Hot Potatoes Bugs and Updates Page

Windows version 6.1

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The current Windows version is 6.1.0.0 (21/12/2006). This page contains a list of bugs and updates in the release, in reverse order (most recent first). Grey background items are fixed or completed; white ones are still live or suspected live. All bugs fixed prior to November 28 2003 (the date of the first non-beta release, 6.0.3.0) have been removed.

Date Affected application(s) Description / How to reproduce Explanation Thanks to Status
09/11/2006 Masher The Masher Add Files dialog box did not allow the selection of TexToys files. This was just a straightforward omission; the Masher has always supported TexToys files, but without the ability to load them through the dialog box, you had to drag them onto the program to get them into the file list. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.1.0.0 (21/12/2006).
03/04/2006 All Potatoes The menu items in the Configuration screen were not connected to any events, and so showed no captions. This is caused by a Delphi bug which catches me by surprise once in a while. Michel Barbot Fixed in 6.0.4.27 (03/04/2006).
31/03/2006 JQuiz The undocumented "per-question reading text" secret feature was not working correctly. I think this was caused by changes to the page structure in the last update, but it's difficult to know. In any case, it should be fixed now. This fix involves a small change to jquiz6.js_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.25 (31/03/2006).
31/03/2006 All Potatoes Network registration sometimes failed to be picked up when low-privilege users logged on. My fault. I was assuming that opening a registry key to read it would always work, but in some contexts it has to be explicitly opened for read-only in order to be read by low-privilege users. Steve Garner Fixed in 6.0.4.25 (31/03/2006).
31/03/2006 Masher When building units with the Masher, the CGI option was not implemented in the output page. My fault. This was due to a complicated interaction between the Potato, the Masher, and a temporary configuration file. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.4.25 (31/03/2006).
21/03/2006 All Potatoes Media players inserted using Insert / Media Object don't work reliably on all platforms. This is in fact an impossible problem to solve; no block of code can be simultaneously XHTML compliant and render a media player correctly on all browsers and platforms. We have done some testing with the newer versions of players and browsers, and made slight improvements to the code for Quicktime and Flash. This fix involves changes to hp6objecttags.js_ and to hp6.cs_. Ourselves Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
20/03/2006 All Potatoes Quicktime players embedded on the page would show through the feedback popup box. This seems to be a Quicktime bug, but we have worked around it by hiding the QT player whenever the feedback is shown. This fix involves changes to hp6showfeedback.js_. The fix also improves handling of the same bug in IE; hiding of form controls is now less destructive of the page layout than it was before. There is a small change to hp6.cs_. Thomas Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
07/03/2006 JQuiz Using the undocumented per-question reading text facility created invalid XHTML code. This was caused by the fact that JQuiz question elements were XHTML p tags, which could not legally contain div tags. The output routine has now been modified to produce div tags instead of p tags for JQuiz questions. In the process, we have also replaced the p tag used for the Instructions with a div tag, giving designers more flexibility in handling HTML code. The latter change affects the following source files: djmatch6.ht_, djmix6.ht_, fjmatch6.ht_, jcloze6.ht_, jcross6.ht_, jmatch6.ht_, jmix6.ht_, jquiz6.ht_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
17/02/2006 JCloze If you edit a large and complicated gapfill, then start a new file or open another file while it's in the middle of saving the file, the file may be corrupted. This is a cousin to the bug below involving file corruption when closing the program. It's easy to avoid -- just wait until the save has finished before loading another file or starting a new one. Langis Rouillard Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
05/01/2006 JCloze Clicking repeatedly on the Hint button in IE generates JavaScript errors (and also affects the score). This bug is caused by working around an IE display bug. Dave Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
20/12/2005 JCloze Creating a gap using the right-click menu in JCloze instead of the Gap button results in the text box scrolling unexpectedly. This is a minor issue -- nothing is actually broken -- but it should be easy to fix. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.4.24 (21/03/2006).
15/12/2005 JCloze If you edit a large and complicated gapfill, then quit the program quickly while it's in the middle of saving the file, the file may be corrupted. This is easy to avoid -- don't quit the program until it has finished saving the file -- but it should also be relatively easy to fix. Langis Rouillard, Ines Martina Fixed in 6.0.4.23 (16/12/2005).
23/08/2005 JCloze Using a complicated sequence of actions, a gap consisting of a single character can be deleted from a JCloze exercise without its associated data being deleted. This is such an obscure set of actions that no-one had every accomplished this before, but it should have been prevented. Gwen Fixed in 6.0.4.22 (06/09/2005).
08/08/2005 JCloze Only one gap could be inserted at a time, unless the program was restarted between gaps. My fault -- I introduced this bug fixing the previous problem below. Cindy Naber Fixed in 6.0.4.21 (15/08/2005).
