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TP4 Buglist - Add one for me

Is there someplace that AMX would like application bugs to be posted? Hope I am not posting in the wrong place:

TP4
v2.7.0 build 545

Sometimes, I leave TP4 connected to my master after doing some panel file transfers. If I go back to NStudio and use it to load some new code to the master, of course, TP4 loses the connection to the master.

The only problem, this now causes TP4 to crash pretty hard; everything in TP4 turns white, only the borders of the windows and toolbars remain gray. I can close the app, but I have to actually go in to the control panel to shut the whole thing down to be able to restart it.

Slightly annoying.
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Comments

  • vincenvincen Posts: 526
    All these damned *&^*&^*& icons in toolbars that always come back on left each time you reduce applications !!

    Vinc
  • yuriyuri Posts: 861
    vincen wrote:
    All these damned *&^*&^*& icons in toolbars that always come back on left each time you reduce applications !!

    Vinc?n

    YES! that's SOOO annoying!
    but roognation, i have never seen the problem you describe... maybe i didnt upgrade... :p
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    I can't stand the way it steals focus all the time. Save a file, start an upload ... well, it takes a bit of time, why not switch back to Studio to continue work while it's busy? Or, perhaps you are done, and that's the last step before moving on to something else ... Well, the thing is, you can't. You switch to another app, and as soon as TPD4 starts writing to a file (whether to save or to make a load image), it steals back your focus, even though there is nothing you can do at this point, and forces you to wait for the operation to finish rather than do anything actually useful. It's only a few moments, but as someone who spends half of his work day waiting on the dang computer to finish whatever it's up to, I resent unnecessary delays like that.
  • roognationroognation Posts: 138
    Oh yeah, after one simulates a panel file, and you come back to TP4, inside the Button Properties Box, the tab headings GENERAL-PROGRAMMING-STATES are all blank, like someone forgot to do a redraw for them.

    And, as noted above, I really get annoyed when the toolbars get reset and all left justified.

    Anyone from AMX able to comment on the buglist???
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    AMX seems to have an unspoken policy of not commenting on bugs before they have a concrete solution; on the face of it, that's not so terrible, I just wish acknowledgments and "we're working on it" statements were more forthcoming. They give them out only very sparingly.
  • roognationroognation Posts: 138
    Feature Request:
    Panel Information should show the total memory the panel file would take up on the panel. And the actual panel memory should be shown when the unit is online and ready for a transfer...maybe I am missing something?

    Not technically in TP4, but in Panel Preview...
    When simulating a TP file, the animations and graphics seem to move a bit more fluidly on the PC. When I load the TP file on to a panel, the animations are terrible (like moving a 640kB image off screen). I suggest that Panel Preview throttle the program to show more realistic results, especially with animations.
  • vincen wrote:
    All these damned *&^*&^*& icons in toolbars that always come back on left each time you reduce applications !!

    Vinc?n

    i have a solution for this, that takes 5 mins: under View > Customize > Toolbars i create "MyToolbar" and move all the icons i use in there. they are not more than one line. there are usually lots of icons i never use. then i set the ticks that only MyToolbar and the menubar are visible. done
  • Joe HebertJoe Hebert Posts: 2,159
    roognation wrote:
    When simulating a TP file, the animations and graphics seem to move a bit more fluidly on the PC. When I load the TP file on to a panel, the animations are terrible (like moving a 640kB image off screen). I suggest that Panel Preview throttle the program to show more realistic results, especially with animations.
    The amount of memory in your TP directly affects how smoothly the animations play. If you boost the memory in your TP, the animations should look a lot more like they do in Panel Preview.
    i have a solution for this, that takes 5 mins: under View > Customize > Toolbars i create "MyToolbar" and move all the icons i use in there. they are not more than one line. there are usually lots of icons i never use. then i set the ticks that only MyToolbar and the menubar are visible. done
    Excellent suggestion, a worthy Tips and Tricks candidate.
  • mpullinmpullin Posts: 949
    Loading...

    While there is a thread like this, here's my beef with TPDesign4: It cannot recover gracefully from XML corruption.

    Sometimes when I import an image into TPDesign4, it looks fine at first, but when I save and close the program, and reopen, that image will appear nowhere on my TP where I put it, and Resource Manager will have a box that says "Loading..." where the corrupt image was.

