Re: [lmi] System crashes with invalid input using input sequence GUI

[Boutin, Wendy]

Vadim Zeitlin wrote: 
> On Wed, 20 May 2015 14:47:33 +0000 "Boutin, Wendy" <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> BW> File | New | Illustration
> BW> Payments tab
> BW> Select ellipsis for 'Individual payment'
> BW> Change 'until maturity' to 'until age'
> BW> Select 'Add' button
> BW>
> BW> There is clearly an input validation error occurring,
> BW> but the system crashes when the diagnostic appears.
> 
>  Hello again,
> 
>  I did end up by modifying wxWidgets to make sure such crashes do not
> happen in the future, see commit[1]. However lmi UI still behaves
> surprisingly (at least I personally find the behaviour described in [2]
> quite unusual) 

I read that documentation, but I'm not sure I understand the unusual 
behavior in the UI. It seems to work normal to me using your patch. Is 
it the case that I'd have to upgrade wxWidgets to see the behavior? If
so, then I will probably avoid that for now and focus only on the lmi 
patch. 
 
>  The patch below just disables the spin control if there is no valid range
> for it. I am not sure if it's the best solution UI-wise, but I can't think
> of anything better right now and it does fix the crash (even without the
> updated wxWidgets). 

The crash is indeed fixed with that patch and I think disabling the
spin control is the best option. I couldn't come up with a more natural 
solution from a user perspective. 

> A possible alternative would be to disable the "Add"
> button if there are no valid values for the controls in a new row, but this
> wouldn't could be quite confusing as nothing would indicate to the user
> that the age must be reduced in order to allow a new row to be added. So if
> you prefer such more pro-active approach, I think it would make sense to at
> least show a message like "Sequence cannot be extended due to age 99
> running up to the maturity" (but preferably better worded). Please let me
> know if you'd like me to make an alternative patch doing it like this.

I don't really prefer that approach, but it could just be a personal preference.
Disabling the 'Add' button confines users to entering their input in sequential 
order only. That isn't quite as natural for me using the input sequence editor. 
I prefer to layout the whole framework of my input stream using the 'Add' 
button 
and then fill in the details with the text and spin controls. When I do it that 
way with your patch, I can easily see the familiar diagnostic that complains 
about input ranges, so it's obvious to me that I need to fix those inputs. I 
think our users are familiar enough with the existing diagnostics, so a further 
enhancement wouldn't be necessary. Does anyone else disagree?




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