Dear Jan,
I suspect you're right. It's a very old project (the manifest is dated 2007 and
I suspect it's even older), and I really can't remember if UTF-8 was even
available then, or when/if I changed the encoding.
Certainly, making a minor change and reverting it has the desired effect.
Thanks for spotting that.
I'm not sure that your fix is 100% correct, though. The .form file (which I
assume is generated by the form editor) has the correct encoding:
<Property name="text" type="java.lang.String" value="□"/>
but the .java file doesn't:
btnRow.setText("?");
So it seems to me that the Form Editor is producing the correct XML, but
whatever process that converts it to Java (or is this part of the Form Editor?)
isn't picking this up.
The odd thing about this diagnosis is that the error occurred recently when I
changed the button form having a GIF to a text character. And the Form Editor
certainly picked up this change.
So in this file, your (a) shouldn't be happening as the encoding (UTF-8) is
capable of representing the characters. (b) seems to be the problem.
Is it worth while my putting this into JIRA? It's probably a rare occurrence.
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Saturday, July 20, 2019, 6:07:51 AM, you wrote:
Hi,
I suspect the cause for the initial problem is that at some point, the files
was saved with an encoding that does not handle these characters. And form
editor avoids regenerating the code unless there are changes, so the broken
code remains until something changes. A potential workaround is to do a change
to the model and then undo it (e.g. set "autoscrolls" on one of the buttons and
then clear it), that should force regeneration of the code.
I think the fix is two-fold: a) NetBeans should complain while saving files
which contain characters that cannot be represented in the current encoding; b)
form editor should avoid putting such characters into the source code.
Jan
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 8:09 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Sorry - hit "reply" rather than "reply all"
Dear Geertjan,
True. Can you try it in the form editor and see what happens? There's not much
point in having an IDE which forces you to use an external editor!
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 19, 2019, 4:47:07 PM, you wrote:
My comment does more than imply: it directly states these words -- "edited this
file directly in GitHub"
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 5:35 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
I see. But in the IDE, the initComponents() can't be edited - it's greyed out
as I'd expect from auto-generated code, especially code prefixed by
/**
?? * This method is called from within the constructor to initialize the
form.
?? * WARNING: Do NOT modify this code. The content of this method is always
?? * regenerated by the Form Editor.
?? */
So how did you manage to edit it?
Your comment implies that you used a text editor directly in GitHub. If you use
the Form Editor in NB you might get the result that I did.
I have to do other things now, so won't be back for a few hours.
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 19, 2019, 4:11:52 PM, you wrote:
I cloned your repo and then edited this file directly in GitHub, replacing the
question marks with your special characters, then created a pull request
against my own repo and merged it:
https://github.com/geertjanw/TestCharacters4/blob/master/src/com/ptoye/TestKiller/OuterPane.java
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 5:08 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
Thanks - it runs fine. So what exactly did you do as I can see no difference in
either the ,form or .java files?
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 19, 2019, 3:57:45 PM, you wrote:
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Type: git clone https://github.com/geertjanw/TestCharacters4.git
3. Open and run the result from NetBeans.
It will work out of the box, at least it does for me. Will you try it and then,
after that, write back?
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 4:52 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
Thanks. But it seems to me that you edited the .java file. The issue is that
the part that you edited is auto-generated by NB from the form designer, and is
not under the programmer's control.
So when I recompile, the old bug will return.
I use "will" here as I'm still trying to work out how to merge your update into
my local repository. GitHub doesn't have the most intuitive of user interfaces
and I'm a complete newbie with it.
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 19, 2019, 1:33:25 PM, you wrote:
https://github.com/geertjanw/TestCharacters4.git
Try check out the above and run it -- you should see your special characters
without needing to do anything.
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 2:28 PM Geertjan Wielenga <[email protected]> wrote:
The problem appears to be that when you check in or check out from GitHub,
those special characters become question marks -- probably not best to use
those special characters to begin with.
