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Bruce Giles wrote:When capturing, the progress bar in the activity window goes to full (100%) immediately at the start of the capture, and then it never changes after that. I have this same problem in the current release version of QRecall also. (Just as I was getting ready to post this message, an action started another capture, and this time the progress bar seems to be working correctly. Is that something you fixed in b13, or have I got some kind of inconsistent thing going on here?)
My old backup drive was getting a bit flaky, so I bought a new external drive, and set up new archives for beta testing. I have not yet tried to convert my old archives. When i opened the new archive window for the first time after the first capture, it opened in icon mode. There was a blank icon with my name under it. I had to double-click the blank area to open up a new view showing the hard drive, and then I got an icon on the drive. The lack of an icon to go with my name was disconcerting -- at first I didn't even see it and thought the archive action hadn't worked. Did you intend to have some kind of icon there, or was it supposed to be blank?
Will the capture assistant be updated to support the new event conditions? I like the new conditions. I'm testing the one that waits to back up my virtual machine folder until after VMware Fusion quits, and so far, it seems to be working.
Feature request: Two-column sorts of the Actions window. I'd really like to see actions sorted first by the Archive column, and then by either the Next or the Schedule column.
In the release notes, "scraping" should be spelled as "scrapping", with two "p"s. Mentioned so you can get it right in the help files.
James Bucanek wrote:Bruce Giles wrote:Feature request: Two-column sorts of the Actions window. I'd really like to see actions sorted first by the Archive column, and then by either the Next or the Schedule column.
I'll add that to the list. Most of the UI enhancements are being addressed in version 2.1, so I'll probably get to it then.
In the release notes, "scraping" should be spelled as "scrapping", with two "p"s. Mentioned so you can get it right in the help files.
I bow to your superior skills in proofreading, but I have to call you out on this one. It's "scraping" (one 'p'), the noun form of "scrape": "to push or pull a hard or sharp implement across a surface or object so as to remove dirt or other matter..."
Ming-Li Wang wrote:I thought one could get the same result by simply clicking on the Next or Schedule column first before clicking on the Archive column. No?
I thought as much, but didn't speak because English is not my first language.
The cause for confusion probably lies in the beta release notes, however. In the section titled "Excluding, Ignoring, and Scraping Items", "scrap"--not "scrape"--is used numerous times as a verb.
James Bucanek wrote:That's not 100%, it's "indeterminate." OS X progress views have an "indeterminate" mode to indicate that the amount of progress is unknown or unknowable. When the look of OS X got "Yosemited." the familiar marching barber-pole pattern was replaced with an (very) subtle gradient that drifts slowly across the screen. On small controls, it's nearly indistinguishable from the progress view at 100%.
To state the obvious, that's a bug. I'm still not sure where the problem is, and I'm beginning to think there are several bugs. In some cases it appears that the icons for the volume and computer aren't being captured properly. In other cases, the static system icons for a volume and the computer that are supposed to display when a captured icon isn't available aren't loading for some reason. Its been difficult to resolve because neither of these problems occur on my system with any regularity. Regardless, it's on the short list of bugs to look into. The issue is entirely cosmetic, as the icons captured/displayed for items in the archive aren't used to recall them.
The assistant in 2.0.0b13 does add the new power state conditions to the actions it creates so that most will stop automatically if the power capacity of the battery drops below 20%. (On desktop computers, these conditions will never trip.)
I bow to your superior skills in proofreading, but I have to call you out on this one. It's "scraping" (one 'p'), the noun form of "scrape": "to push or pull a hard or sharp implement across a surface or object so as to remove dirt or other matter..."
Bruce Giles wrote:I don't think Apple could have made it any more subtle. I much preferred the old barber-pole pattern, but I realize that QRecall is just using what Apple provides there.
So, just out of curiosity, what icon was supposed to be there? I went back and looked at QRecall 1.2.3.8 which is still running on one of my other computers, to see what it did. In that case, the top level item is the name of the computer, as defined in the Sharing panel of System Preferences. It happens to be an old iMac, and the icon is an iMac icon, so that's appropriate. But in b13, the top level item isn't the computer's name, it's MY name. In fact, the computer name isn't even in the list. The next level below my name is the name of the hard drive. So what should the top level icon be -- a human silhouette, or something like that?
