Managed to Screw Something Up Somehow
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#39 Managed to Screw Something Up Somehow
I pasted some text into a Work entry and it had extra spaces, so I hit "ctrl-F" to search for double spaces and replace them (a habit from using MSWord). Of course ctrl+F brought up the search bar, but I noticed that now that I had double spaces entered, a few weird entries were showing up. There were three arguments that were entirely blank, so I went to those three records and deleted each (using the "delete" button in the bottom right). There were also two very weird Institution entries: one that said ", Syracuse University" and the other ", New York University."
I went to the NYU one and (if I remember correctly) it took me to a department with a blank name, which belonged to NYU. I can't remember if I tried to delete this entry but I think the answer is no. Then (again if I remember correctly) I went to the NYU entry and noticed a blank department on the left. I right clicked on that to delete it, or to go to it, and (again, my memory is a little spotty) I think I clicked "go to this record" in the popup menu. Then I think the entry disappeared? Or maybe it took me back to the blank department and I deleted it using the button in the bottom right?
Anyways I tried to do the same thing with the Syracuse ghost department but at this point things were getting weird. If I go to the Institutions tab I am at NYU and cannot navigate away (e.g. I right click a department on the left and select "go to this record" and nothing happens. If I go to the Persons tab it's a blank entry and I can't navigate to anyone else (the arrows in the bottom left don't work). If I go to the Works tab I have the Work I was editing and that is open and I can type, but lots of the buttons don't work. "Accept Edits" does nothing, if I open up the Symbol thing I can click on things but no symbol is added, etc. The Italics button works fine and so on. Again I can't navigate using the arrows in the bottom left.
If I go to the Problems/Debates, Arguments, or Positions tab, only the top part of the UI loads, and it displays nothing. The bottom part is just gray. Ditto Notes and Terms.
If I try to save to XML I get an error (attached).
BUT: then I went to the tree and double clicked on something. It brought me to that thing (an argument I think). And then everything started working fine again.
So, nothing is wrong anymore. But, like, presumably there's a bug somewhere if you want to bother trying to figure out what happened. I still have the ghost department at Syracuse in my database so if I want to try to delete it maybe I can reproduce the bug, but I'll only have one go at it I think, because once that ghost is gone I will be out of ghosts.
Oh and I should add that if you really want to figure out what's going on I might have a backup of the database from a while back before I deleted all the ghosts except the Syracuse ghost.
Thanks for this. I assume you are using version 1.22?
Sounds like there is definitely a bug lurking somewhere but I'm having a hard time reproducing it by following your steps. The fact that you had blank entries in the database might not be a bug; occasionally I have found blank records that I figure I must have accidentally created without realizing it. But the null pointer exception (the error you attached) and inability to navigate off the record indicate a bug. Can you confirm that you can reproduce the error if you load the backup version of the database?
I noticed that when you delete a record, it doesn't get removed from the current list of search results in the search bar (but it doesn't show up if you change what is typed in the search bar). That is a bug I will fix, but I don't think that bug would cause the other stuff you were seeing; double-clicking a deleted entry in the search bar results doesn't do anything.