Can''t Access Document Classes

Drxenos · Post by **Drxenos** » Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:48 pm

I just updated to 8.14 and now I can't access my Document Classes. Every time I try, a modal dialog box pop up stating, "Class names cannot contain unprintable characters, backslashes, nor start with space."

None of mine have these offending characters. Even if they did, TextPad doesn't give you a change to fix it.

Sigh, plus it locks up. I had to kill it with Process Explorer. And now, I can't even reinstall 8.13 because it won't let you downgrade. I'm gonna try uninstalling 8.14 first.

edit2:
Unstalled 14, reinstalled 13, but now I'm still getting the dialog box I started getting with 14.

Drxenos · Post by **Drxenos** » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:27 pm

Hmmm, I renamed my "Helios" folder in my "AppData\Roaming" folder, let TextPad recreate a new set of files, and copied over my Doc Classes, one by one.

It doesn't like this one, but I can't tell why. The name looks fine.
<class name="Batch File" type="2">
<value name="Members" type="collection">
<element>*.bat</element>
</value>
</class>

Edit:
It doesn't like the space, even though the space is not at the beginning, and it was happy with it before. I changed the name to "BatchFile" and TextPad is happy again.

Post by **bbadmin** » Thu Nov 10, 2022 1:25 pm

The last release that spaces were not rejected in document class names is 8.12. This will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for reporting it.

Drxenos · Post by **Drxenos** » Thu Nov 10, 2022 1:42 pm

bbadmin wrote:The last release that spaces were not rejected in document class names is 8.12. This will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for reporting it.

Thanks, and respectfully, you should change the way the issue is handled. A modal dialog box doesn't allow the user a chance to fix it (unless they know enough the manually edit the XML file directly).

DrX

Post by **bbadmin** » Thu Nov 10, 2022 4:33 pm

The user interface prevents document classes being given names with certain characters, so it should not be necessary to correct them afterwards. Unfortunately, a change made spaces invalid, causing this issue. When it's fixed, it will not be necessary to provide a new feature in the UI to allow self-edits.

Drxenos · Post by **Drxenos** » Thu Nov 10, 2022 7:57 pm

bbadmin wrote:The user interface prevents document classes being given names with certain characters, so it should not be necessary to correct them afterwards. Unfortunately, a change made spaces invalid, causing this issue. When it's fixed, it will not be necessary to provide a new feature in the UI to allow self-edits.

That implies that such a bug would never again be possible, which as a developer, you know is ridiculous. If you have a mechanism to report an issue to the user in the first place, you must allow them a means to fix it. Or else why even bother to write code that checks and reports it? Modal boxes that complain about errors, but completely block any attempt to fix said error, are the most aggravating thing I've ever encountered in a user interface.

Edit:
Also, it wouldn't require a "new" feature. Simply display the error box once, not every time the user clicks on the document classes.

DrX