Re: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
My point was only to refer to the inherent exclusive danger of open source tools that Microsoft has had occasion to exploit, and that is the reliability of a construct if derivatives aren't controlled as there root. And I'm referring to the language not the classes. Requesting a feature change or improvement is far different from requesting open source of the Flex As3 language definition. What I mean by this is that Open Source code in the form of AS3 classes is a good thing. Any notion, however, that the community of Flex Developers would be able to distribute a different base interpreter is a dangerous one and competitors like Microsoft know it (this doesn't include a custom lex and interpreter for a 3rd party but the idea of a new version of a Flex interpreter). My only point was to keep Adobe informed of some of Microsoft's strategies they have exhibited in the past. I'm sure some at Adobe already know it, but I believe in the lessons of history and the need to repeat them when the possibility of danger is still there, especially as a friendly reminder to the Flex community at large. There is no whining going on here by anybody as far as I can tell; only, if anything, casting the stone from a possible whiny arm. The fact is that the community of development on the whole in the world is becoming a lot better, but there are still people out there with a never ending thirst for control, and to keep their behemoths alive. -r aceoohay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert: Yes this is an earnest request. While I do not shrink from controversy if I believe it will get things done, I don't needlessly whine either. I believe that it is important to make sure that we help the developers of our tools understand what is important to us consumers of the tools. Otherwise their direction/vision may preclude them from doing the little things that make the difference between a easy to use tool and one that ain't. But really folks, this isn't rocket science, the sort routines are broken. Paul --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Robert Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't believe the Flex language itself is open source, only the .swf format. Someone at adobe may want to clear that up. Although I'm sure this is an earnest request, whenever open source is discussed one thing everyone on this list has to be careful of is that MICROSOFT will not go well into that good night of the loser status that are suffering at the hands of Apple and Linux after the desperate attempts by SCO. I've learned enough about them to know that. They will keep people out on the edge of happenings to attempt to stir trouble, so any discussion of Open Source (microsoft's thorn) in a way that would disturb the good foundation of Flash end-users should looked at closely. One thing I've learned about enemies is that once you begin to feel sorry for their sad state, they usually have such little class as to reach out in desperation to draw their gun from their black holster and beady blue eyes to shoot at innocence. Mercy is good, but not with Microsoft (never). -r Ralf Bokelberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why has you data null values in the first place? Maybe you can put in some dummy data? Cheers Ralf. - Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage. - Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage.
RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
I've moved this bug to https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13808
since it is not related to the ActionScript compiler, it's only in the
Flex classes.
Matt
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of aceoohay
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 9:14 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about
changing the language?
Gordon:
Per your request I have filed a bug report. It can be found here;
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3042
Paul
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
, aceoohay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Gordon, et al:
Here is a simple test that will show the problem;
?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?
mx:Application xmlns:mx=http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml;
layout=absolute
creationComplete=initApp()
mx:Script
![CDATA[
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.controls.Alert;
[Bindable] public var acData:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection;
private function initApp():void
{
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:1,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:A});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:2,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:B});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:3,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:C});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:4,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:D});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:5,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:E});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:6,col2:new Date
(),col3:false,col4:F});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
dgSortTest.dataProvider = acData;
}
]]
/mx:Script
mx:DataGrid id=dgSortTest x=26 y=10
mx:columns
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 1
dataField=col1/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 2
dataField=col2/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 3
dataField=col3/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 4
dataField=col4/
/mx:columns
/mx:DataGrid
/mx:Application
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com , Gordon Smith gosmith@ wrote:
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:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
[mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com ] On
Behalf Of aceoohay
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 2:38 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.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 mailto:flexcoders%
40yahoogroups.com
, Gordon Smith gosmith@ 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
RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
And I guess let me add a few other things.
1) With regard to the bug itself, I'm guessing that the issue is
that first item in the collection to be sorted has the null value. This
is causing an error because we can't determine what kind of comparator
to use by default. If your first item hadn't been null you wouldn't see
the issue. This means that you should specify the comparator you want to
use, but one could argue that perhaps more information could be added to
the DataGridColumn to provide an option for some of the provided
comparators.
