Hi All
Jaroslaw and I have been eMailing off-list and he has asked me to post these here….

Hi Jaroslaw

Sorry to bug you, but I'm rather concerned that questions I post on the Forum don't get ANY replies at all - not even from you!! Does this mean I'm asking them in the wrong way or something? Or does it mean there are very few people on this Forum and that you are too busy with other things to do it?? Or are you the only one who replies on the Forum??

On the positive side my old Database and the new one I have developed for my Partner are working very well indeed with the new ver 3.1 - so I'm very thankful for that!! I’m now using the AppImage program as my OpSys has not updated Kexi on the Repo. I’m currently using AppImage 308.
What I have been doing since I started using 3.1 is to keep a track of things I see that are different or IMHO could be improved. I hope this will be of interest to you and the Devs and be accepted in the spirit that it is sent.

Here is my report ....

NEW KEXI - ver 3.1 Alpha - Appimage 308

POSITIVES

* I like the re-positioning of the Search Box in the middle of the screen!! But it would be good to make this Box more sizable. Also I think the 'Search Up or Down' could be improved by making the search Down automatically start at the first Record and search Up starts from the last Record. This would stop you having to go one way and then the other way to find the Record you want.

NEGATIVES

* There is a big need for either an enlarged view option for fine positioning of Fields in Design Mode OR a Keyboard option to move things a very small amount at a time. ie SHIFT + Arrow Keys.

* The Font size of the Menu Bar, the Properties Box and the Bottom Bar are too small - VERY hard to read!! However the bigger Font size of the 'Find > Look In' Box is a great improvement!! This is particularly important for the 'Save' and 'Find' options at the top AND the whole Bottom Bar which are very very small indeed!!!
BTW - I'm finding with daily use that the small size of the top and bottom Menu Bars, as I mention above, is VERY difficult to use indeed!! Please go back to the old size for these bars!!

* The 'Image > Insert from File > File Types' MUST have an "All Files" option!! ie I have graphics and photos in several formats, before Kexi used displayed All Images by default, now I have to make several selections to find the Graphic or Photo I need!!

* When I try to 'Compact Database" I get an "Unknown Error" Box on screen!!??

* The 'Sort Ascending' and 'Sort Descending' Buttons do not seem to work - or they work in some way that I'm not used to or is not obvious!! An online or built-in Help Function with the latest information would help here.

* I have some Fields set to display contents in Italics and Blue. However this only displays this way after a program shutdown and re-start. It should show as you enter it like BOLD does.

* I am unable to get 'Find in Current Field' to work. I highlight a Field, enter a Value in the Find Box and select next but the displayed Records seem to be random and not the Value I entered.

Just found another couple of "Funnies"

* If you try to delete a Table Kexi 3.1 crashes and the Table is NOT deleted!! So with the changes and corrections in my new Database I now have about three or four “old’ Tables that I can’t delete!!

* The Properties Box for a Photo Object only brings up two options – Foreground Colour and Background Colour so there is no way to set this object correctly.
If I open the DB in the old version of Kexi ALL the Options are present.
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I also need answers VERY urgently on the following ...

1) The old question from last year that I still have had NO REPLY!!!
DO DROP-DOWN BOXES ACTUALLY WORK and if so HOW????
{Jarosow says - I am planning to record a video for this. Please expect it within a week}

2) HOW TO CHANGE A FIELDS TYPE WITHOUT THE PROGRAM DELETING THE ENTIRE TABLE/DATABASE??
Over the years I've worked with many DBs and NEVER seen this before.
If it is some limit in Kexi what is the way round this?
I’ve been able to Add a new field by backing-up, adding the new field and re-importing but this will not work to be able to change an existing field!!
{Jaroslaw says - It's a top​ priority wish that I'd love to implement in my free time.}

3) How to be able to display zero values in a Text Box?
Seen as Kexi can not do Tables yet I have laid out a Table-like section and it populates fine but will not show a Zero value!! I have to do the calculations myself for now but I must be able to show Zero as a Balance when everything has been paid by the Member.
UPDATE - I found the answer to this – my mistake – I had set the fields to ‘Integer Number’ by mistake when it should have been ‘Floating Point Number’!!
{Jaroslaw says - Computing totals is a priority wish too. I realized that I can't afford hiring another person to implement them to so this is the effect: delays until I implement that. Sorry!

As I said - I hope all this is of interest!!
{Jaroslaw says - I very much like your questions and would like you to put them on the forum}

With best regards.
IanW
Pretoria RSA

Thanks so much Ian, this is a great report that will be used to improve Kexi.

Hi All

New funny - The Check Boxes now have a Left-Hand Bracket next to them that we never had before - See below.
Same record in 2.9.11 and 3.1 (AppImage 308). And I can't get rid of it or edit it out!!

Old Kexi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4QRSi ... sp=sharing

New Kexi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4QRSi ... sp=sharing

BTW - How do I add my photo to my Profile on this Forum?? Can't seem to find a way

Thanks

Thanks for the report!

