GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 476982
save unchanged game
Last modified: 2007-11-26 10:55:54 UTC
this bug was initially filled here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-games/+bug/139600 "Binary package hint: gnome-games steps to reproduce it: 1- run glchess. 2- start a new game and save it. 3- without doing a move, save the game again. 4- iterate in the third point."
I don't understand this report. What is the behaviour and what is the expected behaviour? Was the save dialog appearing each time save was chosen? Also which version is this against? I don't see any problems in 2.18 or 2.20.
Hi Robert sorry about not being clear enough, the point here is that glchess by default allows to save newly created games, which hasn't being started, the desired behavior will be, allowing to save games only after some move is made and before that the menu should be grayed and/or disabled, IMHO. I've just test this and can indeed reproduce this behavior under glchess 2.20.0.1, and yes, the save dialog appears every time. hope this time is clear enough. Thanks.
OK, there seem to be two concepts here. 1. Should you be able to save a game before it is started? Some applications (Abiword and OpenOffice) implement this behaviour where other applications (gnumeric, gimp, gedit, inkscape) do not. eog disables the save feature on startup but this is because there is no document to save (compared to an empty document). I'm not convinced this is a feature that should be disabled. Sometimes when I start a document (e.g. a game of chess) I like to save first (before I forget). Once the document has a location you can get down to the task of writing/playing and save quickly with Ctrl-S. 2. Should you be able to click the save button if the game has no changes to save? Again it seems to be Abiword and OpenOffice doing this. This case is more interesting where you are signalling to the user "don't worry, all the current changes have been saved". The convention here tends to be to mark the document title with an asterisk to warn the user there are unsaved changes. This feature was recently implemented in glChess (bug #494847). glChess also has the interesting problem that the button can only be greyed out for non-timed games. Timed games are continuously changing state and thus can always be saved. Greying the button for one type of game could lead to confusing behaviour. By disabling the save button there is one problem that can occur. If the saved file is moved or deleted the file can't be resaved until an action occurs. (This is a limitation that applications cannot easily watch the file for these sorts of events. Keeping the file open/locked solves some of these problems but can create others (and isn't performed by OpenOffice/Abiword). With recent changes to glChess all games are being stored in a history (bug #392284). I think the next step will be to remove the save button from the toolbar and rename it to export in the menu. In this case an export can be done at any time and doesn't imply loss of data if it is not done. In conclusion I don't see the requested behaviour being consistently implemented (and in fact in the minority) or recommended in the HIG or other appropriate documents (anyone with an appropriate reference please paste it here!). I see some of the reasons for the save button being disabled when all data is save but think in the case of glChess this problem will be better saved by using the asterisk marker and changing to an "export" concept. I'm closing this issue for now but encourage continued discussion/evidence to reopen this if there is support.
The conclusion is full of typos, I mean: "I see some of the reasons for the save button being disabled when all data is saved but think in the case of glChess this problem will be better solved by using the asterisk marker and changing to an "export" concept."