2) I can't remember in our code which way null compares to an
actual value, but they will group together.
3) There will of course be a process for code to get contributed to
the SDK. We'll have more info on this as we get closer to release, but
in general it will involve having a bug filed in the bugbase, votes
indicating the community's interest in having it fixed along with SDK
management agreeing that the contribution is useful, and then the
committers (SDK engineering) approval of the fix.
Matt
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Matt Chotin
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 3:57 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about
changing the language?
I've moved this bug to https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13808
since it is not related to the ActionScript compiler, it's only in the
Flex classes.
Matt
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of aceoohay
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 9:14 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about
changing the language?
Gordon:
Per your request I have filed a bug report. It can be found here;
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3042
Paul
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
, aceoohay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Gordon, et al:
Here is a simple test that will show the problem;
?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?
mx:Application xmlns:mx=http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml;
layout=absolute
creationComplete=initApp()
mx:Script
![CDATA[
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.controls.Alert;
[Bindable] public var acData:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection;
private function initApp():void
{
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:1,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:A});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:2,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:B});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:3,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:C});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:4,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:D});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:5,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:E});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:6,col2:new Date
(),col3:false,col4:F});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
dgSortTest.dataProvider = acData;
}
]]
/mx:Script
mx:DataGrid id=dgSortTest x=26 y=10
mx:columns
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 1
dataField=col1/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 2
dataField=col2/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 3
dataField=col3/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 4
dataField=col4/
/mx:columns
/mx:DataGrid
/mx:Application
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com , Gordon Smith gosmith@ wrote:
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:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
[mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com ] On
Behalf Of aceoohay
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 2:38 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.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;
[flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
Matt:
Thanks for fixing the bug request.
Yes, all nulls seem to sort high, but that means if you click the
heading twice it always fails because the nulls sort to the top, and
the sort algorithm fails on the second pass.
One thing that could be done as a workaround, is to have the routine
that determines which type of sorting to do look down the column
until it finds the first (or first 2) non-null fields and use that
info to determine the type of sorting to do. If it finds all nulls it
doesn't need to sort anything.
Irrespective of fixing the bug, adding a property/attribute to define
the internal comparator would be beneficial IMltHO.
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Matt Chotin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
And I guess let me add a few other things.
1) With regard to the bug itself, I'm guessing that the issue
is
that first item in the collection to be sorted has the null value.
This
is causing an error because we can't determine what kind of
comparator
to use by default. If your first item hadn't been null you
wouldn't see
the issue. This means that you should specify the comparator you
want to
use, but one could argue that perhaps more information could be
added to
the DataGridColumn to provide an option for some of the provided
comparators.
2) I can't remember in our code which way null compares to an
actual value, but they will group together.
3) There will of course be a process for code to get
contributed to
the SDK. We'll have more info on this as we get closer to release,
but
in general it will involve having a bug filed in the bugbase, votes
indicating the community's interest in having it fixed along with
SDK
management agreeing that the contribution is useful, and then the
committers (SDK engineering) approval of the fix.
Matt
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Matt Chotin
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 3:57 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go
about
changing the language?
I've moved this bug to https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13808
since it is not related to the ActionScript compiler, it's only in
the
Flex classes.
Matt
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of aceoohay
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 9:14 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about
changing the language?
Gordon:
Per your request I have filed a bug report. It can be found here;
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3042
Paul
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%
40yahoogroups.com
, aceoohay pauls@ wrote:
Gordon, et al:
Here is a simple test that will show the problem;
?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?
