Task Description Text Formatting - The Archilles Heel of DP

[webpros]

This software is fantastic. But not being able to format text in Task Descriptions is a BIG BIG BIG problem.

The center purpose of this software is project management. And project management revolves around tasks. If tasks are difficult to understand, or if I cannot have the ability to format my task descriptions and lay them out making it easy for employees to understand, then this software becomes crippled. One solution is to layout the task in Word and upload the attachment. But many tasks come in detailed fashion from a client through email. I am excited about DP being able to take those incoming emails into the ticket system then simply copy and paste the support request into a task. But the task description strips the clipboard contents of any formatting resulting in a VERY difficult to read task description.

Adam or Karen. Can you please fix this? This has put a BIG damper on DP for me.

David Faria

[webpros]

I found one solution while reading through dp Mantis that will work for now. Using FireFox you can use CRLF. Woohoo!!!! At least I can work with DP now. I was extremely frustrated. I can deal with it now :)

[Karen]

This is not an error with dotProject but appears to be a bug with IE.

If I enter text using Firefox with CR/LF's in that text then both Firefox and IE will render it correctly.

If I enter text using IE with CR/LF's in them then neither Firefox or IE can render it - the CR/LF's appear to have been stripped.

See bug report 902 on Bugs & Suggestions - Mantis.

We're not prepared to devote time and resources to providing a workaround for something that's an IE specific issue.

Somebody in the community may be able to provide some suggestions - but if it breaks or complicates Firefox support then it won't be implemented.

[webpros]

Found another fix. In the includes/db_connect.php file are three lines with "strip_tags". DP is using a smarty plugin that strips any html tags before they go to the database. I know they are doing this for security reasons, but I'm not worried about it as I trust everyone who is logging in to our DP.

So the simple solution is to delete those three references. You can insert full html code, but still no carriage returns. But if you use FireFox in conjunction with this change you have the best of both worlds.

Here is an example of how the line should look.. This is line #227 in db_connect.php and how it should be corrected:

(Line 227 Old code) $values[] = "'" . db_escape(strip_tags( $v )) . "'";
(Line 227 New Code) $values[] = "'" . db_escape( $v ) . "'";


Do the same thing on lines 261 and 307

[cyeager]

>We're not prepared to devote time and resources to providing a workaround for something that's an IE specific issue.

>Somebody in the community may be able to provide some suggestions - but if it breaks or complicates Firefox support then it won't be implemented.

I'm sure a lot of people are wondering what, if you can't be bothered to support the majority browser, exactly what you are willing to devote time and resources to. I'm trying to get a lot of coworkers to accept this software, and a lot of them don't really care what browser they use. I think you'll find that this is one of the inescapable realities of the business world. This bug is just making it more complicated, and it cant be a difficult problem to fix.

Please, dotproject, step up and take the lead on solving this problem.

chris

[Karen]

I'm sure a lot of people are wondering what, if you can't be bothered to support the majority browser, exactly what you are willing to devote time and resources to. I'm trying to get a lot of coworkers to accept this software, and a lot of them don't really care what browser they use. I think you'll find that this is one of the inescapable realities of the business world. This bug is just making it more complicated, and it cant be a difficult problem to fix.

Please, dotproject, step up and take the lead on solving this problem.

chris
Using your own argument, if people don't care what browser they use then why not use the one that works?

Our policy statement clearly indicates that non-standards compliant browser support will always lag and, further we absolutely have the right not to devote time to developing workarounds for issues that are not specific dotProject issues.

Questioning what we do devote our time to is just downright offensive and I have no idea what you think you're achieving except to get yourself put on moderation which has now occurred.

[ajdonnison]

I don't have access to MSIE code, and cannot fix bugs in their code, even if I did. If there is a workaround, then someone using IE may be able to provide us with a hint. If not there isn't a lot I can do. I'd rather spend time fixing problems that affect everyone rather than problems that are browser specific, regardless of the browser. As to stepping up and taking the lead, when will MS do the same and fix the security holes in IE, the lack of standards compliance, the lack of full PNG support, the lack of a decent javascript debugger, or indeed a decent javascript (or ECMAScript) implementation.

If someone who uses IE can figure this out (and I don't use it, nor do I use Windows), then I would be more than happy to incorporate the workaround, provided it doesn't break other browsers. But I don't have the time and resources to devote to a potentially long and involved search for a problem in a product not of my making when I could be fixing problems that are immediate and affect all users.

