I am gradually moving all my rules from RM4 to RM5.
So, I am doing a lot of rule editing.
Few new features such as "copy actions", importing actions from different rules
are really nice and very helpful but few things are real headache.
It use to be an ability to create conditions BEFORE attempting to use them.
Not any more. Now at least one IF statement must be added before ability to
add more conditions will become available.
If I need to delete or modify existing IF statement many created conditions
simply disappearing and must be recreated over and over. This "nice" editing
feature is a real headache and very time consuming.
In some cases the same CONTION multiplies itself without any apparent reason.
This must be benign but annoying to see suddenly groving CONDITIONS list with
multiple exactly the same entries.
Unfortunately the list is much longer but other things have much less weight.
The most annoying is item #2.
I hope to see this fixed/addressed in the next release.
Each of these came about because of user confusion and requests. But I agree with you that these are simply annoying. The worse complaint had to do with Conditions that aren't still in use causing the In-Use-By section of a device to show the rule still using the device. To that, all I can say is that it is up to the user to keep his conditions tidy.
So, next release will address #1 and #2. As for #3, Conditions don't create themselves, the user creates them, perhaps by pasting in actions that reference conditions?
Very BIG Thank You for addressing/fixing these issues.
Maybe this is copy/paste related.
But it does not make sense and somewhat defeats using otherwise very nice
and very helpful copy/paste editing option.
If you paste a conditional action, it HAS to create any condition that it uses, in order for it to be a complete action. If you paste again, it will repeat and create another one. It can't very well attempt to be smarter than you and not create the condition, referencing one you already have for example, as that wouldn't end well.
I'm not sure why you think it doesn't make sense that it must create a condition that you use.
Of course the condition must exist before it could be used.
This is/was not a question.
The question is - why exactly the same condition must exist more than once?
Existence of multiple the same conditions does not make any sense for sure.
Are you suggesting that the app should examine conditions you paste to see if they already exist, and if so, reuse them? Suppose you want to edit the condition you just pasted, but not the one that already existed? Then you'd be saying this is a problem.
When you create an expression, you are given the choice of using an existing condition or creating a new one. What if you create then an identical condition to one that already exists? If you want to consolidate pasted in conditions, those expressions could be edited to accomplish this. But, this must be effort not worth expending. It is inevitable that using features such as copy/paste/import etc are going to have side effects such as this that you bring up. Yet, you say that the way it works is wrong, and "does not make sense for sure". Really? Please explain how it should be done to satisfy all cases.
Well, if you are using copy/paste or cut/paste options you already copying something
already existing. You cannot copy non-existing things. Right?
So why in this case you have to duplicate a condition? It is already there.
I may not understand all the details but to my eyes if something already exist why
it cannot be reused? In RM4 you could create any conditions ether upfront or on a
fly and then reuse them as many times as you want.
But RM4 did not have copy/paste (cut/paste did exist) option.
It could be related to the how copy/paste works but again duplicating the same
expressions is very confusing.
There is a duplicate condition because you pasted an action with a condition. It is necessary to create a new action when you paste one, so this creates a new condition as well. The app is not going to examine every existing condition and try to guess what it should do with each condition that you paste in.
RM5 allows the reuse of conditions just like RM4 did. There is no change with this. The only difference is the first point you raised above, that the very first condition is created when you created the very first Conditional Action. Beyond that, there is no difference between RM4 and RM5 for reusing conditions.
If you are going to have independent actions after pasting, then they must be truly and 100% independent, and allow for changing through editing.
You may recall that I was reluctant to add copying of actions, and now you know the reason why. Copying an action and pasting it in requires that a true duplicate be created. I'm sorry you find that confusing,. I'm caught between users complaining that it's all great but they really need copy/paste, and you complaining that copy/paste is too confusing. There is no middle ground here. The alternative would be a complex UI that prompts you for each action you paste whether to create a new condition or use an existing one for each and every condition -- which could be easily be even more confusing. It does what it says: it makes a copy and pastes it into the rule.
Well, not quite the same.
In order to bring in Create Condition window I am using IF-Then statement and
creating whatever condition.
Once this window is up I am using it to create all conditions I may need and deleting
that IF with associated condition. This way I have nice and clean set of conditions.
What you said from this point it should not be any differences between RM4 and RM5.
But there are many differences (I am talking about editing).
For instance, in RM4 if I reuse the same condition twice or (even more) times I still
have/had only one condition instance. In RM5 they are immediately duplicated (multiplied).
Now if I am trying to edit statement(s) where these conditions are used usually it
creates a huge mess and I have to start over. This is very time consuming and very
annoying. The result is - better not to use copy/paste (and even cut/paste) for the
statements with expressions.
However this works very well for the control actions.
Thinking more about what you just explained I understand (I think) all the related
problems related to copy/paste editing options.
This is really nice option to have but I unfortunately have very bad experience with it.
Here, the same condition is used multiple times, and is not duplicated. This has not changed from RM4 to RM5.
Perhaps you are trying to do too much or the wrong things with this feature. There are many uses of it that do not have these problems you describe, such as, copying a list of actions from one rule to another (here, it should be obvious that the conditions must be created). But, if you are trying to do multiple copy paste within a rule, sure, you can create a mess if you aren't careful about what you do. This is up to you... Any tool can be misused, such as using a hammer to seat a sheet of glass in a window.
Within the same rule I am using copy/paste only for the control actions.
This works OK, no problems.
For the conditions I am using cut/paste (not copy paste).
There was not any problems with this in RM4. But in RM5 this is not working as expected
(occasionally it works).
Bottom line:
In RM4 usually I did not have any editing related problems.
Yes, occasionally something did not work and rule better to be recreated from scratch.
In RM5 I am doing the same things but unfortunately have to redo rules multiple times.
The most annoying things are related to creating and/or editing conditions.
I agree, copy/paste conditions within the same rule could be very messy.
But I am not sure how someone can misuse cut/paste option.
There were changes made to paste to deal with copy, as opposed to just cut. So, a bit of the baby was thrown out with the wash for cut. I'll look into the possibility of making cut simpler as it was before, where it doesn't have to replicate everything in the action when it is pasted.
It turned out to be rather simple to restore the prior way that Cut works. Next release...
There is a subtle but important difference between copy and cut. When you copy an action (or actions), the clipboard retains the copy even after paste. When you cut an action, the clipboard is cleared upon paste. This difference is because in the case of copy an entirely new instance of the action must be created (including all of its conditions), and in the case of cut an existing instance is just being moved in the list of actions. So when pasting something that was cut this can only be done once, while one could paste something that was copied more than once. In this distinction, the action clipboard differs slightly from a conventional clipboard which always retains what was placed on it until something new is cut or copied. Thus is the difference between a clipboard of actions, which have attendant data structures attached, and a simple clipboard of text, which has no attachments.
This foregoing refers to next release, with the change to cut to make it work as it did in Rule-4.1.
