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Bug of the moment 2006-09-24


Briefly continuing with the graphical user interface bugs from last time, here is a visual contradiction in Symbian EPOC 5:

A back-up attempt failed, and PsiTools on my Mac restarted all the programs running on my Psion prior to the back-up. I had left the task window up, which failed to list all the programs that had been re-opened. Oops.


Continuing with EPOC, we return to my classic theme of software development issues. And bad frameworks. And OPL-32. Here is the About dialog box for the game of Sweeper, as it first appears:

Even a novice will realise that these are rather curious instructions. Here is what you get if you follow them:

Strange. Now, how about this?

Yes, I can type all over the text. I am a little surprised that it took me years to discover this one, but I don’t tend to ogle About boxes and generally I tap the OK button with the stylus …

Correct. Being a multi-line edit field (a dEDITMULTI), the enter key replaces the selected text – all of it – with a line break. It neither passes OK nor collects £200. (I’ll say nothing about failing to capitalise “OK”…)

So why dEDITMULTI? OPL-32 has no such feature as a read-only edit field, and while a text label may contain line breaks, text labels cannot be scrolled.

Why didn’t the developer simply put up a label saying “This game is licensed under the MIT license, a copy of which is enclosed with the application”? I have no idea.

But yes. dEDITMULTI defaults to being scrolled all the way to the bottom and with all the text selected (Sweeper is open source). Hence the bizarre instructions.


Posted 24th September 2006 – Comments and questions?