08/08/2005 JMix HTML tags were stripped out of content segments when creating a standard output exercise, making it impossible to use pictures as segments in an exercise. This was done on purpose originally to avoid some specific problems which can arise with images and answer-checking, but I think I've now found a way around it. Ines Fixed in 6.0.4.20 (12/08/2005).
08/08/2005 JCloze Double-clicking, instead of single-clicking, the Gap button could cause an additional gap to be added at the end of the exercise. This gap would be invisible until the exercise was reloaded or exported. My fault for not trapping for the double-click; buttons are never intended to be double-clicked, but of course it's a common slip-of-the-mouse. Gwen Fixed in 6.0.4.20 (12/08/2005).
08/07/2005 JQuiz The "Questions answered correctly first time" text in the JQuiz configuration screen becomes corrupted when saving and reloading a configuration file. Must be my fault. Unicode text is reduced to question marks, which suggests that a non-Unicode string function is being called instead of a Unicode function. Leszek Malinowski Fixed in 6.0.4.20 (12/08/2005).
29/06/2005 All Potatoes Where an upload to hotpotatoes.net contained a media file which was too large, the upload would fail and time out without useful explanation. Our fault (mine and Creative, who run hotpotnet). We've now revised the system so it detects over-large media files and explains why the upload cannot be completed. Ourselves Fixed in 6.0.4.18 (29/06/2005).
29/06/2005 Help file The last few topics in the Help file would not "browse" properly; to move on to the next topic, the Next button had to be clicked several times. This is a bug in the FastHelp program I use to make the Help files. I reported it to the company, but they're not interested in helping because my period of free support has run out. The only way I could find around the problem was to export to HTML Help instead of the old WinHelp format, so both the HotPot and Masher Help files are now in this format. Paolo Cutini Switched to HTML Help in 6.0.4.18 (29/06/2005).
20/05/2005 Masher XHTML tags used in the "Unit or chapter title" field would be escaped, and thus appear as tags. My fault; there's no reason not to allow tags in that field. Bernard Dyer Added in 6.0.4.17 (20/05/2005).
11/04/2005 All Potatoes Not a bug: a new feature. The first time you export a Web page, it suggests a filename based on the data file name (if there is one). It's good practice to name data files and Web pages the same except for the extention, and most people seem to do it already, so this will be a time-saver. Thom Hiemstra Added in 6.0.4.15 (11/04/2005).
08/04/2005 All Potatoes It was possible to save the Web page output with an inappropriate file extension. This is not necessarily a bug, but it makes sense to force an extension that will work on the Web, if one is not provided. Now the apps check to see if there's a suitable extension on the file name, and if not, they add .htm. John Taylor-Johnston Added in 6.0.4.14 (08/04/2005).
08/04/2005 JCloze Case-sensitivity was not handled correctly in JCloze drop-down output. If a drop-down output format exercise was created with the case-sensitive checkbox checked in the configuration, and some answers varied from each other only by case, then only the first of those answers would be included in the drop-down list. This meant that no correct answer might be available for some gaps. This was a straight programming error on my part. Glenys Hanson Fixed in 6.0.4.14 (08/04/2005).
16/03/2005 All Poratoes Some keystroke shortcuts for HTML tags were eclipsing standard editing keystrokes. Specifically, Control + Shift + left-arrow or right-arrow were used for language directionality functions; the latter have now been reassigned to L and R keys, leaving the normal behaviour for selecting text word-by-word working again. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 JMatch Some Windows characters such as emdash and endash were not correctly escaped to Unicode codepoints in the output. This was an inconsistency in the handling of the Dublin Core data with regard to characters which are not correct Unicode codepoints in Windows. Thom Hiemstra Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 Main Hot Potatoes application The flashing potato display easter-egg which appears on special occasions required that a double-click be used to start an application. I've now set it so that any click on the main screen stops the flashing display, re-establishing normal service. Richard Nisius Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 All Potatoes Not really a bug, more an annoyance: the dialog box for choosing a source folder in the Masher and in individual Potatoes did not initialize itself to the current source directory. Simple problem, complicated to fix, because of the complexity of the Windows SHBrowseForFolder API function. Should now be working OK, thanks to some code provided on the Web by Alan Lloyd. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 All Potatoes Access violation errors would occasionally occur when doing a Masher build. The cause of this was too obscure to explain, but basically was caused by trying to access part of the main form after it had been destroyed by the application terminate procedure. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 All Potatoes When using User-Defined Strings in the configuration screen, placeholders would be left in the exercise code if there was nothing in the text box to replace them with. On reflection, this was not logical, so the behaviour has been changed so that placeholders in the code will be replaced with nothing (i.e. deleted) if there is nothing in the relevant text box. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
16/03/2005 Masher When inserting header code using the User-Defined Strings functionality in the Masher, nothing would be inserted into the Masher index page. The index page source file did not contain the placeholder needed. This has now been added, in a small change to masher.ht_. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.13 (16/03/2005).