But they will if the desktop computer is connected to a UPS (and monitoring the battery state via a USB cable), right? The release notes seem to indicate that.
I was going to argue back on this one. I was absolutely certain you had used the word "scrap" in several places, in which case, "scrapping" would be appropriate. I went back and looked again and couldn't find it. Then I read ahead and discovered that Ming-Li Wang noted it as well, and you've apparently fixed it.
I have to say I prefer "scrap" and "scrapping" to "scrape" and "scraping". I think of "scrap" as a synonym for "destroy". For example, "The wrecked car was scrapped." I don't think of "scrape" that way. But it's really not a big deal either way. I can learn to live with it. If I really have to.
James Bucanek wrote:Bruce Giles wrote:I don't think Apple could have made it any more subtle. I much preferred the old barber-pole pattern, but I realize that QRecall is just using what Apple provides there.
In the next iteration of the UI I was contemplating using the even-smaller progress indicator. I might have to include a free pair of reading glasses with every copy of QRecall.
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Bruce Giles wrote:I'm already looking through a pair of the finest reading glasses that WalMart can supply (3 for $7.98!), and trust me, it doesn't help.
By the way, this brings up another issue that's not specific to the beta, as I've seen it in Rev 1 of QRecall as well. Note that the attached screenshot shows it's capturing a file called "screenshot_0000.png". That QRecall capture has now been running for more than 24 minutes, and the activity window STILL shows it working on screenshot_0000.png. I've checked the actual size of that screenshot, and it's only 281K, which QRecall ought to be able to capture in a fraction of a second. So what is QRecall really doing?
If QRecall spent all that time doing some kind of maintenance on the archive file, it seems like it ought to say so in the log and in the activity window.
Bruce Giles wrote:1) The indeterminate progress bar in the Activity window is still nearly impossible to tell from a 100% full progress bar. I realize that's an OS issue, not really a QRecall issue, but Apple has apparently decided this isn't enough of a problem for them to do anything about it.
2) I'm doing a new backup, to a new archive, of my VMWare Fusion virtual machine file. It's been running for about 42 minutes so far, and backed up about 130 GB, and for the entire time (except for perhaps the first few seconds), the Activity window says "Capturing screenshot_0000.png", which is only a 1.9 MB file. I'm sure it's backed up way more than that, but it just seems a little odd. Is there anything you can do in the new version of QRecall to help with that?
James Bucanek wrote:While I can't do anything about Apple's control design, you'll notice that the collapsed version of action (click to toggle between the two) has a new-and-improved background progress indicator of my own design, which I hope clearly distinguishes between these two states.
I've looked that this code a lot and don't see why it should be doing that. Having said that, I've recently made performance improvements in the code that updates the activity monitor with the status of the running action; one side effect is, I hope, more timely updating of the actual status. See if the next (post 2.1.0b32) version improves anything.
Bruce Giles wrote:At first I thought it might be because I'm backing up a folder that contains only a single enormous file -- the VMware virtual machine file. But that file is actually a package containing many files, only one of which is screenshot_0000.jpg.
James Bucanek wrote:This is a little on the experimental side, so I'm looking for feedback.
QRecall no longer reports the progress of individual items inside a directory if that directory is either opaque (package, application, bundle, etc.) or if it is either invisible or inaccessible as a regular user. Instead, it will simply report that it is capturing "Private Folder" or "Adobe Photoshop.app".
Also—and this is the experimental part—it will no longer collect icon or localized display information about these files. The advantage is a (marginal) capture performance improvement. But it also means that if you enable the viewing of invisible items or packages in the archive browser, you won't see pretty icons or localized names for those items.
Finally, if you like this kind of detail there are two new advanced settings: QRMonitorOpaqueFolderProgress and QRMonitorInvisibleFolderProgress. Set them to true to enable the progress reporting of those items (although this doesn't change the display metadata collection).
Bruce Giles wrote:I'm less sure I like that behavior with invisible folders. I may be misunderstanding your intent here, so let me ask a direct question. If I'm backing up my entire hard drive, then am I just going to see "Private Folder" for the entire time while it backs up /bin, /cores, /dev, /etc, /home, /mach, /net, /opt, /private, /sbin, /tmp, /usr, and /var? If that's correct, that would NOT match my expectations. If I saw "Private Folder" listed in the activity window while it did all that, I'd probably be wondering what was wrong.