    This is ok. What's not ok is that it will not allow me to remove this image from my Resource Manager. As a result of having a corrupted image on my TP, I am unable to do a file transfer from the panel without crashing.

    When you try to remove the blank image, a popup informs you "An error has occurred. Please contact Technical Support for assistance." Contacting TS was helpful in learning about the situation but did not result in me getting a repaired version of the file. I redid several pages.

    The workaround I discovered is to make a new panel file and copy/paste all the pages individually. I'm not sure what images cause the corruption. Modifying an image with MSpaint seems to be a surefire way to get the crash, but that's not the only reason because I've had other images go corrupt on me as well.
  • sonnysonny Posts: 208
    I'm still on 2.6...not wild about the issues some have reported with 2.7. However, I've noticed a weird issue a couple of times. I created up/down buttons for manually adjusting heat/cool setpoints on a thermostat. These were tied to a level channel...I wanted to stay graphically consistent with other up/down buttons, so I copied the to a volume adjustment, got rid of the level addressing and added the channel address codes. The volume adjusts fine, but the level is somehow still connected. (after cranking up the volume, noticed that the heater was on with an 86 setpoint)

    I had to go to Power Assign and clear levels to get rid of this behavior.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    I on occasion will use TP4 to transfer panels, especially if I'm working on them, and making a lot of changes. Remember that "bug" that would cause your computer to hang and get really slow when you lost connection to the master? Well, it seems they've amplified the problem 10-fold with the latest. If I lose connection to the master and don't quickly hit "OK", TPD4 will crash and I cannot reopen the file I had open. I ultimately must log off Windows (either by rebooting or just logging off) and then refire TPD4. Talk about EXTREMELY aggravating. If someone could test this out and make sure I'm not the only one with this problem, that would be great. Essentially, connect to a master - lose the connection, then wait a minute then hit "OK" in TPD4. Try it a few times if it doesn't crash the first time. Thanks!
  • roognationroognation Posts: 138
    Feature Request

    Well, I am working on some older CV6 panels. And I remembered a barely implemented tool from TPD3 for PopUp pages. While it is nice to see each of the pop up pages as its own separate entity in some goatee-bearded alternate dimension, I would prefer to see pop up pages with a relative background. This is mainly to help with positioning and opacity.

    Please add some type of pull-down box that allows one to show the full resolution panel behind the popup and a sample page to get some point of reference on.

    Mahalo.
  • Joe HebertJoe Hebert Posts: 2,159
    roognation wrote:
    Please add some type of pull-down box that allows one to show the full resolution panel behind the popup and a sample page to get some point of reference on.
    Instead of double clicking the popup page to view it, right click on the popup name in the workspace tree and select "show popup page" and it will be displayed on the full page that is in view.
  • JeffJeff Posts: 374
    jjames wrote:
    I on occasion will use TP4 to transfer panels, especially if I'm working on them, and making a lot of changes. Remember that "bug" that would cause your computer to hang and get really slow when you lost connection to the master? Well, it seems they've amplified the problem 10-fold with the latest. If I lose connection to the master and don't quickly hit "OK", TPD4 will crash and I cannot reopen the file I had open. I ultimately must log off Windows (either by rebooting or just logging off) and then refire TPD4. Talk about EXTREMELY aggravating. If someone could test this out and make sure I'm not the only one with this problem, that would be great. Essentially, connect to a master - lose the connection, then wait a minute then hit "OK" in TPD4. Try it a few times if it doesn't crash the first time. Thanks!

    Happens to me regularly. Also, I just got back from a week at AMX East, and the same thing happened to me using their computers. I've now had the exact same bug on 3 different computers.

    And yes, all the way down to having to restart the computer to use the file again. Quite Frustrating.

    J
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Jeff wrote:
    And yes, all the way down to having to restart the computer to use the file again.
    That's often my only option in being able to use the file again. However, I've found that you don't need to do a full restart - instead just "log off" Windows and then log back in.

    I think that TPD4 is a program that needs to be "publicly" beta tested prior to a full release like they did with NS2 a while back. Or at least AMX needs to expand their beta tester database for this program.

