Dimensions not always sticking -- sometimes one dimension doesn't save.

Obviously, this can wait until you've finished cleaning up after this morning's hyperspamming, but it's still a problem. I reported in post #324 of the official introductory thread that while the other dimensions (height, width, weight) of a book were saved, the length was not. After it happened again with a different book, and was duly reported in post # 330, I was told that it was being looked into. That's the last I've heard.

It happened again over the weekend, affecting the length of a third book and -- perhaps just to keep everyone on their toes -- to the weight of a fourth (post #340).

Bump.

The problems stemming from yesterday's "event" and the cleanup thereof appear to be solved, so could The Powers That Be please take a look at this?

Besides yesterdays events, there are hundreds of open bugs. Why do you think this one is the most important to work on next?

We had hyperspamming? I only saw about 20-30 this morning on the spam works list when I checked and I never got over there yesterday. (edit: And the closed is right where I left it on some tshirt spam so I don;t think anything got by me.)

#4 The spamming was multiple messages in talk.

Ahh, thanks.

>1 AnnaClaire: I can't replicate the length not saving, in Internet Explorer or other browsers. Which editing screen were you using - the lightbox in the catalog of book edit page? And what browser and platform?

I know it was a problem using the lightbox on FF/Vista. Will check using FF/XP in a moment. (And I am not using IE just to enter dimensions.)

OK, I've tried entering the length for Feminism and Suffrage again in the lightbox, and on the edit page via the edit pencil on the catalog page. It failed again both times, on my work computer which runs XP. For lack of another browser on my computer (I think I might still have Explorer buried on here, but I don't use it), I can't check other browsers.

>9 AnnaClaire: Great, thanks for the information. I'll try it out on FF/XP.

Great. With any luck it will work for FF/Vista at home.

HHm, still no go. Works for me in FF version 4 in XP. Which version of FF were you using? (grasping at straws here...!)

3.6.17, apparently. At least that's the version I'm on at the office. Haven't upgraded to 4 yet at home, but can't get more specific than that while still at the office.

None of the dimentions will stick for me, IE9, Win 7.
I have tried in every place on LT that the info can be added.

>13 AnnaClaire: Thanks, I will double check on FF 3.x.

>14 rbott: Thanks, we'll take a look.

>14 rbott:
That's an interesting extension. (The bug, as originally posted, had a two-dimensional book with mass, or in one instance, a three-dimensional but weightless book.)

I just re-edited the five books that were causing trouble. Got mixed results.

Feminism and Suffrage now has its correct length of 5.5 inches.

BUT:

American Lion does not have a weight (should be 1.55 pounds)
The Bonds of Womanhood does not have a length (should be 5.5 inches)
The Life of Elizabeth I does not have a length (also should be 5.5 inches)
and The Life of Emily Dickinson also does not have a length (should be 6 inches)

I have no idea what this means. I'd suggest that it has something to do with doubled fives, but how does that 6-inch-wide Dickinson bio fit in? And why did I finally get it to stick for Feminism and Suffrage? And why did it never even effect the dozen other books I added a 5.5-inch length to?

Oh, just for convenience, I've tagged those four books with "dimension bug" -- click to see what it looks like in catalog view.

Update: I'm running XP/FF 3.6.17 here and I can't duplicate the problems that you are having. I'll keep at it though, in the hope that I can get something to break.

bump.

I upgraded my browser at home to FF4, and since then have found a couple of books where the pages hadn't stuck. In both cases the correct number turned into default-green text rather than user-black text, so it resembles the weight issue for American Lion.

Better link to that tag can be found here.

(Note: those books with teflon page numbers are Socks from the Toe Up, at 127 pages, and L'Ingénu, at 288 pages.)

I seriously can't believe I'm the only person seeing this. I've tried to add size information from two different computers, running different versions of Firefox, and different versions of my system.

Really, speak up, folks!

Acxtually in the library catalog view, the changes will not stick. If you edit the summary on the book edit page, the physical details will stick there but not in the physical description column in the catalog. This has been going on for week.

For example, in the book The sybil in her grave, the column has: 356 p.; 18 cm.
My edit has correct punctuation and details: 356 p. : map ; 18 cm.

Actually, that's not quite what I'm seeing.

For the books listed in posts 17 and 20, the missing dimensions will show up in the combined Dimensions column when I use that view -- but as green text. But if I switch to a view in which each dimension is broken out, the books with missing lengths will have absolutely nothing in their Length column; American Lion will have the correct weight and those two with non-saving page counts will have what I typed, but again, in green.

For The Life of Emily Dickinson, one of the permanently two-dimensional books, I went to the book page from my catalog and from there hit the "Edit Your Book" link. I scrolled down to the dimensions, and saw this:

That is, everything present and correct, with the big honking hole where the length should go.

I entered "6" -- without the quotation marks, of course -- and hit the save button, only to find that is didn't. Here's the appropriate portion of the details page:


Trying again (for the how-many-umpteenth time) in the lightbox from the catalog page does, as you'd have guessed, nothing.

Are you using any FF extensions? Could you try in Firefox safe mode?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe%20Mode

>24 r.orrison:
Not till you mentioned it, but it didn't help. Editing in safe mode didn't make a difference.

Come to think of it. I'm not sure why it would: things not sticking isn't happening to every dimension or to every book. I have over 170 books with my size info, but only six books tagged for bugginess

I would like to use the Pages (Seitenzählung) and Height fields. Unfortunately, in the German LibraryThing pages none of these fields holds any data I fill in.

In addition, I would like to be able to set inches to centimeters as a default (should be done anyway for most of the non-English language pages, I guess).

Could you please make it work? Many thanks in advance.

