (unvisited) were displayed as white.  Netscape
> >      and MSIE display the link correctly in the default colours.
> 
> "" is a invalid value and the result depends on the default color for the
> browser. We can change it and take black istead of white like other
> browsers.
> 
> >      There are two issues here:
> > 
> >      a - How do I delete link="" vlink="" alink="" from within
> >          Amaya. (Obviously I could do it in a separate text editor.)
> 
> You can delete it by selecting the body, select the corresponding
> attribute
> in the menu Attributes and click on "Delete Attribute"
> 
> You could also select it in the Structure view and delete it.
> 
> >      b - Amaya's display of a white link when the attribute 
> >          does not have a value.
> 
> No. It just understands that you want to change the default color, but
> that
> color is invalid.
> 
> >  4 - On the subject of displaying links, I think Amaya's 
> >      approach of not underlining them is a really bad idea.  I hate
> >      web sites where the links are not underlined.  It makes it so 
> >      much harder to understand what is happening and what 
> >      opportunities the page gives you to access other pages.
> 
> If you have a look at the Alternate view they are underlined.
> More the Links view displays the list of them.
> 
> >      Is there a way of enabling underlined display of links?
> 
> Not in the current version
> 
> >  5 - Whether or not Amaya is in edit mode, there is no display
> >      of the link destination when the cursor moves over the link.
> 
> You can display targets either with the command "Show Targets" in the
> menu view or in the view Links.
> 
> >      Such a display at the bottom of the screen would really help.
> > 
> >  6 - In Windows, Amaya displays the address in the
> >      main display and in the file save box as xxx\New.htm
> >      when in fact the file is xxx\new.htm.
> 
> That is a specific Windows problem. On that system there is a complete 
> confusion or uppercases and lowercases.
> 
> >      Saving to new.htm writes, as predicted, to new.htm.
> >  
> >      Saving to nEw.htm writes to new.htm !
> > 
> >      The problem no-doubt has its roots in Windows' screwy handling 
> >      of capitalisation in file names.
> >  
> > 
> >  7 - The default file extension of "htm" on Windows is something
> >      I don't like!  I think "html" is the best and I don't know of any 
> >      reason on a non MSDOS machine for using .htm.
> 
> We should use html. Perhaps some htm remains. I'll check the code.
> 
> >  8 - Closing a document, even if unedited, when multiple windows are
> >      open, closes all Amaya windows!(It did on one occasion on Windows
> >      but I can't reproduce it now.) On Linux closing the file in 
> >      one window crashes my X server too.
> 
> If there is only one opened document, closing that document closes Amaya
> even if there are more than one opened view.
> 
> >  9 - One very common and useful means of selecting text does not
> >      seem to be available with Amaya: holding shift and moving the
> >      cursor and using the arrow keys
> 
> We're working on that and almost shift arrows commands should work in next
> release. They are already available on Linux platforms.
> 
> > 10 - The similarly userful and common ability to move the cursor one 
> >      word at a time with Control left and right arrows is also not 
> >      available.
> 
> Ok we should coninue our work there.
> 
> > 11 - I had some trouble with a newline I had in a table cell.  There 
> >      was a Span covering this word and another covering nothing (no
> >      characters or spaces) at the end of the cell.  There was only 
> >      one word in the cell.  I added some extra characters in Structure
> >      view to the end of the word, and noticed that they overwrote
> >      the bottom border of the narrow table in the main view.
> 
> Normally the text is redisplayed except if the cell width is forced.
> 
> >      I undid this, and all was well, but I noticed that in Structure
> >      view, there was a blank line after the end of the sole word.
> 
> Don't worry about that empty line. Amaya just reminds that you wanted to 
> create a new piece of text there.
> 
> >      This looked sus, so I tried to get rid of it i Structure view.  
> >      Backspace and delete did not make any difference.  I selected 
> >      that empty line and the right end of the line above it, almost to 
> >      the last character of the word I wanted to keep.  I pressed 
> >      Delete and all Amaya windows crashed!
> 
> To understand how to edit table, you have to read the help entry. It's
> really powerful, but I agree, it needs a minimum of experiment.
> 
> >      I can probably create such a file if you want one as a test case.
> 
> If the bug can be reproduced, your file is welcome.
> 
> >      There were other instances of Amaya crashing, but I can't 
> >      reconstruct the details as well.
> > 
> > 
> > 12 - I wanted to set the colour of one piece of text (in a table cell)
> >      to exactly the colour of another piece.  I knew I wanted 3060FF 
> >      but the colour picker gives no such exact option.
> > 
> >      I tried to use cut and paste in the Structure view to get the
> >      colour attribute from one piece to another but . . . I couldn't
> >      make the Cut and Paste work.  The Cut command was received, 
> >      because the "Paste" option became highlighted afterwards.
> 
> It seems that you're not allowed to paste there. Amaya checks the document
> structure during the editing.
> 
> >      I couldn't get Cut or Paste working in the attributes of 
> >      Structure view - only in the text parts of Structure view.
> 
> An attribute is not the same thin than element and you need to use an 
> other method to copy attributes. First you select the element which has 
> the attribute you want to copy and you open the attribute entry in the 
> menu Attributes. Then you select the new element to which you want to 
> apply the current attribute and click on Apply.