    Although I will stand behind AMX's product until the end, and appreciate their extremely hard work and dedication in perfecting their product (and even hope to work there one day), it blows my mind that fatal error bugs like this aren't fixed before deployment.
  • JeffJeff Posts: 374
    jjames wrote:
    Although I will stand behind AMX's product until the end, and appreciate their extremely hard work and dedication in perfecting their product (and even hope to work there one day), it blows my mind that fatal error bugs like this aren't fixed before deployment.

    Or even soon thereafter. TPD4 has been out for a while now . . . . . And this seems to me to be a fairly easy error to reach. I usually work with NS2 and TPD4 open at the same time, working on the TP and the Code together. I do all of my page flips and popups and button animations in code, and I do incredibly involved touchpanels, so its somewhat necessary for me to work this way. However, if I send the TP file to the TP, then send the code to the master without disconnecting TPD4 from the master, when the master reboots TPD4 gets all blowed up.

    I'm getting better at remembering to disconnect TPD4, but I really shouldn't have to.

    J
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Jeff wrote:
    I'm getting better at remembering to disconnect TPD4, but I really shouldn't have to.

    At the very least - there should be an "auto disconnect" button that would disconnect TPD4 from the master after a panel transfer. Oh well though . . . perhaps they're working on TPD4's next release - I sure hope so!

    On another note - more of a feature request than a bug - it would be nice to be able to "tab" through your buttons to select them. For cable / DSS presets, I typically put them all on a different port, and then the channel number IS the preset's channel number then in code do a routine that spits out the BUTTON.INPUT.CHANNEL at the cable box / DSS box. It's a pain to have to click the button, set it - then click again, set it, then click another one, etc. I'm a rather "shortcut" oriented guy so this would be a nice feature.
  • roognationroognation Posts: 138
    Joe Hebert wrote:
    Instead of double clicking the popup page to view it, right click on the popup name in the workspace tree and select "show popup page" and it will be displayed on the full page that is in view.

    Works like a charm. Thanks for the tip.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    Jeff wrote:
    Or even soon thereafter. TPD4 has been out for a while now . . . . . And this seems to me to be a fairly easy error to reach. I usually work with NS2 and TPD4 open at the same time, working on the TP and the Code together. I do all of my page flips and popups and button animations in code, and I do incredibly involved touchpanels, so its somewhat necessary for me to work this way. However, if I send the TP file to the TP, then send the code to the master without disconnecting TPD4 from the master, when the master reboots TPD4 gets all blowed up.

    I'm getting better at remembering to disconnect TPD4, but I really shouldn't have to.

    J

    Yup, that one is already mentioned in the thread a while ago. It's annoying.
  • Corrupted TPD4 Resources
    mpullin wrote:
    While there is a thread like this, here's my beef with TPDesign4: It cannot recover gracefully from XML corruption.

    Sometimes when I import an image into TPDesign4, it looks fine at first, but when I save and close the program, and reopen, that image will appear nowhere on my TP where I put it, and Resource Manager will have a box that says "Loading..." where the corrupt image was.

    This is ok. What's not ok is that it will not allow me to remove this image from my Resource Manager. As a result of having a corrupted image on my TP, I am unable to do a file transfer from the panel without crashing.

    When you try to remove the blank image, a popup informs you "An error has occurred. Please contact Technical Support for assistance." Contacting TS was helpful in learning about the situation but did not result in me getting a repaired version of the file. I redid several pages.

    The workaround I discovered is to make a new panel file and copy/paste all the pages individually. I'm not sure what images cause the corruption. Modifying an image with MSpaint seems to be a surefire way to get the crash, but that's not the only reason because I've had other images go corrupt on me as well.

    This has been addressed in release v2.8 (build 568).

    TPDesign4 will extract any corrupted images from the panel project when opening the file. The user will be notified at this time as to which image(s) were found to be corrupted. After opening the project, the image(s) should no longer appear in the Resource Manager with the "Loading..." thumbnail.
  • mpullinmpullin Posts: 949
    This has been addressed in release v2.8 (build 568). TPDesign4 will extract any corrupted images from the panel project when opening the file.
    It works! Thanks.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Sweet! Thanks!

