date bug and persistent focus bug

[vjl]

Using Bookpedia 5.9.2, beta 108 on macOS 10.13.6 on a mac mini:

Filling in the "Purchased on" data as "11/12/2016" results in the year being changed to 2020. The only way to get the year to be accurate is to type "16" instead of "2016".

Manually adding items by typing ISBNs continues to be extremely laboursome. Using the multi-add toolbar button [++ icon], and typing an ISBN or Amazon ASIN manually, and hitting either enter or return on the keyboard results in the book being added, and then the edit book screen coming up immediately afterwards. One has to then press ESC and then TAB to return focus to the multi-add window. When adding 100s of records this way, it slows things down a lot. I've tried using the numbers on top of the keyboard as well as the number pad; no difference in behavior. Once in a blue moon, the edit entry window does not pop up, but it is completely random.

When using my USB barcode scanner to do the same thing, this issue doesn't happen. Unfortunately many books do not have barcodes, so they must be typed manually.

Thanks for looking into this!

[Conor]

Could you try disabling "Return to search window after adding an entry". Should not be related and it's not the case that is hoping up but the edit window. But since I have not been able to repeat it, looking for settings that might be affecting the workflow when manually typing out the ISBN.

[vjl]

Could you try disabling "Return to search window after adding an entry". Should not be related and it's not the case that is hoping up but the edit window. But since I have not been able to repeat it, looking for settings that might be affecting the workflow when manually typing out the ISBN.

I will give that a try. I won't be manually inputting items until the 26th of December, but I shall report back then!

[vjl]

I've disabled the 'return to search window after adding an entry' and the issue still persists. Also the date bug mentioned in the original post still persists. Using Bet 109 of Bookpedia now under 10.13.6.

[FineWine]

Using Bookpedia 5.9.2, beta 109 on macOS 10.13.6 on a mac mini:

Filling in the "Purchased on" data as "11/12/2016" results in the year being changed to 2020. The only way to get the year to be accurate is to type "16" instead of "2016".

Have you checked your macOS 10.13.6 Date & Time settings are correct

• 1 - Check that you have the correct Date & Time and Time Zone set in: System Preferences > Date & Time. Also make sure 'Set date and time automatically' is ticked and showing the correct Apple time zone is selected.

• 2 - Now check you have the correct format for your Date & Time in: System Preferences > Language & Region > Advanced > Dates (especially the 'Short' & 'Medium' settings).

If above does not work then the only remaining suggestion I can make is to delete Bookpedia's Preference file. Unfortunately this will delete ALL your preferences for which you will have to redo via: Bookpedia > Preferences

To delete Bookpedia's Preference file:

• 1 - Quit Bookpedia in Dock

• 2 - Finder Menu Bar > Go > Library > Preferences > com.bruji.bookpedia.plist

• 3 - Drag this file to Desk Top

• 4 - Restart Bookpedia and redo your Preferences in Bookpedia > Preferences

NOTE: If your Mac mini is a Late 2012 or newer, it will take macOS 10.14.2 Mojave. All the BETA pedia's have been optimised for Mojave.

There is also one other thing you can do and that is use, what I call a "Grease & Oil Change" maintenance program called Onyx. This is a free program that is a multifunction utility that you can use to verify the structure of the system files, to run miscellaneous maintenance and cleaning tasks, to configure parameters in the Finder, Dock, Safari, and some of Apple's applications, to delete caches, to remove certain problematic folders and files, to rebuild various databases and indexes, and more. I always use it prior and post system OS updates and about once a month.

This program is available here: Titanium Software - Onyx. ONLY DOWNLOAD THE VERSION FOR YOUR macOS

Hope this is of some assistance to you

[vjl]

Using Bookpedia 5.9.2, beta 109 on macOS 10.13.6 on a mac mini:

Filling in the "Purchased on" data as "11/12/2016" results in the year being changed to 2020. The only way to get the year to be accurate is to type "16" instead of "2016".

• 2 - Now check you have the correct format for your Date & Time in: System Preferences > Language & Region > Advanced > Dates (especially the 'Short' & 'Medium' settings).

