Bug: rearranging field order

I cannot rearrange the order of my data columns in the grid view. Left click on column and move within the window works fine. However, when I try to move a column beyond the open window, in the grid view it does not work: move to the left, the filed window jumps to the very far left; move right, the window does not scroll and I cannot move the field beyond the last column visible on the right. It is though the window autoscroll does not work. Sounds minor, but I cannot rearrange the order of my fields. Any suggestions. Is this a repeatable bug or just me?

The grid view has 2 modes for column display that can be switched between using the "Fit table to screen" option, available from the top right corner (...) button.


In one mode all the columns shrink to fit the available space.


In the other each column takes up whatever space it wants and a horizontal scrollbar is used if the total width of the columns gets too big.





The behaviour when dragging a column beyond the right hand edge differs between the two modes, but is hopefully fairly intuitive. e.g. when a horizontal scrollbar is present you need to use it to see the columns that are off-screen.





Tim

Thanks. I have over 50 columns and "fit to screen" is not very useful since I can't see the titles. I still cannot move the columns very far when it is not "fit to screen". Is there any other way to rearrange the column order? The graphical way is nice, but the window needs to scroll when you are moving a column.

No, I'm afraid there isn't any other way. You will need to use the horizontal scroll bar.





We will look at whether we can make the table auto-scroll.





Tim

Thanks again for your response. Unfortunately for me, although the scroll bar works fine to view columns, when I try to move them the screen resets placing column #1 on the far left and I cannot move the column to the right or the left past what is on the screen. I can view it fine, but I can't move it. For example, if I move a column all the way to the right by left click (and hold) on the column header and mouse to the far right the column is reordered. I then use the horizontal scroll so that the column is lined up on the far left of the screen and then try to move it further to the right, the screen resets to have column #1 on the left side of the screen. Any attempt at column reordering for that requires the scrollbar to view, resets the screen to column #1 on the left. The issue for me is not viewing the column, but re-ordering the columns in the grid view. Is there another way to customize the left to right viewing order of columns?

I finally know how to reproduce the problem and also know why Tim could not see it before. The problem is that it works fine if you run Instant JChem on JDK 1.5 (Java 5), but it behaves exactly how you described on JDK 1.6 (Java 6). We will try to fix the problem soon and it should be part of IJC release 2.2.1 (because it's now too late for 2.2).


Thanks for bugreport.


Petr

I am, in fact, on Java 6. Thank you both for looking into the issue and finding the problem so quickly.

Actually we found out that there are two problems in column reordering (probably the first one causes the second one):





1. if you take the column and trying to move it out of the visible area (e.g. in 50 cols table from 1st position to last one)... then it looks it works only first time. If you hold mouse button and move the column whole table horizontally auto-scrolls. But it works only once. Next column is not possible to move out of visible area, the auto scrolling just doesn't work. We can reproduce this on Windows as well as on Linux. If the form or gridview is closed and reopened it works again only once.





2. ... but once the table is broken this way (we are still not sure if it's our bug or in Java), then it causes the bug which you reported. We were trying to reproduce it and it seems it is broken only on Windows XP + Java 6. It works fine on Java 5 on all platforms and it works fine also on Linux or Windows Vista (with Java5 or 6). Just the combination WinXP+JDK1.6 is broken.





We are working on it and will let you know once we have this bug fixed.

This is actually a very important thing to do since it helps organize my fields logically. I am grateful that you are looking into a fix. In the meantime, could you please let me know how to swithc from running off of Java 1.6 to Java 1.5? Thanks.

Find where IJC is installed and then edit the file etc/instantjchem.conf.


Edit the jdkhome parameter to point to a Java 1.5 JRE.





Tim

Thank you Tim!!! That worked well. My columns are all rearranged. The window still does not autoscroll (I need to push to the left, scroll, push to the left, scroll etc for each column) but, I got it done. A suggestion would be to enable column re-ordering in various ways. One, the graphic way, another would be in the customizable widget window (move up/move down). Also being able to control click on several would be great. The reason this is helpful is that data fields are very dynamic in projects. New assays come on-line and it is important to be able to group the data fields in a logical way. Thanks for the help.

The bug with rearranging fields on jdk 1.6 is fixed in IJC 2.2.1 (next version). We also created new reorders columns customizer to simply reorder table with many columns. It will be available from the top right corner (...) button.





Petr

Petr,


Thanks very much. I did notice another issue. When exporting either an SD or csv, the field order in the grid view is not reflected in the order of the export. The export order can be changed (move up/down) but it is only one at a time. Is there a way to have the gridview order retained for the export? The reason this is useful is that grouping fields in IJC can help make logical clusters to look at in Spotfire via SD export.

There is not such support. It's good idea to allow to initialize export according columns of selected grid view.





Petr

This problem is now fixed in IJC 2.2.1