User Name change not honored (intermittently)

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Summary of problem:
The User Name is changed only intermittently. Ideally it should always be immediately changed/updated when the field loses focus.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Create a new Tinderbox document or open an existing one.
  2. Bring up the Document Settings pane (⌘-8 or Edit menu>Document Settings…)
  3. Change User Name to something else
  4. Proceed as per normal, then save and close the document
  5. Re-open the document

Expected outcome:
User name should have been changed.

Actual outcome:
User name was not changed.

Setup: macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 (17B48), Tinderbox Version 7.3.1 (b292)

NOTE: This happens only occasionally.

2

On a hunch I can repeat both outcomes thus:

  • Change not persisted: edit the user name and then close the Doc Settings, i.e. not explicitly set the edit but merely shift input focus.
  • Change persisted: edit the user name and press Return to set the edit.

The latter is normal behaviour in many aspects of Tinderbox, e.g. column view editing, so isn’t a bug per se. This behaviour in column view trips me up regularly, but it is how the UI is designed.

3

Just to confirm Mark A’s response, this is an aspect of TB’s design that requires being aware of. In a number of dialogs, you might expect that the signal for completing an entry and being ready to move to the next field is, exactly as you put it, that the field loses focus. For instance, you might just click over to another field.

But in fact in many TB dialogs you must hit the Return key to signal that the entry is complete and you want it to be accepted. I don’t have a complete view of exactly when Return is needed and when not, but if you ever find values not sticking, try Return as the first possibility. For me that generally does the job.