ISFDB Bug List/Archive/Archive01

Jerry Was a Man^Jerry Is a Man, nt, (1947) Lost Legacy^Lost Legion, nv, (1941) Ahasuerus 23:01, 30 Apr 2006 (CDT)
 * 10002 FIXED some time prior to 11/22/2206: The "Publication Listing" screen displays alternate titles separated by caret signs ("^") instead of "vt [...]". E.g.: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?LSTLEGC1960 shows contents as:


 * Fixed 13 October 06 (dumb programmer error - have to have a disussion with him). http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/eas.cgi?Garth_Nix errors out in both Firefox and IE. Here is the Firefox error message:

Shortfiction

* Black Bread the Pirate (unknown) * Bill the Inventor (unknown) * Serena and the Sea Serpent (unknown) * The Kind Old Sun Will Know (1996) * Lightning Bringer (2000) * Under the Lake (2001) * --> -->     KeyError	Python 2.4.2: /usr/local/bin/python Fri Oct 6 19:38:52 2006

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred. /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/eas.cgi 57        if found: 58                bib.printShortSeries 59                bib.displayWorks('SHORTFICTION') 60                bib.displayWorks('POEM') 61                bib.loadEssaySeriesData bib = , bib.displayWorks = > /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/biblio.py in displayWorks(self=, type='SHORTFICTION') 340                                                first = 0 341                                        print "" 342                                        displayTitle(title, self.au_id, self.au_collabs) 343                                        displayVariants(title, self.au_variants, self.au_id) 344                                        displaySerials(title, self.au_serials, self.au_id, self.au_collabs) global displayTitle = , title = [196993L, 'The Princess and the Beastly Beast', None, None, None, None, None, '2007-00-00', 'sf', 'SHORTFICTION', None, 0L, 0L], self = , self.au_id = 2237L, self.au_collabs = [167428L, 167209L, 160616L, 161572L, 165189L, 165298L, 165338L, 179107L, 179107L, 179107L] /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/common.py in displayTitle(title=[196993L, 'The Princess and the Beastly Beast', None, None, None, None, None, '2007-00-00', 'sf', 'SHORTFICTION', None, 0L, 0L], id=2237L, collabs=[167428L, 167209L, 160616L, 161572L, 165189L, 165298L, 165338L, 179107L, 179107L, 179107L]) 120                output += '(forthcoming)' 121        elif title[TITLE_YEAR] > todaysDate: 122                output += '[forthcoming: %s]' % convertForthcoming(title[TITLE_YEAR]) 123        else: 124                output += '(%s)' % title[TITLE_YEAR][:4] output = ' The Princess and the Beastly Beast ', global convertForthcoming = , title = [196993L, 'The Princess and the Beastly Beast', None, None, None, None, None, '2007-00-00', 'sf', 'SHORTFICTION', None, 0L, 0L], global TITLE_YEAR = 7 /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/common.py in convertForthcoming(theDate='2007-00-00') 35        month = int(theDate[5:7]) 36        day   = theDate[8:10] 37        datestr = "%s %s %s" % (monthmap[month], day, year) 38        return datestr 39      datestr undefined, global monthmap = {1: 'Jan', 2: 'Feb', 3: 'Mar', 4: 'Apr', 5: 'May', 6: 'Jun', 7: 'Jul', 8: 'Aug', 9: 'Sep', 10: 'Oct', ...}, month = 0, day = '00', year = '2007'

KeyError: 0 args = (0,)

And here is the IE error message, which you need to pull up in "View Source":

 --> -->  A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred. KeyError : 0     args = (0,)

Ahasuerus 19:44, 6 Oct 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 1 October 06. Accessing http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Nicholas%20Yermakov in IE works fine, but when you try it using FireFox, you get the following error:

AttributeError	Python 2.4.2: /usr/local/bin/python Sat Sep 30 22:27:18 2006

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred. /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/ea.cgi 61   62         if found: 63                bib.printNCSeries 64                bib.displayWorks('NOVEL') 65                bib.displayWorks('COLLECTION') bib = , bib.printNCSeries = > /www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/biblio.py in printNCSeries(self=<biblio.Bibliography instance>) 282                if self.au_seriesnum: 283                        print "Series" 284                newlist = self.tree.Print(self.au_titles, 'ANTHOLOGY', self.au_id, self.au_collabs, self.au_serials, self.au_variants) 285                self.au_titles = newlist 286 newlist undefined, self = <biblio.Bibliography instance>, self.tree undefined, self.au_titles = [], self.au_id = 2639L, self.au_collabs = [], self.au_serials = [], self.au_variants = []

AttributeError: Bibliography instance has no attribute 'tree' args = ("Bibliography instance has no attribute 'tree'",)


 * I've upgraded to IE7, and that fails as well. After tracking down the cause, strange that it would work in any browser. Alvonruff 06:50, 1 Oct 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 30 September 06. An attempt to change "Manly Wase Wellman" to "Manly Wade Wellman" in http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/editpub.cgi?79190 resulted in the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/edit/submitpub.cgi", line 71, in ? new.cgi2obj File "/www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/edit/pubClass.py", line 655, in cgi2obj self.pub_authors[self.num_authors] = XMLescape(self.form['pub_author'+str(counter+1)].value) IndexError: list assignment index out of range Ahasuerus 23:28, 7 Sep 2006 (CDT)


