LifeDrive Contacts Bug

[potter]

Bumped into this a few weeks ago.
Edit an existing contact, or start a new contact.
Make any desired changes to main "Contact Edit" screen.
Press the 'Note' button.
Spend five to ten minutes entering a detailed note (the new class schedule for the Dojo).
All finished, so hit one of the hard buttons to switch to another application.
Switch back to Contacts, and check the record you just edited, or added. You will find that any changes made to the main screen are there, but any changes made to the note are lost.
I just repeated this on my LifeDrive, the LifeDrive Simulator, and the Tungsten E Simulator. The error occurs on the LifeDrive and LifeDrive Simulator, but not on the Tungsten E Simulator.

[potter]

Just tested: The Tungsten T5 and E2 Simulators also have this bug. The T3 does not. Appears to be a bug with Contacts on an NVSF device.

Opps, forgot: Work around: When editing a note on a Contact record, be sure to hit the “Done” button.

[jomo]

Just tested: The Tungsten T5 and E2 Simulators also have this bug. The T3 does not. Appears to be a bug with Contacts on an NVSF device.

Opps, forgot: Work around: When editing a note on a Contact record, be sure to hit the “Done” button.

Uhm... Nope. This has been a "feature" forever. Jeff Kirvin mentioned this once, in one of his podcasts/rants about "multi-tasking". Contacts does not "save-state" when you switch to another application. All Palms have this problem. It's never been fixed. All the other built in PIMs (Calendar, Tasks, Memos) work correctly, though.

[potter]

Contacts does not "save-state" when you switch to another application. All Palms have this problem. I am not talking about the save-state problem that has been there since the beginning. I am talking about saving of data.

This 'bug' appearently exists on the LD, T5, E2, and TX. It does not exist on the T3 or E, or any device that used the old Address Book instead of Contacts. I do not know about any of the other Contacts using devices.

From the Palm OS® User Interface Guidelines (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UIGuide_Front.html):
Don't Provide Save or Exit Commands (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UI_Actions.html#976831)
Most desktop applications have menu commands to save changes and to exit the application. These commands are so ubiquitous on desktop applications, novice Palm OS application designers try to fit them into their handheld applications. This is almost never a good thing to do.

You find no Save command in the built-in applications. Palm Powered handheld users are not used to saving changes before they switch to another application. Changes are always saved as they are made. Undo is available if the user makes a mistake in an editable text field, and destructive operations have a confirmation.

Palm Powered handheld users are also not used to exiting applications. On the Palm Powered handheld, users do not think in terms of exiting one application and then launching another. The paradigm is such that they consider all applications to be running at once and they can move between them at will. (In reality, the system only runs one application at a time, and the applications are written in a way that moving between them looks seamless. This is an implementation detail that the end user does not know about.)

[potter]

From the Palm OS® User Interface Guidelines (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UIGuide_Front.html):
Launching the Application (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UI_FittingIn.html#971324)

[...]

You do not necessarily display the base form when users launch your application. Do so only if it makes sense. It's often better to return to the place the user exited last. For example, Memo Pad always returns you to the memo you were last reading.

Displaying the location where the user exited is desired because it creates a seamless interface. If you make your application behave like the user never exited, users can think of all Palm OS applications as running at the same time.
I take that to mean the "saving-state" feature is suggested, not required.

[jomo]

I am not talking about the save-state problem that has been there since the beginning. I am talking about saving of data.

This 'bug' appearently exists on the LD, T5, E2, and TX. It does not exist on the T3 or E, or any device that used the old Address Book instead of Contacts. I do not know about any of the other Contacts using devices.

From the Palm OS® User Interface Guidelines (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UIGuide_Front.html):

Uhm, yes. Actually, you ARE talking about the save-state problem. What you are basically doing is exiting in the middle of editing something. On every app but Contacts, this causes the Palm to "save-state". Ie the information is saved to the storage heap and pulled out on return to the app. It "appears" that you are "multi-tasking" as you're supposed to return to where you started. On Contacts, anything that was open when you were "editing" is flushed. You get to start all over again. It doesn't matter if it's a note or contact information. It's treated the same. Clie's have this issue as well. My old Sony NX-60 did this, and it used to drive me nuts until I found out it was a bug.

[jomo]

From the Palm OS® User Interface Guidelines (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ui/UIGuide_Front.html):
I take that to mean the "saving-state" feature is suggested, not required.

Yup. You're correct. Some apps implement it. Some don't. Some of the simpler games, like the old checkers program I used to have on my Clie, don't implement "save-state". Every time you opened checkers, it was a new game.

[potter]

This 'bug' appearently exists on the LD, T5, E2, and TX. It does not exist on the T3 or E, or any device that used the old Address Book instead of Contacts. I do not know about any of the other Contacts using devices.
Correction, this bug exists on the LD, T5, and E2. When I wrote that I had not actually tested on a TX. I later did test it on a TX and found that the bug is not on the TX. Therefore a fix for the LD was to copy the Contacts-PAdd and Contacts-PAdd_xxXX databases from the TX to the LD (where xxXX is appropriate language and country code for your device; in my case enUS).