New Cleaner: Imposoble to reorder steps (drag & drop)

[Peter Boling]

I am creating a large cleaner, and I am unable to reorder steps.  The do move around in the stack, but they never go where I put them, and it isn't consistent so I can't use any kind of patternt to get to the order I want as a workaround.

Any one have ideas?

I've not found any other way to reorder steps aside from drag and drop.

Regards,

Peter

[Mark Munz]

I want to make sure we're talking TextSoap 9, as the behavior has changed over the releases. The info here is based on TextSoap 9.

Is the issue specifically with moving them in and out of conditional actions (If Matches ..., Process List, etc)?

In my experience, moving an action out of the conditional can sometimes get tricky -- especially if you're trying to put an action that was inside a conditional right after it.

If you're putting items into a conditional, you can drop them onto the conditional action and they will be placed at the end of the contained list of actions.

You can click on the left arrow to collapse the action contents, giving you more workspace.

You can also you cut/paste to move items around. Select your actions, cut them. Then select the action you wish to have the inserted after, then paste.

One additional trick for really large cleaners is to use a Group action. A Group action is just a container. You can then collapse the action's children to hide them all.

And I'm open to any ideas you might have that you think would make it easier for you to manage actions in the large cleaner.

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Mark Munz
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[Peter Boling]

I am using TextSoap 9.4.2 (3171) SetApp Edition

I have never used a conditional action, and I am not familiar with them. I just have a sequence of transformations (regex find & replace) I want to apply, and re-ordering them coherently is impossible.

My need for that use case is now past, I just had to rebuild my cleaner from scratch a few times.  I tend to build a new cleaner every few months, so I'm sure I'll bump into it again.

I appreciate the response!  I was just hoping that drag and drop would work, and the item would land where the indicator shows it being dragged to, but it does not, instead it gets dropped to some seemingly random spot in the set of actions.

[Mark Munz]

At the moment, the only issue I know of is in dealing with If Conditionals, especially if you are trying to put something after one. I would like to better understand the circumstances that are creating the problem. If I can replicate the issue you are seeing, I can debug what is happening.

I'll email you directly to see about some options to maybe gather a little more information.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/textsoap/9c920491-ca9e-43a6-951c-5fc8ad88cf8an%40googlegroups.com.

[Seamus Alexander]

This is definitely messy, and frustrating to work with as any slip of the mouse while editing can break my cleaner. The issue I am having is that there seems to be no way to move steps up the hierarchy. Once they are nested, they cannot move back up to the parent level. Worse, I am seemingly unable to reorder steps OR conditionals without them becoming nested--they are very 'grabby.'

To test this, I created a new test cleaner with three empty "If Matches Text" conditionals. If I try to reorder them (A,B,C -> A,C,B), C will automatically nest under A and cannot be unnested. Once it is nested, it also cannot be moved to a different parent.

This behaviour is especially frustrating because there is no way to undo these moves, meaning an errant mouse click can totally break a cleaner and I am likely to muck it up even further while trying to move things back to where they were.

[Mark Munz]

This provides a good example to work on. I was easily able to reproduce the issue you described.

That said, you are correct -- it is a mess. It seems like I managed to whack down one issue and another one popped up!

I will try a few ideas against this to see if I can make drag-and-drop less annoying.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/textsoap/d9b86176-59e9-4578-b3f9-a72c4a3a0ce2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Mark Munz]

If you are using TextSoap Direct, I've posted a beta: TextSoap 9.5b2 which should fully address the drag-and-drop issue.

Using the example provided, I first went back to TextSoap 8 to examine its behavior -- which turned out to be consistent and with no issues.

I then went about replicating that with TextSoap 9.

The result is an outline that appears robust and consistent in moving items in and out of the hierarchy. I will admit that sometimes it is tricky to get the insert indicator to pop out of the last entry of a container to become a sibling of the container. That usually just requires moving the cursor further left.

But wait… there is more.

Additionally, I added support to move a (single) selected action throughout the hierarchy. I used Zavala as a model. A selected object can move up and down among its siblings. Additionally, it can be moved Left (out of the container, becoming a sibling to the container, placed below the container) and Right (if the previous item is a container, the selected action will be moved into it, placed at the end). The menu items are found in the new Edit > Cleaner Editor submenu. And these all come with key equivalents (control-command-arrows).

Please give it a try. I welcome any feedback on the changes.