28/02/2005 JCloze, JCross Where accented character buttons are included to help students type accents in short-answer or hybrid questions, the buttons would fail to appear. This bug was a byproduct of the JQuiz bugfix below for IE. The keypad was hidden by default for JQuiz purposes, and I neglected to make it show again in JCloze and JCross. The fix involves changes to jcloze6.ht_, jcloze6.js_, jcross6.ht_, and jcross6.js_ . David Wren Fixed in 6.0.4.12 (28/02/2005).
16/02/2005 All Potatoes There was some inconsistency in the way dialog boxes remembered their previous directories. This was a rather subtle bug, difficult to characterize, but I think I've now set it up so that all dialog boxes remember their last-used directory both within sessions and across sessions. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.11 (16/02/2005).
16/02/2005 JCross Insertion of space characters in grid cells could result in the application finding "words" which required clues, where actual words were not intended. It should not have been possible to insert space characters in the grid; I've now prevented that. Trish Hutchinson Fixed in 6.0.4.11 (16/02/2005).
16/02/2005 JQuiz Where accented character buttons are included to help students type accents in short-answer or hybrid questions, clicking those buttons when a multiple-choice or multi-select question is displayed causes a JavaScript error in IE/Windows. Another double mea culpa. This should have been fixed back in January. The fix involves changes to hp6.cs_, jquiz6.js_ and jquiz6.ht_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.11 (16/02/2005).
16/02/2005 All Potatoes In certain rare circumstances, using Browse... buttons to create a relative link to another file in the Configuration screen Navigation tab would result in an incorrect relative path. My fault. Where the target file path resembled the source exercise data file path in a particular way, the relative paths between them would be calculated wrongly. This was the same bug fixed a year ago in a different context (inserting links and pictures), so mea doubly culpa. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.4.11 (16/02/2005).
02/02/2005 All Potatoes "Insert Media Object" code for Quicktime player was not functioning on Firefox. I was (shamefully) privileging IE's requirements for a CLSID over the W3C standards. Using a nested sequence of objects works around the problem. This fix involves a change to hp6objecttags.ht_. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.10 (02/02/2005).
02/02/2005 All Potatoes CGI tab controls in the Configuration screen remained disabled when the checkbox to include this option was checked. My fault -- by-product of fixing an earlier bug. Ghislaine Wulles Fixed in 6.0.4.10 (02/02/2005).
02/02/2005 All Potatoes Clicking up or down arrows in the Insert Media Object player list box would result in a "List Index out of bounds" error. My fault -- buttons should be disabled when there is only one item, or when no item is selected. John Taylor-Johnston Fixed in 6.0.4.10 (02/02/2005).
24/01/2005 All Potatoes The menu items in the Configuration screen were not connected to any events, and so showed no captions. As with last week's similar bug in the Reading Text screen, this is puzzling, but easy to fix. Paul Fixed in 6.0.4.7 (24/01/2005).
21/01/2005 All Potatoes The menu items in the Reading Text screen were not connected to any events, and so showed no captions. No idea what caused this; some file corruption presumably. Now fixed. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.4.6 (21/01/2005).
20/01/2005 All Potatoes Making a change in the configuration screen would not necessarily cause a save prompt when exiting the program, so changes to configuration could be inadvertently lost by failing to save the data file. My fault -- previous updates had disconnected control change events from their handler. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.4.5 (20/01/2005).
20/01/2005 All Potatoes In a JCloze exercise with a word list, where two items varied only by case, only one of them would be included (so the word list was case-insensitive). I was surprised to discover that a Delphi string-comparison routine that I had thought was case-sensitive in fact wasn't. Ann Joubert Fixed in 6.0.4.5 (20/01/2005).
20/01/2005 All Potatoes When including a reading text, if no title was supplied for the reading, an empty h3 tag would still be included on the page, taking up space unnecessarily. This makes no sense, so the output functions have been amended to remove the h3 tag when there is no title. This involves a small change to hotpot6r.ht_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.5 (20/01/2005).
20/01/2005 JCloze, JCross, Masher Pressing Control+A in the JCloze clue editing screen, the JCross Make Grid screen, or anywhere in the Masher main window, failed to select all the text in the currently-focused textbox. My fault. Unlike cut, copy, paste etc., select all has to be manually coded for most screens and controls, and I had neglected to do it. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.4.5 (20/01/2005).
20/01/2005 JQuiz Pressing a character insertion button when the question displayed is multiple-choice or hybrid results in a JavaScript error on IE6. My fault. I was trapping for the non-existence of a text box, but when a text box exists but is invisible, IE complains. The fix involves a change to the TypeChars() function in hp6checkshortanswer.js_ Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.5 (20/01/2005).
