On Feb 14, 2017, at 2:00 PM, Thomas Maul wrote: > There is a limit, see documentation: > http://doc.4d.com/4Dv15/4D/15.4/Field-and-variable-objects.300-3285416.en.html > > "Note: Text variables and fields in forms are designed to display contents of > a "reasonable" size. Beyond several tens of thousands of characters > (depending on the system), only part of the text will be accessible in the > form."
Thanks to Thomas for pointing everyone to the most obvious resource for understanding how 4D works — the documentation. I think that far to often most of us “old time” developers fail to first go read the most current 4D documentation when we have a problem. I know I’m negligent in that area often. We’ve been using 4D for so many years that we think we know how it works and never consider that old, long-time features can change with new versions. I always read the documentation to learn about new commands in new versions But rarely do I review the documentation about existing, and supposedly unchanged, commands. I just did a comparison of the v15.4 and v12.4 documentation related to this topic: http://doc.4d.com/4Dv12/4D/12.4/Field-and-variable-objects.300-1016025.en.html http://doc.4d.com/4Dv15/4D/15.4/Field-and-variable-objects.300-3285416.en.html This very important note that Thomas pointed out above IS NOT in the v12.4 documentation. When did it get added? I didn’t know about it. Jeff didn’t know about it. Probably most of us didn’t know about it. This is an important implementation change for 4D. In the past, when we had 32K max Text fields, I think everyone assumed that if you had a text field or variable on a form it would should 100% of all the text in the field up to that 32K limit. If you didn’t see some text at the bottom of the field, then it wasn’t there. But with v11 and the new 2GB max text field size I’m guessing some changes had to be implemented under the hood so that if a developer had a text field with 30MB of text it in and tried to display it on a form 4D would not go unresponsive or crash. Again I’m guessing 4D engineering decided that it was better to not have 4D crash and just some a small part of the data in the text field. Don’t try and show 30MB of text, show a little and forget about displaying the rest. No error message or warning. Just protect the user form a bad experience with using 4D. I think this was a good design decision. But was this design changed conveyed to developers? So now we know that text fields are treated specially when used on a form. If the size of the text is not too big then you will see all of the text that is contained in the field. But if the text is big, then 4D will quietly only display the first part of the big text field. No crashing. No unresponsiveness. No “out of memory” error. No “text is too big and has been truncated for display purposes” warning. Is there any way to find what pages of the documentation has changed with each new version of 4D? It is unreasonable to ask developers to re-read the thousands of pages of 4D documentation after each new version is released. And if a documentation page has not changed, there is really no need to review it. But if someone in France has taken the time to update a documentation page, then we should assume there is new information and it is important. And I want to know about this new information. OK, I just found the answer to my own question. So instead of deleting this email and keeping it to myself, I’ll answer my own question here so everyone can benefit from what I just discovered. At the bottom of the 4D Language Reference is a link to “What’s new”. http://doc.4d.com/4Dv15/4D/15.4/4D-Language-Reference.100-3273598.en.html http://doc.4d.com/4Dv15/4D/15.4/What-s-new.901-3273598.en.html This link has been around for a while and I’ve used it a few times. (I’ll be much more religious about using it in the future with all new 4D versions.) So this is where you need to go to see exactly what documentation pages have changes in the Language Reference. But what about the 4D Design Reference? Does it have this feature? I checked 4D Design References for past version and found: v12.4 NO http://doc.4d.com/4Dv12/4D/12.4/4D-Design-Reference.100-1015803.en.html v13.4 NO http://doc.4d.com/4Dv13/4D/13.4/4D-Design-Reference.100-1226399.en.html v14.4 NO http://doc.4d.com/4Dv14/4D/14.4/4D-Design-Reference.100-2603930.en.html v15.4 YES http://doc.4d.com/4Dv15/4D/15.4/4D-Design-Reference.100-3285265.en.html So starting in v15.4 we now have a quick way to review all documentation changes in the Language Reference and Design Reference with each new version. Thank you 4D, you are doing a good job. This is a much needed new documentation feature. And one that I will be using. Tim ******************************************** Tim Nevels Innovative Solutions 785-749-3444 [email protected] ******************************************** ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:[email protected] **********************************************************************