That was it! Doh! Short was set to 76 instead of 1976 like Medium and Long were set for. Thank you!

NOTE: If your Mac mini is a Late 2012 or newer, it will take macOS 10.14.2 Mojave. All the BETA pedia's have been optimised for Mojave.

It can run 10.14, but I probably won't be upgrading it in the next few years to anything beyond 10.13 [i ran 10.6 until last year and while i've made workarounds for everything, things are a lot less efficient with 10.13 then they were with 10.6, with apps/processes requiring more clicks/keyboard commands, and processes are slower even with a 5+ year newer computer than what 10.6 was running!]. My main reason is I use Aperture and Aperture is unsupported, but unofficially supported with 10.13 [and runs well], but most definitely does not run well under 10.14 as the engineers who kept support for it [unofficially] were unable to do with Mojave.

There is also one other thing you can do and that is use, what I call a "Grease & Oil Change" maintenance program called Onyx. This is a free program that is a multifunction utility that you can use to verify the structure of the system files, to run miscellaneous maintenance and cleaning tasks, to configure parameters in the Finder, Dock, Safari, and some of Apple's applications, to delete caches, to remove certain problematic folders and files, to rebuild various databases and indexes, and more. I always use it prior and post system OS updates and about once a month.

Have it and have been using it for many, many years. Thanks for the thoughtful reply and advice!

[FineWine]

Interesting result. I have my macOS 10.14 Date elements set as:

Short: 1/04/76
Medium: 1/04/1976
Long: 1 April 1976
Full: Thursday, 1 April 1976

I have had no problem with the Date insertion using either the pop-up 'Calendar Selection Box' or manual insertion in any of the Pedia's.

Oop's I forgot about the pedia's own "Date formats:" selection which you can find in Preferences > General

A quote from the pedia Help

The 'Date formats' let you set a default date system to be used in the various date fields. For example, "dd MMMM yyyy" would display as "25 September 2011". The most common options are:

Conversion Specifier Description
d = day of the month (1-31)
MM = month numerical (03)
MMM = month abbreviated (Sept)
MMMM = month full (September)
yy = year without century (11)
yyyy = year with century (2011)

But here is the interesting thing, I have my 'Other dates' set as: d/mm/y which gives me yyyy (2019) If I change it to d/mm/yy it gives me yy (19)

Notice that the 'Conversion Specifier' 'y' is not mentioned in the help section.

Maybe it is just a very small quirky bug that Conor can shed some light on.

[vjl]

Yeah, I posted before I tested. Sigh. The system preference was also like yours and I assumed that is what was causing the issue. But I just tested it [busy day!] and if I type 11/15/2018 into the Purchased On field in Bookpedia, it results in the year 2020 being added.

My 'Other dates' also looked like yours with the single 'y'. I changed it to be 'yyyy' and no difference in behavior for the Purchased On field. Typing a 4 digit year into that field always results in the year being 2020. I'm so used to always typing 4 digit years that typing just '18' feels weird and unnatural to me, so the habit is a bit hard to break.

I've put the Other dates field back to 'y' since it appears to have no difference for data entry into the Purchased On field.

I'm still using beta 109.

EDIT: I should clarify that my issue is that I enter the date into the Purchased On field and if I have to back date it to a different year, when I type a 4 digit year, that year is not displayed but rather the year 2020 is displayed. As I have a large backlog of books to enter [Bookpedia is an inventory program for my bookstore], I will often need to type dates from last year.

[FineWine]

Ok time for some drastic measures .

Delete your presently installed Bookpedia Beta.App. Ensure you have a fresh clean Bookpedia Beta.App from the Beta site, remove the Preference .plist file as explained above, re-install Bookpedia Beta.App with the new version. It will automatically recreate the Preference .plist file with default settings.

Then before you go ahead with re-entering ALL your preference settings just see if the Date problem is fixed using the default Preference file. If it is not then you can just reinstate the original Preference .plist file from the Desktop.

NOTE: your data base will remain intact with the deletion of Bookpedia App. It resides here: ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia

I use a free App cleaner App called (funny enough) AppCleaner. You can grab it from here. It is good at finding a lot of detritus files (caches etc). Remember to untick ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia before you click the Remove button.