22/12/2004 All Potatoes When loading an interface file, the legends "Source" and "Config" in the status bar were not changed to the new language until the application was restarted. My fault. I wasn't rewriting the status bar text when the translation file was loaded. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.4.3 (22/12/2004).
22/12/2004 JMatch Items over 960 characters in length were not permitted in JMatch. This restriction probably dates back to the original version in 1998; no-one noticed there was a limit until it became common to insert complex blocks of XHTML code for object tags and similar structures. The limit has now been removed. Bob Gilmour Fixed in 6.0.4.3 (22/12/2004).
22/12/2004 JMatch Drag-drop exercise page would fail if a right-item was left blank. This error resulted from a data error -- there should always be a right-item for every left-item -- but the condition should have been handled by JMatch. This has now been fixed; non-breaking spaces are inserted to fill the gap, so the user can see a "blank" item in the exercise and will know it needs completing. Paul Allum Fixed in 6.0.4.3 (22/12/2004).
22/12/2004 JQuiz When a short-answer was checked, leading and trailing spaces would be treated as errors. Leading and trailing whitespace should have been stripped from answers before they were checked; this is now being done. The fix involves a change to the CheckShortAnswer() function in hp6checkshortanswer.js_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.4.3 (22/12/2004).
03/12/2004 JQuiz Not a bug: a new feature. When question 1 is showing, the Previous Question button is now hidden; similarly, when the last question is showing, the Next Question button is hidden. This is common sense, and I should have done it before. It involves a change to the SetQNumReadout() function in jquiz6.js_. Andrew Ivin Added in 6.0.4.2 (03/12/2004).
03/12/2004 JCross Status bar display of configuration file name was sporadic. My fault -- when I added the new source file path display option to the previous version, I neglected to allow for the extra status bar panel in JCross. Paolu Cutini Fixed in 6.0.4.2 (03/12/2004).
17/11/2004 All Potatoes Not a bug: a new feature. You can now set the base font size for the page in the Appearance panel of the Configuration screen. This sets the font size for the body tag. All other font sizes on the page are set relative to this, using percentages, in the CSS. Martin Holmes Added in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 All Potatoes Not a bug: a new feature. If the source folder is set to something other than the default, it appears in the status bar at the bottom of the main window of the Potato, to remind you. It's easy to forget that you chose to use a different source folder for some reason. Now you can see at a glance what source folder is being used. This new features involves a change to hp6.cs_. Martin Holmes Added in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 JCross The crossword grid might display vertical lines in the exercise background colour showing through the black between cells. I think this is a Mozilla bug, but in any case setting the grid table background colour to black fixes it. This fix involves a change to hp6.cs_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 JMatch Pressing the Delete button after all flashcards have already been deleted could result in a JavaScript error. My fault -- I was failing to check whether there was anything to delete or not. This fix involves a change to fjmatch6.js_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 All Potatoes Image centering code created when inserting an image and choosing the "Center" option would only work in some contexts. This is caused by two things: firstly, Internet Explorer does not respect correct CSS, and requires an incorrect text-align setting to centre a block element; secondly, the variety of contexts into which an image can be inserted makes it difficult to create one code solution for all needs. However, I think I've managed it now, so if your mileage varies, let me know. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 JMix The Restart button in JMix drag-drop exercises was non-functional after completing the exercise successfully. As in the fix below for the standard exercise format, I replaced the Restart() routine with a simple call to reload the page, because this seems to be equally effective. This fix involves a change to djmix6.js_ (removing the Restart() routine) and djmix6.ht_ (changing the onclick event in the Restart button tag). Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 JMix When drag-drop exercises were created with large font size settings, some correct answers might be shown as incorrect. This was due to a 1-pixel discrepancy in positioning of the dropped cards; some cards ended up slightly raised off the line, and were not counted as in the sequence. A slight modification to the code allows some latitude in checking the position of the cards. This fix involves some changes to djmix6.js_ Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
17/11/2004 All Potatoes Some font sizes were defined specifically (e.g. "large") in the CSS code. This is rather limiting, and contrary to our view of how the Web should work. It also makes it more difficult (paradoxically) to enable users to specify a base font size setting for the page as a whole, which is a key requirement for the new font-size component on the Appearance panel; that in turn is essential for proper support of right-to-left languages, which is coming soon. All font sizes are now defined relatively in percentages, with the exception of the one in the body tag, from which they all inherit; that one will now be specified by the setting in the Appearance panel, which defaults to "small". This fix involves some changes to hp6.cs_, masher.ht_ and jcross6print.ht_ (only to font-size settings). Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
08/11/2004 JMix If the application started up maximized, some elements on the form were sized and positioned wrongly. I have no idea what was causing this, but calling the resize event one more time when the form is shown seems to make it disappear! Richard Nisius Fixed in 6.0.4.0 (17/11/2004).
