Phantom formatting

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-20 10:01:25

Here's another interesting bug I've found. I type a two-word paragraph, highlight the two words, then apply underlining. I hit a carriage return and, naturally, what I start typing on this new line is also underlined. I highlight all the text in the new line, then hit cmd-U to toggle underlining off. I continue typing and, sure enough, the underlining is off. But somewhere in the middle of the paragraph, it will arbitrarily turn itself back on. There seems to be no pattern to this.

MacSailor · Post by **MacSailor** » 2004-09-20 10:23:30

I tried to do the same thing, but I was not able to reproduce the bug mentioned above.

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-20 10:34:02

Peter,

NWE 2 seems to be my lucky application. I'm discovering all sorts of bugs other users aren't experiencing.

Post by **charles** » 2004-09-20 13:29:50

Dennis:

I cannot reproduce this either. What do you type in the second paragraph before removing the underline?

-Charles

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-20 14:07:36

What do I type? What are you looking for here, Charles? I was simply making a page of notes, with underlined subheads. I'd type the subhead, highlight it, then apply underlining. I'd then hit a carriage return, start typing some text, remember that I'd had underlining on, select the text, then remove underlining. I'd type some more, and all would be fine. Then, mysteriously, underling would reoccur in the middle of a sentence. It happened in a few different paragraphs, so I know it's not a one-off thing resulting from pilot error.

Post by **charles** » 2004-09-20 19:03:21

Hi Dennis:

Based on your original description, the only thing I had to guess on when I tried to reproduce your problem was how you typed text afterwards. Sorry, I wasn't trying to bag on your report; I am not able to reproduce your problem so I was just trying to get more information.

Can you tell me, does the underlining start again as you type or does is suddenly appear in earlier text? In other words, say you were typing:

one fish, two fish, three fish, four

Would the underlining appear on the "four" or some other place? say the "three"

-Charles

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-21 05:05:24

The underling just starts again, and continues until I tell it to stop. By the way, I just tried to reproduce the bug, but didn't have any luck. Odd that it appeared three times yesterday. I'm having the worst luck with this software.

Post by **charles** » 2004-09-21 06:17:50

Hi Dennis:

I can this of one scenario where this could happen accidentially...perhaps this is what happened to you?

Image you type:

My Heading
The beginning of my text

At the end of that is a space character. Now, if you go back and only select the phase, but not the space, and remove the underline you still have a space with the underline value applied. Later on, if you move your cursor to the far side of that space, you will suddenly get underlined text.

Just one scenario I could come up with where I could reproduce the situation. Is it possible this is what is happening to you?

I'm sorry you are having such problems!

-Charles

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-21 07:12:58

Charles,

As always, I appreciate your responses. I'll take a look at your scenario and see if I might be doing what you suggested.

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-09-21 09:07:54

Charles,

One little thing you could tweak that would help would be to show the paragraph marker at the end of the paragraph where the insertion point is. Even though I always choose to Show Invisibles, the current paragraph marker doesn't show until I hit a carriage return. Mariner Write shows it for your current paragraph, so there's never any doubt about whether there are spaces at the end of the paragraph.

cchapin · Post by **cchapin** » 2004-09-21 10:05:14

If you take Dennis's suggestion, could I suggest making the marker distinguishable from the normal paragraph marker -- sort of an end-of-file marker? I'd like to know at a glance whether there is an extra empty paragraph at the end of my document. Actually, I'd rather not have a marker at all, but I see Dennis's point. Perhaps users could specify which invisibles to keep invisible.

--Craig

rmark · Post by **rmark** » 2004-10-04 13:23:29

Dennis (and Craig),

What you want (as Craig indicates) is an "end of file" marker. Because the Return character is an actual character (i.e. a value, a "something") in your document, we cannot "show" it until you type it.

Craig's suggestion for the end of file character is interesting. I've never seen one, but, that doesn't mean it can't exist.

If you do have spaces ahead of your insertion point before a Return character or the end of the file, they should appear as little dots.

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-10-04 13:58:24

I'm confused. I'm not sure if you're saying that an end-of-paragraph marker can't exist until I type one, or that NWE can't do it. After I read your post, I fired up Mariner Write, created a New document, then turned on invisibles. The only thing on the page was an end-of-paragraph (or end-of-file) marker. I didn't have to create it. It was just there, and very useful to avoid the scenario I mentioned previously.

rmark · Post by **rmark** » 2004-10-04 14:09:12

Dennis,

We may be discussing "virtual" minutia here, but, can you select and copy what you see at the end of the Mariner Write file?

If you can't select and copy it, what you probably see is an "end of file" marker that Mariner Write is displaying as a Return character.

Does that make sense?

dennisg · Post by **dennisg** » 2004-10-04 14:50:20

No, I can't select the marker, which probably means it's an end-of-file marker and not an end-of-paragraph marker. They simply chose to give them the same appearance. In any case, an e-o-f marker would be very useful, as would a forced-page-break marker that doesn't count on me to begin typing in order for it to appear. Consider this scenario: I select Insert Page Break and, visually, nothing happens. It's not a big deal when what you want to do is begin typing, because then the page break appears. But what if what you want to do is to paste text on the new page? You have to Insert Page Break, then hit a couple of carriage returns, delete the extra paragraph marker, then paste the text in. NWE is the only word processor I've seen operate in this way.