The %#@%&$ red dots no longer stick. (SOLVED)

[dunbarx]

They did last week!

Restarted, yelled, swore, cried. Nothing worked.

And much worse, now they lose their place even if I only modify a line, not that I add or subtract lines. I thought it used to be a loss of line count. Now any change at all breaks them.

v. 9.6.1 on a Mac.

Craig

[richmond62]

What a relief I've never had recourse to the red dots.

When I work on a long script I tend to shift it out into a word-processing document, then copy-paste back and forth (yup, it's nutty).

[FourthWorld]

What a relief I've never had recourse to the red dots.

When I work on a long script I tend to shift it out into a word-processing document, then copy-paste back and forth (yup, it's nutty).

What do we need to fix that currently makes that workflow desirable?

[dunbarx]

Richard.

What we need to fix are red dots. They aren't very useful if you cannot trust them. They were fixed not too long ago. Rats.

Craig

[FourthWorld]

Richard.

What we need to fix are red dots. They aren't very useful if you cannot trust them. They were fixed not too long ago. Rats.

Sounds good. Recipe?

[richmond62]

Let's back up a spot . . .

No obvious problems here:
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When I run that script the thing stops at the red dot and the script editor opens.

Adding a line makes no difference:
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LC 9.6.1, macOS 11.0.1 Beta

They did last week!

What else in your operating environment has changed?

[dunbarx]

Richard.

Recipe for what? The red dots are now, if anything, less stable than a year or two ago. Then, I could at least change a comma on a line somewhere, that is, not add or delete any lines, and they would stick. Now I cannot. ANY change to the script, even, within a single line, changing "xyz" to "abc", will unstick all red dots currently in place.

I know I can add breakpoint commands. That is not the point. I love red dots, or rather, used to.

Maybe I will trash my preferences. Watch this space...

Craig

[dunbarx]

Well, trashing the preferences file did nothing to help. I did not make any changes to my machine. I will try this at home.

I suppose everyone else's red dots work just fine?

Craig

[jacque]

I see them move sometimes but it appears to be a cosmetic problem. If I click in another handler or do anything to jog a redraw the dots usually reset themselves.

[FourthWorld]

Recipe for what?

For reproducing the issue you're experiencing.

Recipes are the way we communicate bugs, in any software, so that others can more readily see what we're seeing.

I see discussions about breakpoints frequently, but from a surprisingly small number of people. I don't think the problem is with the people, merely something about their workflow. A recipe ensures that others trying to observe the issue have the same workflow, by taking the same steps.

[dunbarx]

Richard.

I thought this had been rehashed so much that everyone knew what I meant. A recipe would be:

1- In a working script, set a red dot. Run the handler of interest, and note that execution stops at the dot.
2- Make any modification of any kind to the script. This may or may not involve changing the number of lines in that script.
3- Run the handler of interest. Note that execution runs right past the dot.

This was a bug forever. It was fixed somewhere in v.9. For me too, but now is broken again, and worse than before. It used to be that one had to modify the number of lines, so that the dot lost its place. Now, I can modify one char in a line anywhere in the script, and the red dot loses its place. Perhaps it is the recompile that does this.

This happened abruptly about ten days ago. Same OS, same LC, same machine. No new software installed. Restarting does nothing, Trashing the LC preferences does nothing.

I am depressed.

Craig

[jacque]

Open the property inspector for the stack. Choose the cRevGeneral property set from the Set popdown. The first three properties begin with the word "breakpoint". You can delete all three, but the one that's storing your breakpoints is just called "breakpoint". Empty or delete it and see if that helps.

Sometimes the list gets mangled.

[dunbarx]

Jacque.

Yep. That did it. You are a genius. Thank you.

All three properties were restored immediately. Was that the issue throughout the history of this incredibly annoying travail? No wonder some people saw it and others did not.

How did the team miss it?

Oh, did I mention I wanted to thank you?

Craig

[jacque]

You're welcome. I'm less a genius than just a curious user who pokes around in the IDE sometimes.

I think there's probably a bug somewhere that confuses the breakpoint list but yes, this is likely why some have more trouble than others. I just did a quick check and I see that the "Clear all breakpoints" menu item in the Debug menu does the same thing as the manual method, so that's easier. I do tend to use that menu item a lot so maybe that's why I have less trouble. The glitch I originally talked about was the misplacement of existing dots when you scroll or add carriage returns. Those do seem to auto-update correctly when a refresh happens.

[dunbarx]

Hi.

I saw that you do not have to actually delete the custom prop, just clear it. That does clear the dots themselves, of course.

I made a routine in a plug-in I use for various gadgetry:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   set the cREVGeneral["breakpoints"] of this stack to ""
end mouseUp

I will play with this for a while and see if it, er, sticks. Otherwise I will try to delete the prop itself as you first mentioned. Anyway, it is far better to have to reset red dots and have them work again than to reset red dots and not have them not work again.

Craig