lots of bugs in Amaya

Hello,

I use Amaya for editing DocBook XML documents with embedded MathML.  So I use 
the generic XML editing facilities and the MathML editing facilities.  In my 
opinion, Amaya might have the potential to become the leading free software 
editor for text-oriented XML.

But it annoys me that Amaya is really full of bugs.  And what is even more 
annoying is that the developers seem to not see these bugs or to not care 
about them since otherwise the list on Amaya_open_bugs.html would be twice as 
large.  So there seems to be the danger that the next Amaya release will be 
as buggy as the current release.

That's why I'm writing this e-mail with certain bug reports.  Please 
appreciate that I've spent a notable amount of time analysing bugs, working 
out examples etc.  I would be happy if the developers of Amaya would take more 
effort in ensuring quality so that users don't have to deal with that many 
bugs and don't have to do so much of this time-consuming work of writing good 
bug reports.

Okay, now lets stop the preface and start with the reports.


Metadata applying to all reports:

    Release number: 9.1

    Platform: Debian GNU/Linux sarge on an i686 with Kernel 2.6.8


1. DISTURBANCE OF STRUCTURE IN CONNECTION WITH MATHML

Open the following XML file in Amaya:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <para xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">Hello!</para>

Set the cursor at the beginning of the text and insert a mathematical formula.  
Save the file, exit Amaya, restart Amaya and open the file.  Now you won't be 
able to insert another formula in the text.  If you open the structure view, 
you see that the text "Hello!" is errornously placed inside the math element.  
I also experienced segementation faults in similar situations.

This problem seems to appear only at the end of the file.  If I have elements 
after the last para element containing formulas, it seems to work correctly.


2. MISSING ELEMENT TYPES IN ELEMENT TYPE LIST

Create a file docbook.css with the following content:

    para { display: block }
    itemizedlist { display: block }

Open a file with the following content with Amaya:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <?xml-stylesheet href="docbook.css" type="text/css"?>
    <para xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">Hello!</para>

Press the reload button under "XML element type" in the Tools subwindow.  You 
will now see that para is missing on the list.


3. AUTOMATIC INCLUSION OF UNWANTED LINEBREAK IN SOURCECODE

Take the stylesheet file of 2. and open the XML file of 2. with Amaya.  Place 
the cursor inside the text.  Press the reload button under "XML element type" 
and double-click on "itemizedlist".  Now open the sourcecode view.  You will 
see that there is a linebreak before the <itemizedlist> tag.  Actually, this 
is wrong since it introduces significant whitespace.


4. PROCESS OF CHANGING ENTITY REFERENCES TO CHARACTER REFERENCES IS MADE 
VISIBLE

When editing documents with formulas, Amaya sometimes changes entity 
references like &alpha; to character references.  Until now, I don't know 
what rule Amaya follows in deciding when to do these changes.  A big problem 
with them is that every elementary change is reflected by the structure view.  
So if you have the structure view open, you can see Amaya removing an element 
reference, adding a character reference, removing the next element reference 
and so on.  This looks ugly.  In my opinion, it belongs to the basics of GUI 
programming that one first makes all the changes and updates the GUI once 
after being done with them. A big problem with these reference changes is 
that they take a lot of time.  It can happen that I have to wait for over 
five seconds because Amaya is busy with changing references!


5. SLOWNESS AND NASTY GUI THINGS

In general, Amaya is terribly slow.  In addition, sometimes during editing, 
the user interface blocks for over five seconds.  It can happen that during 
editing of MathML via the formatted view, visual appearance of the formula is 
changed just to be changed again.  The thing said under 4. applies here as 
well: First do all the calculations, then change the GUI once.


6. EVENTS REACH WRONG WINDOW

If I try to open the character entity window via C-m C-e, it regularily 
happens that I have to wait for a while because Amaya is so terribly slow.  
If I enter some characters before the character entity window has popped up, 
these characters are inserted into the view I work in, not into the entity 
window's editing field.  This is wrong.  The sequence C-m C-e a l p h a, for 
example, should always result in the string "alpha" appearing in the 
character entity window, regardless of how much time it takes for the window 
to pop up.  After pressing C-m C-e, events must not be handled until the 
action corresponding to C-m C-e, i.e., opening the entity window, is 
completed.


7. FORMULAS NOT LOOKING NICE

The formulas are typeset badly.  &bigcup; is way to big, spacing is often not 
sensible, fences are way too large if the fenced part appears inside an mrow 
etc.


8. REMOVAL OF FENCES

Open the file from 1. with Amaya, place the cursor inside the text and insert 
a formula containing an mrow with fences.  Now save the document and look at 
the sourcecode of the saved file.  You will discover that the mo elements 
representing the fences have empty content.  This problem seems to not appear 
when editing a separate MathML file.


9. ESCAPE KEY NOT HANDLED BY CHARACTER ENTITY WINDOW

The character entity window which is invoked via C-m C-e should cancel when 
the ESC key is pressed.


Okay, let this be enough for now although there are other things to report 
yet.  Maybe, I will write further reports later.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang

Received on Friday, 27 May 2005 10:51:47 UTC