Moving macros to different category loses Modified

[terrypin]

I created a sub-category and moved about 50 macros to it from the parent. All the entries in the Modified column were changed to today. That data is quite useful when housekeeping so I'm very sorry to lose it. I don't regard a move as a file modification.

 

Reproducible by others? A bug?

 

[acantor]

Good catch. I am noting the same behaviour.

 

Not sure whether this issue rises to the status of "bug," but there is no harm in reporting it. I agree that maintaining the integrity of dates when moving macros between categories would be ideal. However, the problem may be more of an unfortunate user interface hiccough than a programming error.

 

But if it's fixable, I'm sure the good folks at Insight would consider taking it on. They have repaired many quirks that I have reported over the years -- and some of those quirks affect few users.

[terrypin]

Thanks Alan.

 

[Cory]

I'm guessing it's by design. I.E. one modifies the macro to change the location and thus the modification date is changed. These aren't files in folders, they're entities in the data file. I'm guessing nothing is moved in the data structure, but a line in the macro data indicates where it is in the hierarchy. You change that line in the macro and the macro has changed. Not to say this couldn't be done differently, but I this is just my guess of how it works and why it acts differently than a file system. 

[terrypin]

IMO it seems a strange design if so, with no obvious benefit and the clear disadvantage of losing an important item of information about each macro.

[Cory]

I didn't say it made sense from a user perspective. I'm just speculating as to how it's that way and further suggesting that it's not really a bug, buty maybe an opportunity for improvement for the use experience. 

Random mode on an audio playback device isn't random at all. Probably why they started calling it "shuffle". When they started making MP3 players, they offered a random mode and it was truly random. But in the days of limited memory there was often few songs and sometimes a song would repeat. People complained that random mod was broken, but it wasn't. Sometimes when you roll the dice, you get a 6 twice in a row. THey then created a quasi-random mode that was random without repeat. Which isn't random. It wasn't intended to be that way, but technically it was what the consumers wanted. However the consumers didn't understand that what they wanted wasn't random. Anyway, it's just the way it worked out. There was a good reason why songs would repeat sometimes. 

I'm guessing someone at some point said "I want a modified date" and they implemented it. But the person who requested it didn't realize that the path is part of the macro data and changing it would change the modified date. It probably never crossed their minds back then. I.E. I dont' think it's a bug. There's nothing broken.