mx:Application xmlns:mx=http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml;
layout=absolute
creationComplete=initApp()
mx:Script
![CDATA[
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.controls.Alert;
[Bindable] public var acData:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection;
private function initApp():void
{
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:1,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:A});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:2,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:B});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:3,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:C});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:4,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:D});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:5,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:E});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:6,col2:new Date
(),col3:false,col4:F});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
dgSortTest.dataProvider = acData;
}
]]
/mx:Script
mx:DataGrid id=dgSortTest x=26 y=10
mx:columns
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 1
dataField=col1/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 2
dataField=col2/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 3
dataField=col3/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 4
dataField=col4/
/mx:columns
/mx:DataGrid
/mx:Application
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com , Gordon Smith gosmith@
wrote:
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,
[flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
Ralf: The data has nulls in it. For example, one grid is equivalent to a checking account, with deposits and checks. The column for the check number is null for deposits. Another table has three different phone number fields, not everybody has three phone numbers. Another table has employee termination date, current employees have none. As you can see it is a ubiquitous problem and this is in a small part of the application. I could cause the queries to replace nulls with some reasonable data for sorting, but it wouldn't look right to the user. Paul --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Ralf Bokelberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why has you data null values in the first place? Maybe you can put in some dummy data? Cheers Ralf.
[flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
Robert: Yes this is an earnest request. While I do not shrink from controversy if I believe it will get things done, I don't needlessly whine either. I believe that it is important to make sure that we help the developers of our tools understand what is important to us consumers of the tools. Otherwise their direction/vision may preclude them from doing the little things that make the difference between a easy to use tool and one that ain't. But really folks, this isn't rocket science, the sort routines are broken. Paul --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Robert Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't believe the Flex language itself is open source, only the .swf format. Someone at adobe may want to clear that up. Although I'm sure this is an earnest request, whenever open source is discussed one thing everyone on this list has to be careful of is that MICROSOFT will not go well into that good night of the loser status that are suffering at the hands of Apple and Linux after the desperate attempts by SCO. I've learned enough about them to know that. They will keep people out on the edge of happenings to attempt to stir trouble, so any discussion of Open Source (microsoft's thorn) in a way that would disturb the good foundation of Flash end-users should looked at closely. One thing I've learned about enemies is that once you begin to feel sorry for their sad state, they usually have such little class as to reach out in desperation to draw their gun from their black holster and beady blue eyes to shoot at innocence. Mercy is good, but not with Microsoft (never). -r Ralf Bokelberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why has you data null values in the first place? Maybe you can put in some dummy data? Cheers Ralf. - Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage.
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?
[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 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, 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. 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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of aceoohay Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 9:33 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.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
RE: [flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
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
[flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
Gordon, et al:
Here is a simple test that will show the problem;
?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?
mx:Application xmlns:mx=http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml;
layout=absolute
creationComplete=initApp()
mx:Script
![CDATA[
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.controls.Alert;
[Bindable] public var acData:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection;
private function initApp():void
{
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:1,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:A});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:2,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:B});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:3,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:C});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:4,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:D});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:5,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:E});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:6,col2:new Date
(),col3:false,col4:F});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
dgSortTest.dataProvider = acData;
}
]]
/mx:Script
mx:DataGrid id=dgSortTest x=26 y=10
mx:columns
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 1
dataField=col1/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 2
dataField=col2/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 3
dataField=col3/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 4
dataField=col4/
/mx:columns
/mx:DataGrid
/mx:Application
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Gordon Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
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 gosmith@ 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
[flexcoders] Re: If Flex is open source, how do we go about changing the language?
Gordon:
Per your request I have filed a bug report. It can be found here;
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3042
Paul
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, aceoohay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Gordon, et al:
Here is a simple test that will show the problem;
?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?
mx:Application xmlns:mx=http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml;
layout=absolute
creationComplete=initApp()
mx:Script
![CDATA[
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.controls.Alert;
[Bindable] public var acData:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection;
private function initApp():void
{
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:1,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:A});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:2,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:B});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:3,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:C});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:4,col2:new Date
(),col3:null,col4:D});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:5,col2:new Date
(),col3:true,col4:E});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
acData.addItem({col1:6,col2:new Date
(),col3:false,col4:F});
acData.addItem
({col1:null,col2:null,col3:null,col4:null});
dgSortTest.dataProvider = acData;
}
]]
/mx:Script
mx:DataGrid id=dgSortTest x=26 y=10
mx:columns
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 1
dataField=col1/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 2
dataField=col2/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 3
dataField=col3/
mx:DataGridColumn headerText=Column 4
dataField=col4/
/mx:columns
/mx:DataGrid
/mx:Application
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Gordon Smith gosmith@ wrote:
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 gosmith@ 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
