So when we do go open-source next year, you will be able to offer changes to the source code like the Sort code (but not the language itself). Then Gordon and I and the rest of the team will duke it out over whether your submission is reasonable, and if so, it or something like it will be changed in the source code for future versions.
________________________________ From: Gordon Smith Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 3:00 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Cc: Alex Harui; Lauren Park Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language? Your use case seem very reasonable to me. In this particular case I disagree with my esteemed colleague Alex (who sits across from me)... I think our default sorting routines should handle null values. So please file this as a bug at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex and feel free to mention that I consider it a bug. However, I agree with Alex that it probably will not get fixed in time for the Flex 3 release, as the bar is currently extremely high for making changes at this point. We've got to stabilize the release and get it out! So you'll need to use a workaround for now. Gordon Smith Adobe Flex SDK Team ________________________________ From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of aceoohay Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 2:38 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language? Gordon: This thread was not intended as a technical thread, which is why I didn't include the details about the problem. I documented the problem in the following post; http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/95131 <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/95131> The only responses I got seemed to indicate that the behavior was by design, as opposed to a bug. Yes, it does throw a runtime error. I just signed up over at the Adobe bugs site. Paul --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , "Gordon Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > it gets confused when there are nulls in date, numeric, or boolean > fields > > > this is by design > > I doubt that we designed this code to intentionally get confused. : ) It > sounds like we're simply not properly handling null field values when > sorting. > > What do you mean by "get confused"? Does it throw an RTE? Do the nulls > cause incorrect sorting of the non-null values? Do the nulls not sort > together? How kind of sorting behavior do you think should occur when > there are null values? Should they sort before or after other values? > Please file the bug at htp://bugs.adobe.com/flex. <htp://bugs.adobe.com/flex.> > > BTW, the Flex SDK is not yet open-source, but it will be soon. > > Gordon Smith > Adobe Flex SDK Team > > ________________________________ > > From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> [mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> ] On > Behalf Of aceoohay > Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 9:33 PM > To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> > Subject: [flexcoders] If Flex is open source, how do we go about > changing the language? > > > > I just ran across what I consider a significant deficiency in Flex. > To correct this problem would require an addition of two attributes > to the mx:DataGridColumn class. > > I could make a change to my version of the language, or perhaps I > could create an inherited class. However, I feel strongly that the > problem is so fundamental that it should be changed in the language. > How do I go about making this happen? > > The problem is this; > > It appears that when sorting a DataGrid by clicking a column that > Flex currently does its best to determine the data type and sorts > based on that data type. The problem is that it gets confused when > there are nulls in date, numeric, or boolean fields. When it gets > confused it ralph's on its shoes (blows up). Based on my research, > including reading a bit of the file sortField.as, this is by design. > > There is a way around it but it requires instantiating a compare > function for each column that might get a null, and might be one of > non string data types. The workaround is to create a function, and > use the "sortCompareFunction" attribute to call a that function. > There is even a kludgier workaround to make the function generic by > using the "headerRelease" attribute of the DataGrid to update a > public variable with the column number. > > Since it seems as though this is an ubiquitous problem, it should be > solved in the language itself. The best approach that I came up with > is to have two new attributes for the mx:DataGridColumn; > > sortDataType - Basically specify the type of data contained in the > column that would be honored by the sort routine irrespective of the > values contained in the column. Values would be any valid data type. > > sortNullCollatingSequence - This would define whether nulls get > sorted to the top or bottom of the list. Values would be low - which > would indicate that nulls would sort lower than the lowest normal > value, and high - which would indicate that nulls would sort higher > than the highest normal value. > > This is one possible solution, there may be better ones but in my > opinion the current method should be improved. I would like to see it > implemented quickly as I believe it is a serious problem. > > How do I go about getting this taken seriously, and not assigned > an "enhancement request number" and never looked at again? > > Paul >