08/11/2004 JCross Pressing a key to enter a character in the grid would cause a complete crash of the application. I think this was caused by an update to some third-party Unicode libraries used in the program, but I'm not sure; the bug appeared only after those libraries were updated. It occurred as a result of some code added to make left and right arrow keys function correctly in the grid. I have now rewritten that code so that it avoids setting the offending property, and that seems to have done the trick. Gerry Hancock Fixed in 6.0.3.45 (08/11/2004).
05/11/2004 JMix Pressing the Restart button in JMix resulted in the appearance of a list of "remaining words" in the guess box; this was unnecessary and confusing, because it's not there when the exercise starts up. This was a holdover from older versions of JMix. I replaced the Restart() routine with a simple call to reload the page, because this seems to be equally effective. This fix involves a change to jmix6.js_ (removing the Restart() routine) and jmix6.ht_ (changing the onclick event in the Restart button tag). One of the configuration items ("Remaining words") has also been removed from the JMix configuration screen, because it is no longer needed. Bernard Dyer and others Fixed in 6.0.3.44 (05/11/2004).
05/11/2004 JMix When a partially-correct answer was checked, the whole of the complete wrong answer was left visible in the Guess box, but all the components of the answer not correct were also shown below, ready to be chosen again. This was confusing. Now the correct part of the answer is written to the Guess box, so it's clearer that the student can continue by choosing the next item from the remaining parts. This fix involves a small change to jmix6.js_ . Bernard Dyer and others Fixed in 6.0.3.44 (05/11/2004).
25/10/2004 JQuiz In Internet Explorer, checking a wrong answer then asking for a hint in a short-answer question could result in an "undefined" hint. My fault. I was using string[0] instead of string.charAt(0) in the JavaScript; addressing strings as arrays of chars in IE doesn't work. This fix involves a small change to hp6checkshortanswer.js_. Elek Mathe Fixed in 6.0.3.43 (25/10/2004).
20/10/2004 JQuiz In the Safari browser, if a student chose all the wrong answers in sequence in a multiple-choice question, the scoring would be screwed up (resulting in -infinity). Safari's fault, as far as we can see; it looks like a basic math implementation error. We've added a workaround. This fix involves a small change to jquiz6.js_. Various Fixed in 6.0.3.42 (20/10/2004).
15/10/2004 JMatch In the standard JMatch output, items in the left column are centred in the column instead of aligned. This looks wrong for longer items. My fault. Left alignment looks better in most situations, and should be the default. This fix involves a small change to hp6.cs_. Various Fixed in 6.0.3.41 (15/10/2004).
15/10/2004 JMatch Not really a bugfix -- this is an improvement. In previous versions, when answers in the drag-drop output were checked, wrong answers were sent back to their original locations on the right. This was felt to be a little confusing; students might forget where they had (wrongly) placed them, and put them in the same places again. The change is to make wrong answers highlighted and slightly moved to the right, but leave them next to the locations where they were wrongly placed. This fix involves a small change to djmatch6.js_. Various Changed in 6.0.3.41 (15/10/2004).
07/10/2004 JCloze When exporting to WebCT, angle brackets of HTML code in the text were escaped to numeric escapes. I think this was originally done a while ago because of a compatibility problem with an early version of WebCT, but I'm assuming that no longer exists, so I'm now outputting the tags intact. Tom (Mercen4ry) Fixed in 6.0.3.40 (07/10/2004).
07/10/2004 JCloze When multiple gaps had the same answer, multiple copies of that answer would be included in the word list on the page, making for a large and confusing word list. Not really a bug, but certainly a bit illogical. The program now eliminates duplicates automatically. Tom (Mercen4ry) Fixed in 6.0.3.40 (07/10/2004).
07/10/2004 JCross Not a bug -- actually a new feature. When using the automatic grid maker, you can now type "word::clue" to include clues for your words automatically. I've been meaning to do this for ages. Martin Holmes Added in 6.0.3.40 (07/10/2004).
07/10/2004 JCross Left and right arrow keys were not working to move the cursor from box to box in the grid. My fault. Cod for handling of keystrokes to trap for combining diacritics was interrupting the normal flow. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.40 (07/10/2004).
18/08/2004 JMix If certain colours were selected, text would become difficult to read, or invisible, in popup message boxes. My fault. Colours were not handled carefully enough in the CSS. This fix involves a small change to hp6.cs_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.39 (18/08/2004).
25/06/2004 JCloze Some old JCloze exercises created with version 5 would show an extra gap text box at the end of the exercise when compiled with version six, but no gap was visible in the authoring environment. This is actually a bug in version 5, which v5 was successfully hiding, but which showed up in v6. The "invisible" gap actually has an empty answer, so it can't be seen and deleted in the JCloze authoring screen. Now, any gaps with zero-length answers are assigned an answer of "XXXX", so that they can be seen and deleted. Sophie Duhayon Fixed in 6.0.3.37 (25/06/2004).