    I wish in the "readme" file they would list what was really fixed.
  • feddxfeddx Posts: 167
    Don't have to restart Windows with TP4 2.7
    jjames wrote:
    Well, it seems they've amplified the problem 10-fold with the latest. If I lose connection to the master and don't quickly hit "OK", TPD4 will crash and I cannot reopen the file I had open. I ultimately must log off Windows (either by rebooting or just logging off) and then refire TPD4. Talk about EXTREMELY aggravating. If someone could test this out and make sure I'm not the only one with this problem, that would be great. Essentially, connect to a master - lose the connection, then wait a minute then hit "OK" in TPD4. Try it a few times if it doesn't crash the first time. Thanks!


    OK, there's talk that the latest release of TP4 (2.8) Fixes this as well as other problems. BUT!!! On the off chance that it doesn't, I've found success with this solution for the "TP4 knocked offline by NS or Master Reboot":

    It seems that TP4 goes through it's shut down and then asks to send a report to MS (and on my machine it, screws with the ARCHAIC "DR WATSON" as well!!). TP4 is NOT actually shut down, but is STILL running in the background!! If you cannot open TP4 after this "crash", open up the task manager, click on the Processes tab, and look for "TPDesign4.exe". If it is there then you have the same problem that I have (if not then here's where we part ways friend), then simply "right click" on TPDesign4.exe and click on "end process tree".

    This will give you some more errors, BUT it will shutdown TP4, and you'll be able to reopen the program again WITHOUT restarting Windows .

    I hope this helps.

    "The programmer was just sitting there with his headphones on. I needed to talk to him, so I pulled off his headphones, and he choked, turned blue, and died. I was shocked! So I thought I'd listen to what he was listening to. This is what I heard, 'Start inhalation, execute, stop inhalation. Start exhalation, execute, stop exhalation.'.... It repeated over and over."
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    I've twice had TPD4 2.8 crash and burn on me in mid-transfer with an invalid memory access. Clearly, they did not plug all the connection holes.

    Don't get out of the habit of saving panel files before transfer. :(
  • chillchill Posts: 186
    Yet another one...

    This is more of a feature request - actually, I'm requesting that a "feature" be removed. It seems like whenever TP4 has a file open, it places some sort of read-lock on the file. The net effect is that I can't do anything with the file (like transfer it to the panel from within NS, or copy it to make a backup) unless I close the file in TP4. I can (sort of) understand a write-lock, but prohibiting a read while TP4 has the file open makes no sense at all.
  • I seem to have a problem that is new:

    when I copy a set of popups with page flips to each others I loose them when the popup the page flip is directed to is not yet in the new panel file.

    it is veeery annoying
  • SensivaSensiva Posts: 211
    I seem to have a problem that is new:

    when I copy a set of popups with page flips to each others I loose them when the popup the page flip is directed to is not yet in the new panel file.

    it is veeery annoying

    This is because of TP4 is continuously updating page flips and verifies it, It's something like a sword with two blades.... I suggest this feature to be an option that can be enabled or disabled (with a command icon in the toolbar)

    With this feature, you don't have to reassign page flips after changing some page's name
  • Sensiva wrote:
    This is because of TP4 is continuously updating page flips and verifies it, It's something like a sword with two blades.... I suggest this feature to be an option that can be enabled or disabled (with a command icon in the toolbar)

    With this feature, you don't have to reassign page flips after changing some page's name
    This feature already exists (see Button | Paste Controls). Enable "Retain page flip references" and the page flips should carry over from one panel project to another, even if they are not currently valid on the destination panel.

    Note that it is the panel designer's responsibility to ensure that the required pages and/or popups are also copied over from the source panel.
  • Toolbar positions reset to default.
    vincen wrote:
    All these damned *&^*&^*& icons in toolbars that always come back on left each time you reduce applications !!

    Vinc?n
    This should be fixed in v2.9 Build 586, available as of 1/10/08 on www.amx.com (and via WebUpdate).

    However, I was only seeing this in the scenario where TPDesign4 is minimized while an action taken in Netlinx Studio (such as updating the program in the master that TPD4 is also connected to) causes TPD4 to lose it's connection to the master.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Thanks!

    However, when I installed the new version, it started up with everything on a separate line, and complete removed my custom toolbar. Blah . . . oh well, guess I'll start from scratch again. Wish there was a way to save all the settings so we don't lose them like this.
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