Tough words about GUI

[PeterH]

...not much time in the moment. But in short:

"The rename job is now completed" should be removed from the window to avoid confusion.

I don't think it should be removed, but changed.
Maybe appended with "...with errors", or to "The rename job has ended (with errors)"

But you are right: the current wording seems to say that the rename is kind of "perfect completed".

[j_c_hallgren]

a) "The rename job is now completed" doesn't gel with "An item could not be renamed" and "Rename Failed". Those together send an inconsistent message to the user. "The rename job is now completed" should be removed from the window to avoid confusion.

Sorry but I disagree with zer0 here...I don't see any inconsistency as the 'job' is the "wrapper" and it did finish/complete (though with error(s) occuring)...just because one/more item within that job had a problem doesn't affect the overall status of job complete or not.

Back in my mainframe days, we had batch jobs that were submitted...each step had a completion code of 0, 4, 8, 12 or 16 with the higher numbers meaning a more severe error...a 16 from a step would stop the job automatically but other codes had to be tested to see if it was acceptable since for some steps, a 4 would be fine but on others, it wouldn't..but in any case, when the job completed, we would see what steps had issues...it's similar here...the job completed but with a step failure...not inconsistent at all.

[zer0]

a) "The rename job is now completed" doesn't gel with "An item could not be renamed" and "Rename Failed". Those together send an inconsistent message to the user. "The rename job is now completed" should be removed from the window to avoid confusion.

Sorry but I disagree with zer0 here...I don't see any inconsistency as the 'job' is the "wrapper" and it did finish/complete (though with error(s) occuring)...just because one/more item within that job had a problem doesn't affect the overall status of job complete or not.

Surely, the point of each job is to make sure that all items within it complete successfully. If even one item does not do so, it's illogical to declare the overall job complete as it did not finish all its necessary tasks. Much the same, it irks me when a copy/move fails, XYcopy's bar still sports a green tick.

Back in my mainframe days, we had batch jobs that were submitted...each step had a completion code of 0, 4, 8, 12 or 16 with the higher numbers meaning a more severe error...a 16 from a step would stop the job automatically but other codes had to be tested to see if it was acceptable since for some steps, a 4 would be fine but on others, it wouldn't..but in any case, when the job completed, we would see what steps had issues...it's similar here...the job completed but with a step failure...not inconsistent at all.

Back in my programming days, I had to write unit tests for my code to make sure it was kosher. Such tests feature multiple functions and all had to return correct values for the "wrapper" unit test to be successful.

Another example: I manage backups for multiple clients. I am not aware of any enterprise data protection software that shows a parent job as successful when one of its child streams fails.

[j_c_hallgren]

Surely, the point of each job is to make sure that all items within it complete successfully. If even one item does not do so, it's illogical to declare the overall job complete as it did not finish all its necessary tasks. Much the same, it irks me when a copy/move fails, XYcopy's bar still sports a green tick.

I disagree on some of this.

Yes, it would be great if all items finished successfully but that does NOT affect the overall status of the job as being "completed"...when that msg is given, the job is not longer active and thus must be complete...agree that it may have had a failure but it's still finished...for me, job completion status and job success status are NOT the same...that's where we may not agree.

SyncBack reports status of job as "success" or "failure" so one knows that there were errors...but also shows either status as 'completed'.

Now as to the green tick: I'd have that as yellow or orange if there were any errors and reserve green for 100% sucess...that I do agree on.

[zer0]

...for me, job completion status and job success status are NOT the same...that's where we may not agree.

Yes, I think this is where we disagree. For me, the two terms go hand-in-hand.

[j_c_hallgren]

...for me, job completion status and job success status are NOT the same...that's where we may not agree.

Yes, I think this is where we disagree. For me, the two terms go hand-in-hand.

And I also think I'm having a hard time explaining why I believe those two statuses are always separate...because from my background:

Job completion = is the job currently active or inactive? (regardless of errors)
Job success = did it have errors or not? And how severe were errors?

There are four different answers (YY/YN/NY/NN) possible and to attempt to combine that into two (Y/N) isn't possible so that's why I feel that Don's status message is accurate.

Addendum:

"The rename job is now completed" should be removed from the window to avoid confusion.

I don't think it should be removed, but changed.
Maybe appended with "...with errors", or to "The rename job has ended (with errors)"

But you are right: the current wording seems to say that the rename is kind of "perfect completed".

Agree! That would be an appropriate solution! Missed your post earlier somehow...sorry!

[admin]

OK, I suggest to replace
"The rename job is now completed."
with
"There are no more items to be renamed."

Please give me your better English if you can...

[j_c_hallgren]

OK, I suggest to replace
"The rename job is now completed."
with
"There are no more items to be renamed."

Please give me your better English if you can...

I think PeterH has the better idea, in that it would be one of two choices depending on item error status, and saying "Rename job completed successfully" or "Rename job completed with error(s)" or similar.

[admin]

OK, I suggest to replace
"The rename job is now completed."
with
"There are no more items to be renamed."

Please give me your better English if you can...