Avatar: click Browse at ucp.php?i=profile&mode=avatar

> Check Boxes

Could you please make one of them larger for a moment and switch to the data view to look what's the test there?

Maybe there's some text in them?

I have your 'userform' form here you and it does not show the glitch with 3.1 Alpha. We've not made any changes to checkboxes for 3.1 so I don't know (yet) what could happen. The checkboxes on the form have text property set but it is intentionally not visible due to the geometry. How about removing the text from them to see what happens. In any case I see texts like 'Check Box 3' there and nothing containing a '(' character. EDIT: it's probably a fragment of the 'Check Box' text It did not show in Kexi 2 probably because physical font settings were slightly different for that version (technically: for Qt and KDE libs). So all you need to do is what I advice: removing the text entirely.

Related: since 3.0.2 (and since tomorrow's snapshot) check boxes will be two-state by default, see:

https://cgit.kde.org/kexi.git/commit/?i ... 333cb29e6b

Thanks Jaroslaw

RE: Check Boxes now show a '(' Bracket on the right

I discovered also that this was in fact the left part of the Capital 'C" of the Field Name "Check Box n".

I edited it as you said and this removes it but as soon as you save and return to Data Made they are back.
No matter what I try they keep coming back.
The field area is as small as I can make it and I even downloaded the latest (319) AppImage and still no change!!
Any other ideas??

Regarding me wanting to add my photo to my Profile you say "Avatar: click Browse at ucp.php?i=profile&mode=avatar".
I do not follow this and can not understand it!! Can you please explain a little better??

Thanks a lot.

> I edited it as you said and this removes it but as soon as you save and return to Data Made they are back. No matter what I try they keep coming back.

Ian, as always very interesting. I cannot reproduce so far:
- text property editing: https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/7lfCewlXeCxMyrw
- effect after saving https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/G3AMOAOByKBl4wv

If there's still an issue could you please list what you do step by step?

I sent you password allowing uploading screenshots for this thead.

Regarding avatars I mean the 'Browse' button at this: https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/RCOZcmpoCrGgik5

OK, Ian answered: https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/RWnN5Y9qccLiNao

> I have reduced the field area as much as you can - If this could be made smaller it would get round the problem.

Ian, maybe you can change Width property of the by entering the value in the property editor. On my system it allows as small as 21 pixels.

Thanks Jaroslaw - BUT no joy!!

I followed your suggestion - if you try to make the 'Y' coordinate of the Field Area smaller without removing the Field ID it stops at 25, just too short to remove the partial 'C'. If you first delete the Field ID it still stops short with the manual moving but you can put a value into the 'Y' coordinate box. I entered 10 which works fine. BUT after a Save and change to Data Mode all the Check Box Field Areas default back to 25 and the partial 'C' comes back on the screen!!! This value of 25 must be set as a limit somewhere in the code!!

NEW SUGGESTION FOR THE TOP AND BOTTOM MENU BARS
I was doing some work with an on-line program yesterday and noticed a very nice idea. You have obviously reduced the size of these Bars to free up more screen space for the Form which in principal is a good idea but, as I have said , their new size makes them very hard too use.

The program I was using yesterday did the same thing BUT as soon as you position the Mouse Pointer on a Bar it doubled in size.
I thought this was a very cleaver idea that works well and serves both ideals.
Maybe you should consider this -

Thanks again.

PS - How goes the Drop-Down Box Video, still very keen to see this!!

> I followed your suggestion - if you try to make the 'Y' coordinate of the Field Area smaller

Ian
I mentioned Width, not Y. Could you please install and provide me access to the TeamViewer tool because I must miss something important in your Kexi version. It happens.

It's Perfectly possible that widget style you're using has minimum size for the check box. It's also computed based on fonts. As you may guess, all the logic is not part of Kexi, so I need to try it on a real system.

My mistake Jaroslaw!!

It was the width I was adjusting.
I'm not sure if this is a Font problem - I'm not aware of how you change the Font of a field Label (or ID) - dosn't the Font selection only effect the contents of the field??

Regarding TeamViewer I do have it installed here (ver 12.0.71510) and remember I'm running PClinuxOS here.
Will we have to have Skype running as well so that we can talk?
I am one hour ahead of you here and when would you like to do this?

Thanks

Ian
I have found a way to be more liberal about minimum width of the field. Currently we're setting minimum size based on size hint. The reason was to avoid confusion when user changes the size to a value that's smaller that the size of the [x] rectangle. E.g. 4x4 pixels may be confusing.

Regarding the test I responded by email. But I propose to wait 24 hours with the meeting before improvements to the above behavior land in the Snapshot - so you can test. Thanks.

> But I propose to wait 24 hours with the meeting before improvements to the above behavior land in the Snapshot - so you can test.

Ian
Just added the change. You can test the version that would appear this midnight (in 14 hours or so).