Default prompts added when upgrading from NT 7.x to 8.16

[JPMacDonald]

Hi Bruce,

Not a bug per se but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

In testing a 7.3x app upgrade to 8.16 I had a form with a lot of check boxes and some other fields that I did not need/want a prompt for so I left that blank in the template and all was fine. When I opened the app using 8.16 it added a prompt for all of these fields that I think is the dictionary field name making the form not very pretty.

It seems to me that if NT 8.16 needs the prompt field filled in now it should at least honor the developer's original decision to have it blank but putting 2 single quotes there as opposed to the dictionary field name. That way the developer would not have to go back to every form and make that change by hand after the upgrade.

Perhaps the answer is that I should not have been so lazy to leave the prompt field empty in the first place but the template let me and that made it quicker to complete the entry for all these fields.

Your thoughts?

Regards

Parker

[Bruce]

Hi Parker,

I think the defaulting of prompts for dictionary fields has been in since NT4 or thereabouts.
However it didn't default the prompt for local variables - which is wrong because it just means more work for you when you're putting variables on a form.

The "correct" way to set a prompt (or comment for that matter) to be blank is to just put 2 single quotes in the field. This is also true for any of
the other default settings - like tip, picture and so on.

I understand this is somewhat not "backwards compatible" - but unfortunately I can't tell between an "old field" when upgrading and a new field when creating a new column. So alas it is what it is.

In your case you'll need to "set" the prompts you want blank to be ''

Cheers
Bruce

[JPMacDonald]

Hi Bruce,

I guess I was kind of hoping that when an old app was being loaded for the first time in 8.16+ that it would see that the prompt was empty and pop in the 2 single quotes rather than pull in the field name.

What this means for me is that for every app I bring forward I need to visit all the forms to see where I need to go back in and replace the new prompts with single quotes.

Live and Learn! 

Thanks

Parker