Topic: Too many bugs to list

I have now undertaken some reasonably detailed tests of FA, checking the data files after each stage of activity with PHPAdmin.
It exhibits inconsistent and counterintuitive behaviour, as well as allowing multiple representations of the same entity without any apparent key checking and with seemingly no visibility of the actual primary key.
It is also trivial to corrupt data in the master files with the current illogical form behaviour.

The manual does not describe to the actual behaviour so that is of no use.

Since others are using it successfully I can only conclude that somehow the system has been corrupted  by my install (this is the 5th one, though) or my environment,, but for me, I cannot see how it can be realistically deployed in our business. Even without the errors, the whole maintenance approach and the bizarrely inconsistent forms make it totally unusable for the accounts department.

Pity, as at first glance it seemed the best match for me of the Sourceforge products.

axe_man

Re: Too many bugs to list

If you need any help please stop cry, dry your eyes and  try to explain what is your problem. For now the only thing I can understand from your post is that FA manual is not up to date. Yes, it is.

Janusz

Re: Too many bugs to list

Dear Mr. axe man.

Over the years I have tried every open source erp system out there using php mysql, and I have not found a more aggressive dev team.  If you read some more in this forum you will see that bugs when they are identified are fixed.  Not all of us use FA in the same way, some parts of FA I will never use in our business, there may be bugs I will never know of.

If you find a bug it will be fixed!!

Happy FA

Alvin

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."  - Aristotle.

Re: Too many bugs to list

" try to explain what is your problem"
I already made a post elsewhere giving details of one particular problem, but as yet noone responded. This was pretty basic, in that in this installation it is not possible to amend COA details - and this is just one example of the issues.

"manual is not up to date. Yes, it is."
Well, I can tell you that the screens I have here do not tally with the screens that appear in front of me - and hence my first post, looking for help to find out how my installation might have gone wrong - so for me the manual is _not_ correct. Impasse.

However, more importantly, I don't just try and then give up and burat into tears, and I find that remark demeaning and completely uncalled for.  I have installed, re-installed, and checked several times befire I posted. I have checked table updates with phpadmin and put on logging, including sql logging. I've been in the software busines all my life so I can test in a structured manner. In fact, my business is designing and implementing enterprise capable (>1m entries per day) ledger systems for investment banks, so I also know which side a debit goes on. [Indeed, I was planning to contribute some specific COAs if FA had functioned]

I made it very clear in this post that I was not suggesting FA didn't work, only that something in _my_ installtion didn't work and it was not practically unusable as installed here.  As it is  just don't have the time to spend further trying to sort it out when something else may work out of the box. I was not in any way berating FA or its development team.

However, having expressed that I get belittled in this reponse, which tells me how any further posts are likely to get treated.

Re: Too many bugs to list

axe_man wrote:

" try to explain what is your problem"
I already made a post elsewhere giving details of one particular problem, but as yet noone responded. This was pretty basic, in that in this installation it is not possible to amend COA details - and this is just one example of the issues.

Well, I have read your post, but I had really not understand what you mean. Now I think you have tried to test FA against outdated manual, which can be confusing. Sorry for that, we should simply remove the manual at all from our site until it will be up to date.

Anyway you can look into FA demo available via link on our home page. If the demo works another way than your local installation - this is probably some installation or compatibility bug.

axe_man wrote:

However, more importantly, I don't just try and then give up and burat into tears, and I find that remark demeaning and completely uncalled for.  I have installed, re-installed, and checked several times befire I posted. I have checked table updates with phpadmin and put on logging, including sql logging. I've been in the software busines all my life so I can test in a structured manner. In fact, my business is designing and implementing enterprise capable (>1m entries per day) ledger systems for investment banks, so I also know which side a debit goes on. [Indeed, I was planning to contribute some specific COAs if FA had functioned]

Sounds interesting. There is still a lot to be done both in FA design and testing, so if you are still interested you are welcome.

axe_man wrote:

I made it very clear in this post that I was not suggesting FA didn't work, only that something in _my_ installtion didn't work and it was not practically unusable as installed here.  As it is  just don't have the time to spend further trying to sort it out when something else may work out of the box. I was not in any way berating FA or its development team.

Ok, no problem. Please try compare your local FA behaviour with the demo, and when unsure do not hesitate ask again. We always try to help fix any problems with FrontAccounting, when we have a chance to reproduce them locally.

Janusz

Re: Too many bugs to list

Hi itronics

Well, I certainly don't want to start one of those e-mail fights with you, that's for sure - it helps noone.

I have now tried the installation on three machines, and it shows the same problem on all three. It's running under xampplite on large XP professional machines. I've tried the obvious things like browser settings (behaves the same under Chrome and Firefox) and with the firewall off and everything enabled in the browsers. I have up to date versions of Apache and MySQL.

For interest, I installed weberp before FA, and this works ok. This is weird, because FA is a fork (I think?) and I wanted to run the more up to date system.

The fundamental problem is the same in each element of the application.

I have just tried ypur demo system as you suggested, and it behaves identically to my installations. Take this trivial example which I have just done on the demo system.

In Chart of Accounts maintenance I have just added an account 0001. The screen now shows a green line at the top telling me that the account has been added. The form still has the 0001 data in it, but the account code is now greyed out.
Now if I want to amend an account, say "1060 Checking Account" I call that up on the drop down, but there is then no way to amend that - at the bottom of the form I'm only given the choice of updating 0001 or deleting it. Now the manual showed an 'edit' button when a drop down item was selected to enable amendment, but that is not shown in the demo system

Now I may be being incredibly stupid (possible / likely) but I can't see how an amendment is then done to an existing account. This applies to other master data, such as customers etc. That's the nature of the problem.