25/06/2004 JMatch Actually a new feature rather than a bug: originally, items in JMatch flashcard exercises were always shuffled, but some users wanted to turn this off and make them present in the same order every time. The configuration screen "Shuffle Items" checkbox now controls whether items in flashcard exercises are shuffled, as well as ordinary matching exercises. This fix involves a change to fjmatch6.js_. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.3.37 (25/06/2004).
25/06/2004 JQuiz The cursor was not automatically placed in a short-answer question text box at the beginning of the exercise. Users felt it would be helpful for students if the cursor was placed in the textbox immediately on starting the exercise. This fix involves a change to jquiz6.js_. Paul Fixed in 6.0.3.37 (25/06/2004).
28/05/2004 JCross If the text colour was set to white, no letters would show up in the crossword grid. My fault. The default text colour was cascading down to the grid itself, resulting in white text which didn't show on a white background. This fix involves a small change to hp6.cs_. Lisa F. Shenk Fixed in 6.0.3.35 (28/05/2004).
13/05/2004 JCloze Inserting a table in a JCloze exercise could result in a page that was not valid according to the W3C standards. My fault. JCloze exercise texts were enclosed in a paragraph tag (<p>), and a <p> tag cannot contain a <table> tag. The <p> tag is now replaced with a plain <div> tag, resulting in legal XHTML code. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.34 (13/05/2004).
13/05/2004 The Masher Masher batch files (*.bjm files) did not save and reload settings from the main window. This is not really a bug; I originally designed it like this, but discovered when working with batch files that is was more useful, and more intuitive, to save and reload all the current settings in the batch file itself. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.34 (13/05/2004).
07/05/2004 The Masher The Masher did not allow the setting of the "Next exercise file name" for ordinary HTML files being exported as part of a unit. My fault -- I was hiding that text box in the dialog box for some reason. It now shows. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.30 (07/05/2004).
07/05/2004 JQuiz, JCross and JCloze A JavaScript error might be generated in Opera when calling window.addEventListener, depending on what User Agent string was being used in Opera. Because of Opera's habitual user agent spoofing (pretending to be Internet Explorer, usually), this one got by me. I'm now testing for support of that function. The change affects hp6utilities.js_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.30 (07/05/2004).
07/05/2004 JCross A JavaScript error would prevent CGI submission from working. My fault -- I was calling a non-existent variable "TotalScore" instead of "Score". The change affects jcros6.js_. Greg Kaminski Fixed in 6.0.3.30 (07/05/2004).
07/05/2004 JQuiz A partially-correct answer shown in feedback might be invisible against the feedback box background. My fault -- I had one CSS class doing too many jobx. A new CSS class now handles this element. The change affects hp6checkshortanswer.js_ and hp6.cs_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.30 (07/05/2004).
07/05/2004 All Potatoes A 1-pixel width difference shows between the navigation bars and the main exercise area. My fault -- I finally realized this was caused by margin: 1px in the div.StdDiv CSS definition. Now revised to margin-bottom: 1px. The change affects hp6.cs_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.30 (07/05/2004).
03/05/2004 JCross The JCross Export For Printing output contains placeholders ([inclExerciseSubtitle] which should have been removed. My fault. Code which removes the subtitle section (to save space) when there is no subtitle was incorrectly implemented. Josef Schiele Fixed in 6.0.3.29 (03/05/2004).
29/04/2004 All Potatoes Text containing a mixture of right-to-left and left-to-right languages would be formatted oddly. My fault. A function detecting the boundary between the two directions was incorrect, resulting in right-to-left styling (with larger text) being carried forward into subsequent left-to-right text. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.28 (29/04/2004).
29/04/2004 JQuiz Textarea elements for entering long answers would sometimes be a little too small for the answer, necessitating scrolling, in IE. I think this is due to an Internet Explorer calculation inaccuracy, and only seems to show up with certain fonts. I've added extra width to the textare component to allow for this. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.3.28 (29/04/2004).
29/04/2004 All Potatoes Positioning of applications on dual monitor systems was inconsistent. My fault. Splash screenswere showing on the first monitor, irrespective of where the main application window would open up, and some dialog boxes were screen-centred instead of being centred on the main application window. Behaviour should now be consistent and intuitive on multi-monitor systems. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.28 (29/04/2004).
02/04/2004 All Potatoes In certain rare circumstances, using Insert / [Picture from or Link to] local file would result in an erroneous file path. My fault. Where the target file path resembled the source exercise data file path in a particular way, the relative paths between them would be calculated wrongly. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.22 (02/04/2004).