>26 cowpeace: - are you trying to edit those fields via the catalog, or on the book edit page? Also, do fields like volume, length and width hold data, or do all of the physdesc fields do the same thing?

>27 jbd1: I'm editing the fields in the book edit page. All physdesc fields do the same thing indeed. Oh, no, sorry, the volume field is set to 1, by default.
I tried it also in the Catalog page, but there it did not work either. No values entered returned after pressing the save button.
By the way, I am using IE9...

Hi all,

We (conceptDawg and I) think we have found the source of this bug. There was a hole in our logic dealing with editing fields where there was green text available which happened to be the same as the value you were entering.

AnnaClaire: thanks for your detailed explanation (not to mention your patience). The green text information in posts 20 and 23 really led us to the bug.

AnnaClaire: could you try once again on your buggy list? We edited Elizabeth I to test but not the others.

>28 cowpeace: cowpeace: we're hopeful this bug fix will fix the editing for you as well, please post back (and include the browser you were using, please) if not.

>22 fdholt: fdholt: to clarify, it's the physical summary field, in particular for you, which is not saving in the catalog view?

#29 Yes, it is the summary - correct when I edit the book to fix something in physical summary but not corrected in the column named physical description.

> 30 fdholt: It turns out what's happening is that the physical description summary you entered is not currently viewable on the Catalog page. The physical description column on the catalog is actually displaying the original, unedited MARC data, not the data you entered. That's what it's always done...it is just named, maddeningly, Physical description!

As you know, the data you entered *is* viewable and editable on the book Edit page.

Obviously this state of affairs is rather confusing! We're going to figure out how to handle it, as well as a number of other physical description-related feature requests soon, hopefully next week.

> 29 ccatalfo: Thanks very much for your efforts to fix the problem. I'm afraid, however, that, at least the German LT page, it has not improved yet...
I tried it also to fill in the measures in the Catalog page, but there it did not work either. No values entered returned after pressing the save button.
One of my recently added books indeed has "green numbers": The confessions by Rousseau; I added the title yesterday. But there are more data in it, than I filled in myself. I see, they are the Physical description...
By the way, I am using IE9...

#31 I didn't realize that I couldn't edit the physical description. When I open the box in catalog view, I can also edit the summary but nothing happens. Howver the edits are saved in the book edit page.

Thanks for explaining. At least I can add dimensions and paging; just not the complete 300 MARC line.

>29 ccatalfo:
Your fix is partly confirmed. The length for the Elizabeth I bio has stuck, and I was able to add lengths to The Bonds of Womanhood and The Life of Emily Dickinson; all three have had the bugginess tag removed.

However, I still couldn't get the info to stick for the other three books, for which my information happened to match the green data (the books that were fixed had empty boxes in catalog view). Those have remained tagged.

As before, editing from the lightbox apparently clears the green data but doesn't save my info -- and the green number shows up again when I hit my browser's "refresh" button or come back to the page. Going to the Edit page skips the middle bit, and just takes me back to where I started.

Thanks for the partial fix, and let's hope the rest is easy enough to swat.

Cowpeace, can you try with a different browser? IE9 is being a pain in many places, I wouldn't be surprised to find it was messing up here as well.

>35 jjmcgaffey: Thanks, yes, Firefox seems to work fine for filling in the data (at least for pages and height, which I will be using. But I tested the other dimensions as well: it seems to work for them too). Seems that I am condamned to Firefox...

It doesn't solve the problem, however, of the point that in non-English countries like Germany, centimeters and kilograms are not set as default measures. This would be highly convenient, as you may guess. I hope this will happen some time in the near future. I would be very grateful.

It would probably be better to enter that as a new bug since its a different problem.

Or RSI - I think it's already been requested, actually. Possibly even in the original thread. You can switch all measures to cm/kg, but only on the individual book page - I'm not sure how it picks its defaults, but for me it seems to be pounds and centimeters (?!) - so it would be very handy to have a place to set a default. Maybe along with setting your time zone?

Bump.

Fortunately, I haven't seen any evidence of this problem growing again, but for troublesome non-length measurements it hasn't shrunk, either. American Lion is not accepting its weight of 1.55 pounds; L'Ingénu and Socks from the Toe Up are not accepting their page counts of 288 and 127 pages, respectively.

Bump.

Bueller?

Sorry. Not forgotten, we promise. CC and I were just talking about this earlier today.

So non-length dimensions are really that complicated?

It's less a matter of complication than a matter of this not being the only thing on CC's plate.

And I thought it complicated because the earlier fix was only partial...

I'm not saying it's not complicated, I'm just saying that's a component of the delay. Sorry.

This is one of those things where CC is really busy and I've been buried in a project (that I released today, though we haven't talked about yet) and the two of us need to get together for a little while to talk over this particular problem. It is affected by code that both of us wrote. Honestly, I've been the hold-up I think.

ETA: Just in case the newer members are confused...we have two developers named "Chris," which is why we identify each other by initials in talk: CH, CC, etc. (we do this while on internal chats too):
CH = Christopher Holland = conceptDawg
CC = Chris Catalfo = ccatalfo

Bump?

>39 AnnaClaire: - These should now be fixed, thanks to CC and CH.

We're still working on the IE9 issues mentioned above. Sorry for the delays on those.

Thank you!

Dear LT team,

The point I addressed in >36 cowpeace: still stands, however:

"It doesn't solve the problem, however, of the point that in non-English countries like Germany, centimeters and kilograms are not set as default measures. This would be highly convenient, as you may guess. I hope this will happen some time in the near future. I would be very grateful."

It's not a big problem, but one the comes up with every book I add to LT (and I have quite some titles to add).
Thanks in advance.
Willem