My experiences with tellico, a few bugs and possible enhancements

[Robby Stephenson]

Hi Jens,

On Sunday 18 February 2007, Jens Seidel wrote:
> after a few days playing with tellico I also noticed problems which I
> want to report (exists a bug tracking system?):

Novell Forge has a bugzilla, but I don't use it. I suppose Tellico usage is 
growing to the point that there might be a need for a public bug tracker, 
rather than the local file I keep.

> * The documentation is not always accessible, e.g.:
>   http://periapsis.org/tellico/doc/installation.html:
>    Forbidden
>    You don't have permission to access /tellico/doc/installation.html on
>    this server.

Server problems, I haven't ever been able to track it down. The permissions 
are fine. Usually it'll load if you refresh or wait a bit. Color me puzzled 
on that one.

> * I selected "No formatting" for the description and the title, which
>   consists of "%{year} %{denomination} %{description}". Nevertheless
>   the capitalisation of the title is modified. 

The "Auto-capitalize titles and names" option overrides "No formatting" 
field option. That's a bug, I suppose. It should probably be the other way 
around.

> * I changed the type of a catalog number field from text to number and
>   tellico did not complain, even with values like "17a" in the
>   collection. Great!

Yeah, it doesn't go through and revalidate every entry. :)

>   Now I got the correct sorting order ("4"<"17a") and 
>   assumed that tellico also handles non numerical characters in such
>   fields. But the field value in the top right widget (column view)
>   vanished!

Vanished? Meaning you can't right-click and show it?

>   So it is not properly supported. 
>
>   What is suggested for such catalog numbers?
>   - Text, results in wrong sorting
>   - Use number type and allow also non numerical characters but sort
>     numbers properly

I don't like either one of those options, since they both involve lying 
about the field semantics. It's either a number or text, and it gets sorted 
that way. If you really want 4 < 17a, then enter "04"

>   - Split field into a number ("17") and a text field ("a") and display
>     both always side on side to get "17 a"

Possibly, plus you could create a dependant field to combine the two.

> * Once a collection vanished tellico complains that it cannot open it.
>   This error occurs not only once but on each start!

So you're repeatedly trying to open a file that doesn't exist? Why? Once you 
open a file that does and then quit, Tellico should no longer try to open 
the first file.

> * I decided to save pictures outside tellicos .tc file.

What does that mean exactly, turning off the "Save images in data file" 
option? I'm not sure what you did.

> I tried to open 
>   the collection from another user account and tellico did not found any
>   of my pictures. Why do you do not save just the filenames instead of a
>   hash?

What if you opened it from another machine, how would it get the pictures 
then? If you want to share date files, the images will have to be saved 
inside the data file.

>   I also noticed that tellico creates copies of the pictures in 
>   .kde/share/apps/tellico/data/. This is not wanted!

Turn the option "Include images in data file" on then. That location is the 
default location for the images when they're not in the data file. It 
improves load time greatly, believe me.

> * The XML file uses the tag <scott>. Nevertheless my stamp collection
> doesn't use scott catalog numbers (I don't know these), but Michel ones
> (which are protected by copyright, grml!!! Any solution to this?). Why
> not use <catalog_number>?

Because a Scott number is not a Michel number. If you called the 
field "Catalog number" and put scott and michel numbers there, it would be 
a bit meaningless, no? If you want a field for Michel numbers, then just 
add it. I don't know anything about stamp collecting. I looked at a few 
other stamp collection databases, tried to figrue out what fields they 
included, and add those for Tellico. If Michel is a popular cataloging 
number, then perhaps it should be added as a default field for stamp 
collections, then.

> * Plural forms of tags are very funny: I see <katalogpreiss> for
>   <katalogpreis> (English plural rule for German words :-))

The XML elements aren't meant to be grammatically correct. :) Even in 
english, the 's' doesn't work sometimes. I don't expect most users to be 
messing around in the XML. Adding the 's' was just an easy and 
straight-forward way to name the container element.

>   Tellico also doesn't check for user supplied fields with appended "s",
>   whichs XML tag collidates with the plural form!

I'm not sure what you mean there. If a field can contain multiple values, 
that fact is part of the "flag" attribute and Tellico will only read 
multiple values if that flag is set. Whether the field is a user's custom 
one or not doesn't matter at all.

> I attached another update for the German translation. I hope it
> stabilises soon :-) Please note that the patch contains also the
> errors reported in
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=313839 which were never
> properly fixed during the last 17 months.

Thanks, just committed.

> Please add a proper translator comment to "Denomination", my dictionary
> contained many possible translations and I selected initially the wrong
> one.

A comment saying that a stamp denomination and a coin denomination are 
different? Or just what the word denomination means with regard to stamps 
and coins?

Thanks for your feedback!
Robby