All Too Mortal Section Sheets

[marguerite]

Sometimes when I'm typing, I accidentally select the last, invisible paragraph break in a section. The Section Separator converts itself to Section Text, and the sheet associated with the next section appears to vanish. Hitting "Undo" immediately restores the text but does not convince the section separator to restyle itself or restore the "missing" section sheet. Manually reassign the Section Separator style, and Storyist creates a blank "Untitled Section" sheet to replace the missing one, trashing all my carefully entered information in the process.

 

Yesterday when this happened, I renamed the untitled sheet and began reentering information. Then I checked the associated plot point to see if it had linked to the new sheet. As it turned out, I had forgotten the original name and given the section sheet a new one. The plot point still listed the old name. When I clicked on the old name, the original sheet reappeared with all its information (clearly a function of Storyist storing trashed sheets until the user quits the program). So the sheet was still present; it just wasn't restored with "Undo."

 

As a result, because I hadn't saved these changes, I was able to save the problem file under a new name, reopen the original file with the sheets in place, and copy (very carefully!) the revised manuscript text into that file. This is the workaround.

 

Has anyone else encountered this? I've been trying to reproduce it with the Novel template so I can file a proper bug report (although I'm not sure it is a bug--still, the behavior is disconcerting, to say the least). So far, though, the section separators in the test file are behaving themselves perfectly. So I'm not sure what exactly I do to create the problem that I'm not doing in the test file.

 

What I would like to see is either greater resistance on the part of the Section Separators to turning themselves into Section Text or--if that is as much of a programming headache as it sounds--the capacity to not only "undo" the text deletion but restore the trashed Section Sheet.

 

Meanwhile, I'm working on my text selection skills.

Best,

Marguerite

[codemer]

Has anyone else encountered this? I've been trying to reproduce it with the Novel template so I can file a proper bug report (although I'm not sure it is a bug--still, the behavior is disconcerting, to say the least). So far, though, the section separators in the test file are behaving themselves perfectly. So I'm not sure what exactly I do to create the problem that I'm not doing in the test file.

 

Have you tried this on the TaleofTwoCities.story file?

 

IF

[Steve E]

Sometimes when I'm typing, I accidentally select the last, invisible paragraph break in a section. The Section Separator converts itself to Section Text, and the sheet associated with the next section appears to vanish. Hitting "Undo" immediately restores the text but does not convince the section separator to restyle itself or restore the "missing" section sheet. Manually reassign the Section Separator style, and Storyist creates a blank "Untitled Section" sheet to replace the missing one, trashing all my carefully entered information in the process.

My experience with this is a bit different. Yes, I have, on occasion, unintentionally deleted the Section Separator, thereby merging the current Section with the next Section and "trashing" the second section's Section Sheet.

 

Hitting undo restores the Section Separator and the two Sections. The second Section name in the manuscript is restored with its links to the proper Section Sheet. But the second Section name does not appear in the Project Pane. What does appear in the Project Pane is "Untitled Section". If you click on it it takes you to a point in the manuscript just above the second Section name.

 

If you change "Untitled Section" to something else a new Section is created in the manuscript (above the original second Section) along with a new Section sheet. The original second Section remains in the manuscript but is still absent from the Project Pane. Delete this new Section from the Project Pane and the original second Section disappears, text and all.

 

Select and delete the original second Section name from the manuscript and things seem to go back to normal but you will lose the second Section sheet (obviously).

 

I have found no easy way to restore the original second Section Sheet. Recreating it in the renamed "Untitled Section" sheet seems to be the only way.

 

So I agree with you Marguerite. This seems to be a bug in the sense that "Undo" doesn't fully undo the loss of a Section Sheet due to a Section merge. We should be able to fully undo a merge before the next Save.

 

-Thoth.