Beta 3 Bug Reporting

[mikelove]

Since we're still fixing a lot of the bugs we know about (yes, that means this probably shouldn't be called a beta, sorry about that) we're only looking for a few very specific kinds of bug reports on this; for anything else, please wait until Beta 4.

We're specifically interested in hearing about:

- Lost / corrupted flashcard data, but only if it's in files newly created with Beta 3.
- Crashes severe enough to require a hard reset / wipe of your system's memory, or other bugs/problems which affect other software running on your system.
- Bugs which make the software *completely* unusable, in the try-to-launch-it-but-get-a-blank-screen-and-a-system-reset sense.
- *Severe* font issues, i.e. entire screens of text being corrupted / unreadable.
- Software failing to unlock / other issues with the now-nearly-finalized registration/ordering system.

And that's about it. So I'm hoping this will be a relatively short thread

 

[grabolus]

Hi,

I am not sure if I do something wrong, but I always get a reset a second after I started Pleco beta3. (Treo 650)
I thought I deleted all old files...

Best Regards

 

[ipsi]

Download... Check.
Synchronized... Check.
Opening... FAIL!

Tried to load it, and it just gave me a soft reset... Doesn't seem to much I can do about it. I deleted all my files before installing, but I just get a soft reset on trying to open it.

grabolus: I get the same thing, on a Treo 680.

 

[ipsi]

EDIT: Ignore this post, I'm a muppet, I used the B2 File instead of the B3 file... It still resets as posted above.

EDIT: I'm also calling this a "Bugs which make the software *completely* unusable, in the try-to-launch-it-but-get-a-blank-screen-and-a-system-reset sense".

 

[mikelove]

Any chance you might have left the preferences behind? Or not deleted the flashcard / user dict files, some of which may appear under separate entries in Delete? Make sure you've cleared out absolutely *everything* and try again...

Edit: as a sanity-check I just installed the complete Beta 3 distribution on a newly hard-reset TX here and it works fine, so there's definitely some sort of specific conflict involved - all of the files except HWR + Pleco Engine are on the memory card, if that makes any difference.

 

[mikelove]

Just found a potential problem involving the audio files: try deleting those and see if that improves matters any.

 

[mikelove]

OK, something very weird is going on here... it looks like the beta on Palm may be using some of the older-version application sources, there's stuff that isn't working the way it was recently written to. And unfortunately I don't have the ability to make a nice clean build here on my laptop on vacation (worst possible time to release a new beta, really), so I'm pulling the Palm-specific files from the Beta 3 distribution - I'll re-post it hopefully by late next week once I've gotten this straightened out. Sorry, all. (ipsi, the bitmap font files from beta 3 should work OK with beta 2 if you want to at least enjoy full-width punctuation in the meantime)

 

[ipsi]

Oops. Oh well. But don't pull all the Palm Stuff - the new full-width punctuation works with Beta 2. .

I'm also still getting resets despite having deleted all the files with creator code PLEN. Not sure what else I need to delete. Not that it matters right now anyway.

Also, just making sure - you didn't make my mistake and install B2 instead of B3? .

 

[ipsi]

Also, I think you still need to upate the Pleco Engine creator code.

And I'm not seeing some of the forum images. What's going on there? Stuff like the smilies and the rank pictures (Huangdi, Zhuangyuan).

Also, I actually discovered the punctuation thing myself, so that's cool. .

 

[mikelove]

It's definitely B3, there's other stuff that wouldn't have been in Beta 2. Looks to be mostly ARM-acceleration-related, bits of the ARM code keep intermittently acting oddly - for example right now on my TX the software boots but the audio files sound like random buzzing. Anyway since the software was working correctly yesterday it should hopefully be easy to find the cause of this when I get back.

The forum image problem is because in yet another Thing I Shouldn't Have Done Just Before Vacation I put the new version of phpBB on here and it's not behaving itself very well - when I get back I may finally do what I should have done months ago and switch everything over to vBulletin.

 

[ipsi]

That's the way it goes... Everything works fine until it gets released... Also, did you actually install your keyfile? While you're the person who'd normally ask this, people forget to do some really important crap no matter how often they've done it before...

Yeah, upgrading the forum probably wasn't a good idea just before Christmas... Do you not have SSH (or equivalent) access to your stuff? That sounds like it might have been a sensible idea.

 

[mikelove]

Yes, I did install my keyfile And it's not a question of access but rather of how much time I can spend diagnosing a problem while I'm trying to be a good family guy - the software was actually updated about a week ago but we didn't realize there were problems with the update until several days later, fortunately I managed to patch it up to the point where it would at least be functional before I left.