02/04/2004 JQuiz Very long answers can result in text boxes that scroll off the page to the right,. distorting the layout. Not a bug exactly, but previous versions of Hot Potatoes changed to a textarea (multiline edit) control when answer length was above a certain size. This is what will be implemented here; answers longer than 25 characters (or 13 characters in the case of languages such as Chinese with wide glyphs) will result in a textarea being displayed instead of a single-line input text box. The hp6.cs_ source file is affected. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.22 (02/04/2004).
02/04/2004 All Potatoes When the popup feedback box was shown while doing an exercise, the OK button was not focused; if the button is focused, it's easier to just press the return key to dismiss the box, rather than use the mouse to press the button. Not really a bug, but focusing the button automatically is clearly a good idea. Over the last year, the way the main browsers handled the focusing of objects around the same time as they're displayed was subject to change; I think I now have a solution that works in most cases. The hp6showmessage.js_ source file is affected. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.22 (02/04/2004).
02/04/2004 All Potatoes During export, if there is no text in the Exercise Subtitle field, an empty HTML element is still included on the page. This is not a bug, really, but the emtpy field is unnecessary and may take up screen space. It will now be removed from the code if there's no text in the Exercise Subtitle field. This will bring Hot Potatoes into line with the upcoming TexToys 3 release, which behaves in the same way. This affects the following source files: hp6.cs_, djmatch6.ht_, djmatch6.ht_, djmix6.ht_, fjmatch6.ht_, jcloze6.ht_, jcross6.ht_, jmatch6.ht_, jmix6.ht_, jquiz6.ht_. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.22 (02/04/2004).
19/03/2004 All Potatoes Using the CGI option can cause a page to fail if there's an apostrophe in the exercise title. My fault -- I'm not escaping the apostrophes when the title information is inserted into the hidden form field in the CGI code. To get around it until it's fixed, avoid apostrophes in exercise titles. This fix affects the hp6sendresults.js_ source file; the placeholder [strExerciseTitle] is changed to [strEscapedExerciseTitle] in this update. Esther Blanquet Fixed in 6.0.3.18 (22/03/2004).
03/03/2004 All Potatoes JavaScript function needed tightening up (no actual effect on pages). The JavaScript function Shuffle(), in hp6utilities.js_, needed a little work. One loop function was reading off the end of the array, and two variables were used without being declared (not illegal, but bad practice). This fix affects the hp6utilities.js_ source file. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.16 (09/03/2004)
02/03/2004 All Potatoes JavaScript function defined twice (no actual effect on pages). The JavaScript function FocusAButton() was defined twice, once in hp6utilities.js_ and once in hp6buttons.js_. The former definition has been removed, so only the definition in hp6buttons.js_ remains. This fix affects the hp6utilities.js_ source file. Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.16 (09/03/2004)
01/03/2004 JQuiz Arabic short-answer questions don't work properly -- HTML tags appear in the answers. My fault -- I was wrapping answers in p-tags to apply right-to-left formatting irrespective of what question-type was involved. Short-answer questions should not have that wrapping. Joost Verschaeve Fixed in 6.0.3.16 (09/03/2004)
09/02/2004 Masher Building a unit which contains plain HTML files (not exercises) causes an unnecessary popup to appear showing a large block of code. My fault -- debugging code was left in the app! Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.14 (09/02/2004)
12/01/2004 JMatch Creating a standard v6 exercise output with a single left-item and nothing at all in any of the right-item slots causes an error. My fault -- I hadn't predicted this improbable scenario, so I wasn't trapping for it. Mark Fixed in 6.0.3.10 (21/01/2004)
12/01/2004 JMix Scoring for incorrect answers was punitive. My fault -- I was calculating the score incorrectly when a partially-correct answer was checked. This fix affects the source files jmix6.js_, djmix6.js_ Martin Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.9 (14/01/2004)
12/01/2004 JMix, JMatch, JCross The timer doesn't stop when a correct answer is checked. My fault -- it should obviously stop. This fix affects the source files jmatch6.js_, djmatch6.js_, djmix6.js_, jmix6.js_, and jcross6.js_. Small changes were also made in jcross6.js_ and hp6checkshortanswer.js_ Karl Loren Fixed in 6.0.3.9 (14/01/2004)
10/01/2004 JQuiz If a multiple-choice question with only one answer is created, clicking on that answer results in a score of "NaN%". NaN = "Not a number"; the score should actually be 100% presumably. Our fault. In the meantime, it's easy to avoid this by not creating a multiple-choice question with only one answer! This fix affects the source file jquiz6.js_. Gordon Bateson Fixed in 6.0.3.9 (14/01/2004)