[webpros]

It's unfortunate that we can sometimes be more demanding of "free" services than of paid services :(

CYEAGER,

Have you tried the fixes I posted (removing strip_tags from db_connect)? For me the issue is resolved. If you have someone who insists on using IE, then just tell them to use html breaks instead of CRs .

I'm afraid I posted this topic with too harsh of a title (I was frustrated at the time). We have gone through 5 Project managers in the last 5 months. Most didn't work nearly as well as DP. And the ones that do work well, we had to pay for. We are beginning to outsource a lot and everytime we added a user our monthly fee went up. DotProject is a God-sent program for us as we are adding more and more sub-contractors to our team, and the fact that it works as well as it does...

Excellent software and FREE, how demanding can we be?

Thanks to the DP team.

[smallmid]

Thanks for the work around. Spent days trying to locate the HTML stripping routine.

[kkendall]

It's unfortunate that we can sometimes be more demanding of "free" services than of paid services :(

CYEAGER,

Have you tried the fixes I posted (removing strip_tags from db_connect)? For me the issue is resolved. If you have someone who insists on using IE, then just tell them to use html breaks instead of CRs .

I'm afraid I posted this topic with too harsh of a title (I was frustrated at the time). We have gone through 5 Project managers in the last 5 months. Most didn't work nearly as well as DP. And the ones that do work well, we had to pay for. We are beginning to outsource a lot and everytime we added a user our monthly fee went up. DotProject is a God-sent program for us as we are adding more and more sub-contractors to our team, and the fact that it works as well as it does...

Excellent software and FREE, how demanding can we be?

Thanks to the DP team.

You're absolutely right! We must remember all the time its free, and in that sense really cool!
But I still think there are lots and lots of bugs in dotProject, so much so my coworkers don't want to work with it...

And a little advice for Karen:
Please don't react all frustrated and offencive to people who are experiencing problems while using your software. I'm sure you can imagine that if you want to work with a project management tool, you don't want to devote all of your time on bugs, errors and workarounds.
People will get frustrated, angry and desperite if you react the way you often do...
Please don't punish me for making this comment in any way as I am trying to help all of you guys...

Best regards!
Kasper

[ajdonnison]

And a little advice for Karen:
Please don't react all frustrated and offencive to people who are experiencing problems while using your software. I'm sure you can imagine that if you want to work with a project management tool, you don't want to devote all of your time on bugs, errors and workarounds.
People will get frustrated, angry and desperite if you react the way you often do...
Please don't punish me for making this comment in any way as I am trying to help all of you guys...
Best regards!
Kasper

I don't want this to get heated, however, don't you think that this is a little patronising? What about you allow us to be as human as you expect us to allow others to be, and move on. This doesn't help, no matter how you phrase it. And in future, it might be an idea to keep your advice to yourself, or take it off the forums. As I've mentioned before these are for technical matters, not for point scoring.

And please, don't answer this to the forums, but to me directly. If you do, then I will take it as just another person trying to score points and will take action.

[pedroa]

Hi Adam,

I really liked phpBB2 board you haved here, but since you have changed for vBulletin sometimes the forums topics get their topic names from outerspace for the old threads/posts.

Hey, but there's a new friend that I just used for this issue you are having here, the "Add to Ignore List" button.

Humm, I am beggining to like vBulletin...

Adam, it stops here for you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kkendall
"I am trying to help all of you guys..."

Sorry, I didn't notice where.
Have you helped someone in the forums with any problems?
Or are you just trying to help yourself?
Have you invested some of your time trying to solve the bugs, and have you shared your solutions with others here?
If not, how can you feel entitled to others helping you?

I know dP has bugs (probably even more than you do), and it is not the best PM tool in the world but at least we are doing some positive work towards that direction, so if you can pass your test of frustration, maybe you could give us a help here, since everyone is needed in this process.

You are free to choose...just let me know when should I remove you from my Ignore List.

kkendall, it stops here for you.

Now for the rest of you guys, this thread is a bit too heavy for us to keep talking here, so I recommend you see thread http://www.dotproject.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=10863
and we'll continue there, ok?
It is basically the same thing, and there will be news about this in the near future.

Thanks

Pedro A.