 

[ipsi]

Good to hear .

And fair enough. Family are important. And running your own business doesn't exactly give you a lot of non-business time from what I understand. You need to take what time you can.

 

[gato]

maybe you should hire ipsi.

 

[ipsi]

Hell, I'd go with that . I need a job right now - I'll be less active when I find a permanent job.

 

[Smoodo]

I would like to suggest that after reading many, many entries with all of these beta releases that a very simple utility be written that wipes out previous versions of PlecoDict betas, if not optionally other versions. Everyone would benefit from having an easy way to be sure of the state of their system.

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could do an MD5 Sum on the files currently installed and see if they all belong to the same version. Every build could have sums. On the first startup, just have it check the files. If anything ever goes wrong later, have an option to check the sums. You could do this with flashcards too.

Some kind of checksum would hopefully show clearly if a problem belongs to developer error, user error or possibly hardware error.

 

[mikelove]

Interesting idea, but we're behind schedule enough at this point that the last thing we need to do is add another new feature (which this is) - might be something to consider for a future version, though. The checksumming isn't really an issue, it's not a matter of entire files being wrong but rather of the wrong versions of specific library / source files being included, and writing a utility to checksum/version-check each of those in a finished application would be much more work than just more rigorously checking the binaries before releasing them.

 

[gato]

It would basically be an uninstall utility. I do see potential conflicts between version 1 and version 2 as an issue when you do a mass release. Just have to be careful very different file names are used. I've had to do a clean re-install of version 1 already.

 

[mikelove]

Oh, we'll be very careful about that - whole new system for file naming on Palm, and new file type specifiers in all of the files to keep any previous software (or beta version) from even attempting to access them.

 

[gandq]

"Test" on Treo 680

Dear Mike,

a Happy New Year to you and everyone else!

I haven't posted for quite some time now, mostly because I am too busy and can't really help with beta development like I used to do with PlecoDict 1.0 (still hope I was at least of some help back then). Apart from that, I need a stable palm, since my PDA is now also my cell phone which I can't have crashing all the time. (Besides, the Treo 680 takes forever too reboot after a crash...) Nevertheless, I've been following the Beta Thread and I did install Beta 1 and 2 for some quick looks on how things were going. Since I've got some leisure time now, I wanted to take a look at Beta 3 as well.

After installing Beta 3 yesterday I feel I have to post about it, because truthfully, it was quite an annoying experience. It rendered my working-flawelessly-and-being-very-important-for-everyday-life Pleco 1 unusable once again, meaning it made it disappear and replaced it with the Beta. This was an issue with Beta 1, too, and I am quite disappointed to see it happen again. Moreover, Beta 3 still invariably crashes the Treo every time any other function apart from a basic search is used (audio, Pleco Reader, Flashcard import etc... I stopped trying it after the 5th crash or so). I wonder whether or not there has actually been any testing being done a Treo 680 before, because it seems that in terms of stability there have been almost no improvements since Beta 1.

This post might not be of any help in terms of bug-finding and might actually not be anything you're not already aware of (just read your post above), but still: please make beta testing a less cumbersome experience in the future (I had to reinstall Pleco 1 with the keyfile and then reset all the preferences, very annoying and quite time consuming). A clear destinction between beta files and files of the working version would be appreciated. The way things are now, I probably will stay away from Beta 4 unless at least the most basic issue of not having Pleco 1 killed by the beta is explicitly adressed.

...

Ah, what the heck! While I'm at it, here are some few little things i noticed:
- The preference panes are - to say the least - a bit confusing. No explanation whatsoever. If functions are not 'guessable' from reading their names, there is no way of knowing what the arey supposed to do an thus no way of knowing if they work or not.
- The key preferences don't seem to work and there is no indication of which key one is actually configuring.
- I can't get more than 3 buttons working in the searchbar (a fourth one will appear, but it will be a useless magnifying-glass-button, no matter what action I select for it).
- The search-/cmdbar button for the Reader doesn't work. A blank, not-clickable space will apear where it should be.
- Color settings for the tones display (cool feature, BTW) can't be customised because the color selection doesn't work. Not only can't one select any new color, there is also no way of exiting the palette screen, other than leaving the application altogether. At least no crash here
- Sadly, clicking on 'Info' when a character is magnified will invariably lead to a crash (has been the case with all beta versions, as have most of the above issues, actually).

So much for my "test",

Cheers


jo.