If all else fails Then we await for Conor's help.

[Conor]

This was a tough bug to fix. As it has a lot to do with localization and date formats preferences on the computer as FineWine pointed out. Also that it's no longer supported by Apple to be lenient on how you enter dates. They want you to stick to the formats you have on your preferences.

Do please try the Bookpedia beta 110. Since you are already on the beta it should self update when you launch it again or use "Bookpedia -> Check for Updates".

Did require some serious changes, so if anybody runs into any date entering issues in the current beta, do let me know.

[vjl]

This was a tough bug to fix. As it has a lot to do with localization and date formats preferences on the computer as FineWine pointed out. Also that it's no longer supported by Apple to be lenient on how you enter dates. They want you to stick to the formats you have on your preferences.

Do please try the Bookpedia beta 110. Since you are already on the beta it should self update when you launch it again or use "Bookpedia -> Check for Updates".

Did require some serious changes, so if anybody runs into any date entering issues in the current beta, do let me know.

Thanks, Conor! I will update today and test it out. I remember that using certain key words for time/date stamps was going to be dropped due to Apple dropping support [but i recently typed 'now' and was pleasantly surprised it worked, though i forget which field].

I should note that the Sold On field seems not to be affected by this bug [in beta 109], or at least in how I use it, as I paste in complete date and time into that field as apposed to just the date in the Purchased On field. Eg: 12/24/2018 11:01:41 AM is what I will paste into the Sold On field, and Bookpedia validates that field displaying, "Dec 24, 2018 11:01:41 AM" for me.

Anyway, I will test out beta 110 and report back soon! Thank you very much for tackling this one!

[Conor]

I recently typed 'now' and was pleasantly surprised it worked

This is where all this comes. I love the idea of colloquial phrases and that was possible all the way to 10.6. After that Apple started getting strict on the dates, hence why it goes through several passes. The first being the Apple way, hence if you give a full date as the one your displaying it will recognize it. After that Apple refuses to guess at a date. Here is where I use the old methods that still support "Today" "Yesterday" and so on, as well as try to guess based on your locale at the order of month versus day. But as we move into the future the bugs crop up like not wanting to deal with 4 digit year and assuming that it's 2 digit.

My 'Other dates' also looked like yours with the single 'y'. I changed it to be 'yyyy'

The format is a little technical, but it was easier to expose the underlying format to the user for full customization. Here is the actual full standard, where it says y = yyyy = yyy. Only yy has special meaning. For example you could add in the day of the week with "eee".

[vjl]

Conor - I haven't found any unusual datestring issues since your 110 beta.

The focus issue is still there, as I did something unusual a bit ago and copy/pasted an ISBN into the multi add window:

1935507338

then I hit return [on the main part of the keyboard]. Bookpedia then added and opened the book - Well-Driven Nails, with the following buttons on the bottom: New Search, Close, Add.

The item is already added in the main [right] pane of Bookpedia, so I use ESC or click Close to close the window, and then the tab key to get the cursor back into the multi add window.

I am using Amazon US as my only source for fetching data [since i sell on Amazon and the ASIN field is their primary key used for matching items].

If I scan the book's barcode, 9781935507338, with my USB scanner, this issue does not appear. It is only when I manually type or copy/paste an ISBN or ASIN into the multi-add field that I get this behavior. "Return to search window after adding an entry" is not checked. "Add first search result automatically" is also not checked [the only 2 items checked in the General pref are the check for updates and open links in ext. browser].

Thank you very much for fixing that 2020 date bug! I remember a few years ago you telling me about how 'now' was being depreciated by Apple; I am very glad you kept that feature, as it is quite useful.

[vjl]

A slight update to my Jan 12th post about the edit window popping up. With beta 110, this issue still happens, but after hitting ESC, focus does return to the Multi ++ add window, so I no longer need to hit the tab key. But the main issue of manually entering an ISBN and the add title/edit window popping up is still there. It just happened when I put this ISBN in:

0060422580