Bugs / Suggestions

[Bert Leithold]

Brendon, running Mac Version 3.5.3 on OSX 10.10.3; iPad Version 4.0.1 on iOS 8.3; iPhone Version 4.0.1 on iOS 8.3. Enjoying your apps after spending considerable time importing several-year-old tracking spreadsheets over to Tap Forms. Following are suggestions and/or bug reports if this isn’t your intended operation…

1. Mac: Create an Import failing record display. It would have saved me hours of work, if Tap Forms either creates a log of records that won’t migrate or at a minimum displaying the first record number of any record it cannot migrate, so problem determination can proceed more expediently.

2. Mac/iPad/iPhone: Implement a visual queue (perhaps a red up arrow?) indicating when the present database has had database changes that have not yet been sync’d up to the cloud.

3. Mac/iPad/iPhone: Create a “database maintenance best practices FAQ”. This can really be a problematic area for those of us with lots of rows/columns, or who are going through major form maintenance adding/deleting and changing fields. e.g.:
— Once I got my forms created, initial data imported, and then did major manipulation of the data within Tap Forms, my aggregate database is only 56-62KB, yet, I went through periods working on my Mac and then going to my iPad where more than 400,000 rows and 1.2GB of data was trying to be sync’d to my iPhone and iMac…
— How do we ultimately reduce all the data being stored on Dropbox or iCloud when multiple devices are involved? I figured-out I could get my Mac forms into the state I wanted with a lot quicker sync and not using so much unnecessary space by: Performing all 4 database maintenance functions, then disabling Tap Form sync on all 3 of my devices, manually delete all data within 2 of the Tap Form instances (like my iPad & iPhone), go to Dropbox or iCloud and delete those .tfs & .tfx files, then turn sync back on from my Mac, and then turn it back on each of my other devices. That speeds up things a lot and dropped my Dropbox usage by nearly 1.5GB.
— What does Reset Sync do?

4. iPad: Editing a Pick List while Sync is in progress can hang the app. I had a download sync in progress as shown at the top of Tap Forms with the progress bar “xxx rows remaining”. Select tools, edit pick list, and Tap Form hangs. I was able to swap out to iOS via Task Manager and then delete Tap Forms and restart it fine. If concurrent operation is not possible, perhaps the functions should not be enabled.

5. iPhone: Implement a “Record Editing Enabled” switch like what the iPad version has.

6. Mac: More consistent refresh of pick list pull-downs. Try this: A form has a pick list. While editing the form, go to Tools / Edit Pick List, and add a new entry to that same pick list. Go back to the form and the pick list isn’t updated with the new value but you are able to enter it if typed-in fully. I’ve not yet exactly figured out when Tap Forms is refreshing changes like this, so I change forms or exit Tap Forms and start again, and all is right once again.

7. Mac/iPad/iPhone: Stay on existing record when Sync completes. Try this: Go to a record other than #1 in any form — either while sync is operating in the background or before it does. When sync completes, Tap Forms will put you back at record #1. This is especially annoying when sync happens in the background and you don’t notice it’s going on, and while looking at a record or editing, Tap Forms all of a sudden jumps back to record #1 and leaves possibly a partially created or updated records somewhere else in your database.

8. Mac: Notes field data has odd typefaces and sizes in custom layouts. Try this: Create a custom layout with a notes field. Using the text inspector, in my case, the area shows the text as Helvetica Regular 13pt. If I then go to a record that has content for that notes field, the text within it displays much larger and the Tap Forms text inspector indicates the text itself is “.Helvetica Neue DeskInterface” 17pt. I didn’t think text formatting was imported with a CSV and have cross-checked that a number of times. I also don’t have that odd font installed according to Font Book. There is no problem with this using the default layout, so perhaps it’s only a problem with the custom layout and notes fields?

THANKS AGAIN FOR A GREAT SET OF APPS!
Bert

[Bert Leithold]

Re: #8

I should add that not all Notes fields have this odd text/point problem. Some came across and display correctly in both the default and custom layouts. Others, have the odd-ball font and size… Strange.

[Brendan]

Hi Bert,

Thanks for the feedback.

1. The biggest thing to get right is the File Encoding setting. Tap Forms needs to be told what the File Encoding is of the file itself. Once that’s right, importing files usually succeeds without issue.

2. I’m testing out a new sync system using the Couchbase Mobile database engine. If all goes well with that, it will mean the end of having to worry about syncing. It should just happen automatically whenever you make changes to your database without user intervention.

3. Reset Sync will do what you did manually. It deletes the .tfs and .tfx files for you. If you’ve added and deleted and added and deleted a lot of records, then your database file will get bloated. Running the Vacuum command will compact the database.

4. Hopefully the Couchbase system will prevent the hang from happening. It’s due to the database being locked while it’s being written to during a sync operation. If you try and do something while the status bar shows that rows are being updated, then you’ll get locked out until the sync completes.

5. This is already there. Tap on the action menu button on the iPhone version when viewing a record and you’ll see the pencil button to toggle record editing.

6. Understood. This is something that I need to investigate further. I’ve done some testing with this and it does update for me, but for some people it doesn’t. Not quite sure why yet.

7. Understood. Again, hopefully the new sync system with Couchbase will make this much better.

8. Ya, I’ve seen that odd font too. I think it’s when the note field doesn’t have a font defined for it yet.

Thanks,

Brendan

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