"Sounds interesting"
I sold my banking product company last year, but have investmjents in two others - one of which I planned to use FA for. I have been toying with the idea of getting one of them to write a ledger for the investment world - there really aren't any Open Spurce products  that handle this. There are several factors, such as how they handle currencies and dates, which just don't work for banking.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't mean to irritate anyone, as (as I said)  I am assuming it's something I have done/ my setup rather than FA but it's stumped me so far and has been very frustrating

BTW. If I do ever get FA to work, I can certainly share the COA for a service company operating in various countries - my target application.


Thanks

Axe-man

Re: Too many bugs to list

Hello Axe_man,

"Well, I certainly don't want to start one of those e-mail fights with you, that's for sure - it helps noone."
So we are on the same side, apologies if you had another impression wink.

For interest, I installed weberp before FA, and this works ok. This is weird, because FA is a fork (I think?) and I wanted to run the more up to date system.

FrontAccounting is rather complete rewrite of webERP than simply fork. As you certainly noticed FA has (between others) completely different user interface, more consistent and designed for fast kbd data entry. We try to ensure our application works on any lamp based system which has php>4.3.2 and mysql >3.23.58, but using bleeding edge php version is not tested well (we are working to make it better).

I have just tried ypur demo system as you suggested, and it behaves identically to my installations.

This is the good news smile.

Take this trivial example which I have just done on the demo system.
In Chart of Accounts maintenance I have just added an account 0001. The screen now shows a green line at the top telling me that the account has been added. The form still has the 0001 data in it, but the account code is now greyed out.
Now if I want to amend an account, say "1060 Checking Account" I call that up on the drop down, but there is then no way to amend that - at the bottom of the form I'm only given the choice of updating 0001 or deleting it. Now the manual showed an 'edit' button when a drop down item was selected to enable amendment, but that is not shown in the demo system

Now I may be being incredibly stupid (possible / likely) but I can't see how an amendment is then done to an existing account. This applies to other master data, such as customers etc. That's the nature of the problem.

Well, I'm really  lost as I cannot reproduce your problem.When you want to entry new account you should select first selector option (New account ) as you have described. When you want to change any account, select it via the top selector, then you have all editable parameters for this account instantly available. The account code itself is grayed out (not available for edition) simply because it is used as key in another tables, so changing it could broke database consistency. If you really want to change the code you can delete account and recreate again with another code until this account is really used, otherwise you can deactivate the account to be not available in selector throughout FA ui.  After the change you have to press update button, that's all.

It is how it should work, and it do for me (Debian, FireFox). As far as I understand you cannot change top selector, or after the change the edition form is not updated and still details for previous account (0001) are displayed. Is this a case? Have you javascript switched on in your browser?

Janusz

PS. I hope after initial problems you will find FA useful for your application. Keep in mind FrontAccounting is community-driven project, so if some feature is missing in core code, but can be implemented with advantages to wider audience - it is added directly, or at least we help develop extensions .
J.

Re: Too many bugs to list

Hi itronics

"When you want to change any account, select it via the top selector, then you have all editable parameters for this account instantly available."
Well, that's exactly what doesn't happen (but see below) - select something from the drop down and it resolutely stays (in the example I gave) with the previously newly added data still in the form (yes I realise the reason for the greying out).
The result was that since when you selected from the dropdown the form was not refreshed, you couldn't edit accounts.

Now for the weird bit - and progress

I have three machines, all XP Pro, in my den here, and have tried FA on all three. Same problem on each. I tried on one of them (an internal web server) both Chrome and Firefox - no difference. However, because I was sitting here responding to this thread I just ran Chrome here, and it worked ... but go back to IE 7 and it doesn't!

So it's something in the machine and browser setups (all three machines are quite different) which causes the problem. What I will now do is track this down and report back, because someone else might have the same issue. I'll post again when I have nailed it, but meanwhile I thank you for your patience and help.

The good news is that I can progress with FA for ledgers for my company.

Re: Too many bugs to list

I have just solved the problem. Please remove ending comma at line 308 of /js/inserts.js. For some reason IE7 does not like it. I am preparing some smaller fixes to current FA version just now, so this fix will be updated in CVS later today.

Thank you very much for tracking this down. I really does not use MS windows at all, so I had to ask my son for help. Fortunatelly he still has XP installed for gaming smile.

Janusz

Re: Too many bugs to list

" have just solved the problem"
Fantastic, thank you! The problem is that it's impossible for you to test every combination of op system, browser etc, so these things are bound to slip through.

I'd come to a similar conclusion after doing a complete update of my system to make sure that JRE etc was up to date, and found that IE8 worked but whatever you did to IE7 in terms of settings did not.

Now on to setting this up - I'll contribute back the COA's if that might be of use.

Thanks

Tim

Re: Too many bugs to list

"found that IE8 worked but whatever you did to IE7 in terms of settings did not."
Have you downloaded new version of inserts.js form CVS, or made the fix descried above manually? I cannot guarantee anything on IE7, but after the fix at least the problem you have reported seems to be gone.

"Now on to setting this up - I'll contribute back the COA's if that might be of use."
Ok, thank you Tim.

Janusz

Re: Too many bugs to list

I have similar experience that IE may have errors not suitable for frontaccounting.

Firefox seems to be OK as I test in Windows System.
I may try this in Ubuntu later for my testing in vmware guest.

Windows system Frontaccounting may behave differently to Linux system like locale problem and utf8 issues.

Re: Too many bugs to list

FA should work right both in Linux and Win. I personally use Linux box for development, but Joe develops (and make all tests) under Win.
Janusz