> 
> >      In the end, I had to manually edit the attribute to what
> >      I wanted in Structure view.
> > 
> > 
> > 13 - When something was done to text in a table cell, for instace
> >      increasing the font size, the reformatted text goes beyond the
> >      table cell lower border and the right border disappears.
> > 
> >      Workaround is to save the file and reload.
> 
> I've never seen that. Is it the same than that mentioned in  11-
> 
> > 14 - Without applying any attributes for vertical positioning
> >      of text within a table cell, Amaya displays them as being
> >      to the top, whilst in fact there is no attribute, and 
> >      Netscape displays the text in the centre of the cell.
> 
> Some attributes within cells are not interpreted yet. We need to 
> change the table model in allow them and we cannot say when that work
> will be done. There too many work for 3 people.
> 
> > 15 - I had a few words of text which was Helvetica Bold 14 point. 
> >      (I had entered this manually, not from an existing file and
> >       had applied Style > Character Style to it successfully.)
> >   
> >      Then I added some text in the middle of this, selected it and
> >      tried to make it 12 point Times, not bold or italic.  The
> >      results look fine on Amaya, but both Netscape 4.6 and
> >      MSIE4 display the Times text in bold.  I have enclosed this
> >      file as a demonstration - bug2.html.  Also, a simpler 
> >      deliberate example of it is in that file.
> 
> You had generated an element SPAN with a CSS attribute style. You need to
> take a software which supports CSS to see the result.
> 
> >      The problem is that Amaya turns on boldface with a "span style" 
> >      command of "font-weight: bold" and then expects to be able to 
> >      specify non-bold in a subsequent "span style" command which 
> >      includes "font-style: normal".
> 
> That is the right way to process now.
> 
> > 16 - Amaya's display of table border width and cell spacing is 
> >      deficient or non-existent.  See bug2.html for an analysis.
> 
> See the answer to 15-
> 
> > 17 - Amaya chews RAM and will use most RAM in a 128 Meg machine, which 
> >      has Netscape and MSIE running.  This stops Windows from 
> >      functioning properly and prevents any other programs running.
> 
> Normally No.
> > 
> >      This seems to be related to multiple saves, and perhaps to
> >      having the View Structure window active.  No, maybe it is
> >      just enough to have Amaya running.  When I switched from 
> >      Amaya to writing this email, there was no RAM shortage. 
> >      Now, switching back, RAM is all taken up because Windows 
> >      cannot put icons in the little window which pops up with 
> >      Alt Tab.  All is well as soon as I exit Amaya.
> 
> We introduced many new features in that release and we didn't have the
> time to fix all inserted memory leaks. We already fix a lot of them within
> the release in progress.
> 
> > It took a little while to realise I must look at the bottom line of
> > the screen to see what I was selecting with F2.  I thought I had the
> > entire table selected and was frustrated at not being able to find an
> > attribute for border width.  But then I did one more F2 and saw I was
> > selecting the table, not to body of the table.  Then I could alter
> > Attributes > Border.
> 
> I know structure editing is new approach and needs some training.
> Today you see its limits but tomorrow you can discover its benefits.
> I guess that approach is going to be generalized with the development
> of  XML documents.
> 
> > It took me a while to figure out how to get rid of Blockquotes - to
> > use Edit > Transform.
> > 
> > Another welcome good point:
> > 
> > *   The ability to keep a Character Style window open and then to 
> >     select other pieces of text in the main window and press "Apply"
> >     in the Style window - great stuff!
> > 
> > 
> > My interest is whether Amaya is a stable, reasonably easy-to-use
> > WYSIWIG editor for creating moderately ambitious HTML pages.  At
> > present I don't think it suits me.  The key reasons are:
> > 
> > 1 - Amaya is seriously non-WYSIWIG in respect of table border, 
> >     cellspacing and cell-padding.
> > 
> > 2 - It does not use the HTML3.2 approach to Bold, Italics, Font size 
> >     etc. but its new "span style" approach is generally properly 
> >     interpreted by MSIE 4.0 and Netscape 4.6.  This would be OK, 
> >     but Amaya does not handle getting rid of bold face properly.
> > 
> > 3 - Any attempt at using Netscape to edit a file made or edited with 
> >     Amaya will be very painful since Amaya uses HTML tags which 
> >     Netscape's Composer cannot interpret. (It just shows them as 
> >     little yellow tags which can be edited manually and 
> >     painstakingly.)
> > 
> > 4 - Using Amaya to edit a file created with Netscape will be a pain
> >     because Amaya does not recognise Netscape's way of specifying 
> >     Helvetica font.
> > 
> > So if I start using Amaya, I must always edit those files with Amaya -
> > whilst steering clear of its bugs and using Netscape to see what the
> > file is really going to look like.
> 
> The Web progress and I guess Netscape follows that way. Perhaps you have 
> just to update your tools.
> 
> > I hope these bug reports assist in improving Amaya.  It is a promising
> > program!  For now, I need to create an HTML page, and I think I want
> > to use Netscape!
> 
> Thanks for the long report.
>   Irene.
> 
>

Received on Friday, 11 June 1999 10:06:30 UTC