I think PeterH has the better idea, in that it would be one of two choices depending on item error status, and saying "Rename job completed successfully" or "Rename job completed with error(s)" or similar.

You might have wrong assumptions about the nature of the message. It's not a status message, but an error warning. It has two possible forms, the first being far more common:

1) On any non-last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:

Code: Select all

The following item could not be renamed:

E:\Test\f\ecsegar09-ab.gif

Error: Die Syntax für den Dateinamen, Verzeichnisnamen oder die Datenträgerbezeichnung ist falsch.


Are you sure you want to proceed with the remaining 1 rename operation?

2) Only on the last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:

Code: Select all

The following item could not be renamed:

E:\Test\f\ecsegar09.gif

Error: Die Syntax für den Dateinamen, Verzeichnisnamen oder die Datenträgerbezeichnung ist falsch.


The rename job is now completed.

So, "The rename job is now completed." is just the logical match to "Are you sure you want to proceed with the remaining 1 rename operation?"
But I see the ambiguity it has, especially if there has been only one item in the job. Another (and I now think best) solution would be to simply drop it.

[j_c_hallgren]

I think PeterH has the better idea, in that it would be one of two choices depending on item error status, and saying "Rename job completed successfully" or "Rename job completed with error(s)" or similar.

You might have wrong assumptions about the nature of the message. It's not a status message, but an error warning.

Ok - yes, I didn't fully know the situation
I was presuming it was more like a batch where you only get results at end of job.

It has two possible forms, the first being far more common:

1) On any non-last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:
2) Only on the last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:

So, "The rename job is now completed." is just the logical match to "Are you sure you want to proceed with the remaining 1 rename operation?"
But I see the ambiguity it has, especially if there has been only one item in the job. Another (and I now think best) solution would be to simply drop it.

But if you did drop it, there would be no specific indication/report that the job has ended...so having one of the two msgs I suggested would be totally appropriate even if there was only one item but also would apply to multi-item jobs...I don't see any ambiguity by doing so since you're reporting that job is done + status.

[admin]

I think PeterH has the better idea, in that it would be one of two choices depending on item error status, and saying "Rename job completed successfully" or "Rename job completed with error(s)" or similar.

You might have wrong assumptions about the nature of the message. It's not a status message, but an error warning.

Ok - yes, I didn't fully know the situation
I was presuming it was more like a batch where you only get results at end of job.

It has two possible forms, the first being far more common:

1) On any non-last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:
2) Only on the last item that could not be renamed in a batch rename job:

So, "The rename job is now completed." is just the logical match to "Are you sure you want to proceed with the remaining 1 rename operation?"
But I see the ambiguity it has, especially if there has been only one item in the job. Another (and I now think best) solution would be to simply drop it.

But if you did drop it, there would be no specific indication/report that the job has ended...so having one of the two msgs I suggested would be totally appropriate even if there was only one item but also would apply to multi-item jobs...I don't see any ambiguity by doing so since you're reporting that job is done + status.

There is no specific indication/report that the job has ended (in form of a dialog) when a job runs without errors. Why should there be one when a job has errors? And in any case there is status report on the status bar.

Still I could live nicely with the following:

Code: Select all

The rename job is now completed. 0 of 1 items have been renamed.

[zer0]

Still I could live nicely with the following:

Code: Select all

The rename job is now completed. 0 of 1 items have been renamed.

I would live even nicer with:

Code: Select all

The rename job did not complete successfully. 0 of 1 item(s) have been renamed.

[TheQwerty]

Why do we get so many different looking dialogs from the same task?

Rename Failed

20110329-150425 - Screenshot.png (18.27 KiB) Viewed 1975 times

Collision

20110329-150510 - Screenshot.png (11.82 KiB) Viewed 1975 times

Failure Summary

20110329-150440 - Screenshot.png (16.47 KiB) Viewed 1975 times

And that's not counting the Bad Filename, Rename dialog, Preview dialog, Preview detected warnings prompt...


Couldn't XY do a preliminary check.
If it finds any issue pop up a modified preview dialog which lists all of the items and also prompts to proceed (within the same dialog).
If the user chose to proceed it could still show the summary at the end but ideally the header of that dialog would include the text from/similar to the status bar: "# items renamed. The following # left untouched."
The status bar would also still show that text, which would be redundant, but I think that's a cleaner solution than only showing it when XY is 100% successful.

If the user manually previews before renaming then nothing should change from how it is now. Preview Dialog->Warning Prompt->Summary.

[admin]

Still I could live nicely with the following:

Code: Select all

The rename job is now completed. 0 of 1 items have been renamed.

I would live even nicer with:

Code: Select all

The rename job did not complete successfully. 0 of 1 item(s) have been renamed.

The word "completed" is used here with the same meaning as it is used in the Background Jobs status list. It means "done", not "done well".

The point of this sentence is to say "Game over.", not how it went.

[admin]

Why do we get so many different looking dialogs from the same task?

Thanks for the hint. I replaced the ugly one ("File comment: Collision").
It's not the time to dive into further polishing here, because I have to finalize XYcopy 2.0 quickly...