To solve the 'swing-layout not found problem' in your project, right-click it,
choose Properties, go to the Libraries tab, and remove the reference to
swing-layout, which you don't need and are not using in your project.
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 2:09 PM Geertjan Wielenga <[email protected]> wrote:
I've checked in the changes you need as a pull request, once you integrate the
pull request, you will not have question marks. The question marks where in
your repo, they will not be there anymore after you accept my pull request.
At this point, you've spent about two weeks working on this problem -- maybe
you should make images of what you'd like to have on those buttons and then
attach those images to the buttons instead of what you're currently doing. If
plan A doesn't work, try plan B.
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 2:07 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
Errr.... No!
I don’t want to delete the button - it's part of the UI.
What I don't understand is how deleting button X changes the text in buttons
A,B and C (if you see what I mean). That's surely a bug in NB, somewhere when
it translates the data in the .form file into the Java code for
initComponents().
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 19, 2019, 12:42:14 PM, you wrote:
I just followed your steps now and am now at the end where you say:
"Go back to the OuterPane design and delete the leftmost button (undo). Compile
and run again. The question marks have disappeared and the arrows/square are
there!"
So, the problem is fixed, i.e., your code is working in the end in the way
you'd like it to be.
And here is your pull request:
https://github.com/ptoye/TestCharacters4/pull/1
Gj
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 1:28 PM Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
You didn't answer my last emails, and I’ve been away for a few days.
Have a look at https://github.com/ptoye/TestCharacters4 - I hope you can access
it but I'm not sure about the privacy settings on GitHub. There's a README file
to tell you what to do.
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Saturday, July 13, 2019, 4:28:57 PM, you wrote:
Make as small a sample as possible that reproduces the problem and put it on
GitHub — that will always be the approach to take, no one will ever want ‘the
lot’ to solve a specific problem.
Gj
On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 at 17:19, Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Geertjan,
Oh dear, I was wrong. The problem came back today, even without the offending
file in the directory.Shall I try to cut down the program to a manageable size
before posting it, or would you like the lot?
Best regards,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Friday, July 12, 2019, 4:25:35 PM, you wrote:
You’re always going to have the same response — put the code somewhere so that
someone can look at it and/or provide clear step by step instructions to
reproduce the problem.
Gj
On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 at 17:15, Peter Toye <[email protected]> wrote:
To continue with this (as I've not had any feedback) the .form file seems to
contain the correct character:
</Component>
<Component class="javax.swing.JButton" name="btnRow">
<Properties>
<Property name="font" type="java.awt.Font"
editor="org.netbeans.beaninfo.editors.FontEditor">
<Font name="SansSerif" size="12" style="0"/>
</Property>
<Property name="text" type="java.lang.String" value="↔"/>
THIS IS CORRECT!
<Property name="toolTipText" type="java.lang.String" value="Confine
selected squares to row"/>
<Property name="margin" type="java.awt.Insets"
editor="org.netbeans.beaninfo.editors.InsetsEditor">
<Insets value="[2, 5, 2, 5]"/>
</Property>
</Properties>
So there's something wrong in the translation from this and the generated Java.
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
-------------------------
Tuesday, July 9, 2019, 12:53:19 PM, you wrote:
I modified a button to display a character rather than a GIF icon. The
character is a symbol - from the Unicode arrows set \x219x. It displays OK in
the Design (and also Preview) panes (see Fonts1.png) but when the program is
run it displays as a question mark. And if I look at the generated code, the
question mark is there as well (see Fonts2.png).
The character coding for the project is set to UTF-8, so there shouldn't be any
code conversion issues there.
I've looked at the generated code with a hex editor and it's definitely a "?",
the problem isn't just the display font used for the file.
The only slightly odd thing about the project is that it was imported from NB
version 8.
I've tried generating a such simpler example from scratch, but this displays
OK. And the generated code has the correct UTF-8 encoding for the character.
Has anyone any idea what's going on? It seems to be something to do with
converting the form design to Java code, which I don't know anything about.
Thanks in advance,
Peter
mailto:[email protected]
www.ptoye.com