06/01/2004 Masher When Masher inserts navigation bar into HTML pages, the pages do not pass the XHTML validator. My fault -- the stylesheet is being inserted into the body tag instead of the head. Myself Fixed in 6.0.3.8 (09/01/2004)
02/01/2004 JQuiz Spellchecking questions, answers and feedback causes angle brackets to be escaped inappropriately, so HTML tags don't function in the output. My fault. One too many layers of escaping. Glenys Hanson Fixed in 6.0.3.7 (05/01/2004)
31/12/2003 JMatch In standard output format, the incorrect indicator is not shown when a wrong answer is checked. My fault -- just forgot to do it. This fix affects the source file jmatch6.js_. Bernard Dyer Fixed in 6.0.3.7 (05/01/2004)
25/12/2003 All Potatoes JavaScript window.innerWidth called instead of window.innerHeight in GetViewportHeight function. My fault. This error didn't seem to cause problems, but that's probably because most users have fairly square browser viewports! This fix affects the source file hp6utilitites.js_. Michael Rottmeier Fixed in 6.0.3.7 (05/01/2004)
23/12/2003 All Potatoes Uploading to www.hotpotatoes.net fails if there is no title for the exercise. A generic title should be substituted so the upload can proceed. Nik Holmes Fixed in 6.0.3.7 (05/01/2004)
18/12/2003 All Potatoes The timer could become invisible if certain colours were chosen for the page. My fault -- colour inheritance wasn't working the way I expected in CSS, so the timer colour could end up matching the main page background colour, making it invisible. Henny Jellema Fixed in 6.0.3.6 (18/12/2003)
11/12/2003 All Potatoes Uploading of background graphics to hotpotatoes.net failed. My fault -- I had failed to take account of the url(xxx.xxx) structure used to link graphics in stylesheets. Brad Carty Fixed in 6.0.3.5 (11/12/2003)
11/12/2003 Masher Main window state (maximized or normal) was not saved and reloaded correctly between sessions. My fault -- I was failing to save the state, so a maximized window would reload as normal but huge. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.3.5 (11/12/2003)
10/12/2003 JQuiz Unnecessary JavaScript alert showed up when choosing correct answer. My fault -- debugging code found its way into the final release. Paolo Cutini Fixed in 6.0.3.4 (10/12/2003)
09/12/2003 JQuiz Scoring in JQuiz was too harsh. This is not really a bug, but the algorithm for scoring multiple-choice questions when wrong answers were selected prior to the right answer was quite harsh, so scores lower than expected were puzzling users. On reflection, we revised the algorithm so that (for example) where there are four M/C answers, and one wrong one is selected prior to the right one, a score of 67% would result (rather than 37%, as before). Two wrongs followed by a right now give 33%, and three wrongs give 0. (Of course this example assumes that all the wrong answers have a setting of 0% in the "percent correct" field.) Batia Eilon Fixed in 6.0.3.3 (09/12/2003)
09/12/2003 All applications Inserting an ill-formed colour value into a data file would result in an error when trying to compile an exercise. Some old versions of HotPot would allow you to insert ill-formed colour values in the configuration Appearance screen; if these were saved to file, and then the same exercise was opened with a version 6 application and compiled, an error would result when the application tried to calculate the correct relative highlight and shade colours for button edges based on the ill-formed colour. Norbert Berger Fixed in 6.0.3.3 (09/12/2003)
03/12/2003 All applications Keystroke shortcut for <em> tag (italics/emphasis) resulted in insertion of extra tab character. Long, complicated story relating to Windows message processing. Various people Fixed in 6.0.3.2 (05/12/2003)
02/12/2003 JCloze No penalties were deducted from the score for asking for Hints. My fault. Wrong variable being changed. Jens Østergaard Petersen Fixed in 6.0.3.1 (02/12/2003)
30/09/2003 All Potatoes Switching back and forth between right-to-left and left-to-right text entry can cause access violation errors. These are sporadic and so far I haven't been able to pin down where they're happening, other than that the messages specify ntdll.dll, a Windows system file. This is either somewhere in Windows or somewhere in Troy Wolbrink's Unicode component code (which I'm using as part of the Unicode support in HotPot). I don't know what's causing it yet. Various users working with Hebrew. Unresolved, although for version 6.0.3.2 I added some better processing for the switching routines, and I haven't seen the error myself since then.
30/09/2003 JCross JCross fails to parse a grid and extract words correctly if a right-to-left language is used. This is because it's hard-coded to search for words running top-to-bottom and left-to-right, and all the output code is also designed to build a traditional British-style grid with words and clue-numbering operating that way. Maria Kyung Overgaard Unresolved; this is a huge problem that may not be fixable. The format of Arabic crosswords is different from that of traditional British ones, in that rows and columns are numbered rather than word-initial cells, so fixing this would require creating an entirely new output format. There's little evidence so far that enough users would use this for it to be worth the huge amount of work.