Phrasing new lines cause text to scroll erratically

[Sam Freney]

I'm a fairly heavy user of phrasing in the BHS-T, LXX1 and NA28 texts.

 

In all of them when I shift-return to add a new line in the phrasing display, or insert a tab space, the text column will jump-scroll by a few lines. This very frequently pushes the cursor down off the screen, but even if not always moves the cursor position, meaning that I've always got to readjust where I'm looking. It's frustrating.

 

I think what's happening is that the text re-adjusts to have the start of the top-most verse visible, even if the cursor (i.e. the verse that I'm actually looking at) is now off the screen. I've attached two screen shots as a before and after example.

• In the before shot, my cursor is in Gen 32:11. A partial view of 32:9 is at the top of the visible part of the screen.
• I put a new-line at the highlighted word.
• In the after shot, 32:9 is now fully visible. But because of the phrasing that I've inserted in the previous verses, the one that I'm looking at with my cursor is now off the screen and I need to scroll to see it.

 

A 'fix' is to only work on verses where they are top-most in the window... but that's against the point of phrasing, which helps connect the flow of ideas to the previous and following verses.

 

I have up-to-date Accordance 14.0.9, Sonoma 14.5, and both MacBook Air M2 and Mac mini M1.

But it's been a persistent problem with every version and OS I've had since phrasing came out.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Can you email me a copy of your Phrasing folder from your Accordance Files folder, plus a screen recording of what you're seeing? I'll play around with it.

[Sam Freney]

Here's a screen recording: 

 

 

Phrasing folder is attached.

Phrasing.zip

[Sam Freney]

Note in that recording, what happens is that v. 16 is partially visible at the top of the BHS text column. When I insert the phrasing new line, it jumps so that all of v. 16 is visible, pushing my cursor in v. 19 off the bottom of the screen.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks! Also send me your workspace so I can compare it.

[Sam Freney]

Here you go.

Workspace.accord

[Ken Simpson]

Hey Sam, this is pretty standard Accordance behaviour on screen redraw. Whether we like it or not, or agree with it or not.

 

Not my idea of ideal, but not a bug as such...

 

(P.S. you need to update your profile photo - we need to see you in all your hyper-bearded glory)

Edited July 22 by Ken Simpson

[Sam Freney]

Yes Ken, I am considerably more hirsute these days! Some of my friends have dubbed me "Nerd Kelly", which I honestly quite like.

 

I think you're right in that it's standard redraw behaviour. But I'd still want to put it to the development team that this behaviour, in the new context of phrasing, makes it a bug.

 

Phrasing is a new thing. And it results in new interactions with the text. The top-most verse isn't necessarily the thing I'm most interested in on the screen, but in the absence of any other information it's a good guess by Accordance if it needs to re-draw the screen. But now when I'm putting phrasing in, the program can tell exactly what I'm looking at. But because of the standard process, designed before this feature existed, the very spot where the program can now tell is the focus of my attention gets moved. Often shunted off the screen, but always moved around a bit. And I need to go searching for it, every single time.

 

If my word processor did that when I put in a newline, even if I understood why it did it, I'd still say that's a bug - even if it's technically a "bug in the UX". (In fact, I'd say MS Word is (in)famous for doing just that whenever you touch a table/graphic/etc in a complex document, and it buggily moves things around in ways that confuses the user no end.)

 

It's a software process that makes the UX of this feature impossible to use until you work out what's happening, and then when you do work it out it makes it a complete pain each and every interaction with that feature. You can call it a feature request if you like, but that's a bug in my books.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks @Ken Simpson for the update on this.

 

I'm chatting with a colleague to see if this should be filed as a bug report or instead put on my feature request list. I only wish to file actual bug reports on the bug report list so we don't clutter up the programmer's board, but I keep a separate feature request list of a pool of customer feedback on I can bring up with programmers if/when time permits for stuff like this.

[Sam Freney]

I've thought more on this, and I don't think it comes under a feature request. It's fixing the UI on an existing feature that does not work in the way that it should. (That is, the phrasing feature does not work the way it should.)

 

There are logical reasons why it works the way it currently does, but for the purpose of the existing phrasing feature this redrawing isn't an enhancement or something that would be nice to have, it's fixing something that is genuinely broken in the user experience of using it.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

True that it is a fix. I'll have to chat with our team to see if they want this officially filed as a "bug report" or as a "user interface improvement". There is a difference. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I'll add this to my list of user interface improvements.