Flare 10.x - Some recent observations

[sdcinvan]

Happy Friday all,

Here are some recent issues found in Flare 10.1.0 (latest). These are all minor issues.

Rounding of fractional values
I first observed this in MadCap Capture but it appears to be common in all Flare products:

_Flare v10-No_fractional_values-rounding_problem.png

Split screen problem
Highlighting text in XML editor is occasionally (or often) not mirrored in the Text editor. I am unsure what causes this to condition to occur.

_Flare v10_text_xml_not_mirrored.png

NOTE:
1) When this occurs, what is seen in the text half of the screen is always far from where the XML is showing.
2) The reverse is not a problem. Meaning whenever I select/mark Text editor content, it is always mirrored in the XML editor.

[atomdocs]

Concerning 0.2px, is it possible to display that on a screen? I thought a pixel was the smallest display element. I assume that Flare indicates 0px because it knows it can't represent 0.2px on the screen, so it rounds it - to let you know the actual value that will be used.

[doc_guy]

I think Tom may be right. See the example below where I'm able to get Flare to show decimals for units where decimals make sense.

[doc_guy]

(This is in the CSS editor, on the 'body' tag, if you want to replicate to see if it works differently for you.)

[RamonS]

Even if 0.2 px can be rendered, can a person make out the difference between 0px and -0.2px? I understand and share the concern that if there is a means to enter a fraction it should properly display and retain that input, but I also question that behavior in the first place. If I'd work in MadCap QA my recommendation would be to not allow anything other than integer entries. From what I read in blogs and discussions as well as CSS documentation there is nothing that explicitly requires integer values, but I think that is more due to the nature of the CSS standard were the value for a unit is allowed to be a fraction. That makes sense for larger units like inch or cm. My guess is that the 0.2 px are not in violation of the standard, but - sorry - nonsensical, especially since browsers round to the nearest value anyway. Some do it incorrectly, but in any case it will not be what you specified.
As far as Flare goes, I think developers should spend their time on more important things than this.

[rob hollinger]

Split Screen issue.
I have seen issues if the topic contains comments or items that are hidden in the XML editor but visible in the Text editor. The highlighting does not take into account for the extra spacing etc.
Highlight two words split by a single space in the XML editor - In the Text editor, there are multiple lines between the words - not a single space.

Please remove the blank space between " week. The" and see if that fixes the issue. They are effectively in the same paragraph in the XML editor, but in the text editor, there are 3 different line numbers. This is throwing the selection off.

[rob hollinger]

The Length Dialog -
It will write the correct digits to the CSS or Topic etc.
It does not display anything below 0 when launched with an existing value below 0.