 * Not a Bug. An attempt to edit various dates and shortfiction values in the "Aliens" anthology (ed. Ben Bova, Futura, 1977) resulted in what appears to be a total mess. Leaving as is for now. Ahasuerus 14:29, 9 Aug 2006 (CDT)


 * So - just trying to add a little precision here... Does "total mess" mean that the storylengths were erroneously modified? (Just trying to get a sense for what was changed by the editor, and what was changed by the app). Alvonruff 21:12, 9 Aug 2006 (CDT)


 * Oh dear... Please disregard the bug report -- my primary visual receptors do not support the level of wavelength granularity that humans use, so I was confused by this "color" thing. Just my luck to have been sent to a planet where the natives have cones in addition to rods! :-( Ahasuerus 09:04, 10 Aug 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 6 August 06. Submission 47395 indicates that I tried deleting shortfiction information from 3 stories even though I didn't touch anything by the title of this collection. Leaving it alone for now. Ahasuerus 20:20, 4 Aug 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 12 July 06. When editing Content data, deleting the first Author in the list of Authors results in a "*** ERROR: Entry must have an author." Ahasuerus 10:58, 12 Jul 2006 (CDT).


 * Fixed 12 July 06. When editing a Publication which contains a Work with more than one Author, the Moderator's page shows the Authors in a garbled format, e.g. "Stephen Weiner and Keith R. A. DeCandido" were displayed as "Stephen WeinerKeith R. A. DeCandido+". Ahasuerus 15:40, 9 Jul 2006 (CDT). Maybe it was fixed by recent changes, or I'm mis-reading the problem. I edited a publication, and added an additional author, and the Moderator page was "X+Y", not "XY+". Alvonruff 18:24, 11 Jul 2006 (CDT). I've since figured out what you where talking about, saw the problem, and fixed it. Alvonruff 18:50, 12 Jul 2006 (CDT)


 * Not a bug - 11 July 06. I wonder how two of Gene Wolfe's stories managed to acquire publication dates of 2018 and 2019 respectively? Ahasuerus 10:13, 20 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Ancient history. I pulled up an old copy of the ISFDB that preceeded MySQL (from 03/15/2005). I found a total of four titles that had bogus forthcoming dates:


 * 21339
 * 124677
 * 124349
 * 124674


 * This doesn't look like a database error - the values in the current database reflect the old bogus values. Alvonruff 18:19, 20 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Oh well, I guess I'll stop looking for Gene Wolfe's hidden time machine then... Ahasuerus 20:04, 20 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * No, no, no. This does not disprove the existence of any such device. Isn't it suspicious that Gene Wolfe has two of the four titles? And he seems to know quite a bit about past events, like Kipling and Pirates? Alvonruff 19:26, 21 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 11 July 06. I wasn't signed in and tried entering a new Novel. The system asked me to sign in and when I did, it redirected me to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/newpub.cgi, which doesn't appear to be a valid URL any more, at least not without a "?1", "?2", etc appended to it. Ahasuerus 22:29, 28 Jun 2006 (CDT). Same root cause as the problem below. Alvonruff 19:14, 11 Jul 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 11 July 06. When adding a new novel, clicking "Add Author" or "Add Artist" (using IE) results in an "obkect expected" error. This appears to be a new error since the functionality was available just days earlier. Ahasuerus 16:19, 2 Jul 2006 (CDT). This happened when all the "new" pub types were put in the nav bar. In this case, the javascript wasn't being emitted for novels. Alvonruff 18:56, 11 Jul 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 11 July 06. Touch the Stars: Emergences authors were listed as "John Dalmas", "Carl Martin" and "Martin". (Parenthetically, this is a recurring problem with the second+ author of a Work appearing twice, once under his full name and once under his last name only). I pulled the Publication up in the new editing screen and deleted "Martin" (which happened to be the second Author in the list) from the Metadata section as well as the Content section. The Metadata edit worked fine, but the Content edit resulted in both' "Martin" and "Carl Martin" getting dropped by the submission mechanism. When I went to approve the submission, it listed "John Dalmas" as the only proposed Author of this Work and that's what got filed. Ahasuerus 10:40, 11 Jul 2006 (CDT). This required the same hack that was applied to publication authors. In this case, we allow up to N authors to be removed; in this case N=10, which seems high enough. Alvonruff 18:24, 11 Jul 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 10 July 06. When editing Publications with Roman numeral page numbers (e.g. "ix"), the software thinks that there was a change to all Roman (but not Arbaic) page numbers even when there was no change. See this unapproved submission for an example. Ahasuerus 11:16, 10 Jul 2006 (CDT). This was easy since it is one of the fixes I made Saturday that was lost. Errant cast of the page number to an integer. Alvonruff 20:05, 10 Jul 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 11 June 06. When a unique partial match is found (e.g. "Cowper" finds "Richard Cowper"), the URL of the displayed Web page is http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi and not http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Richard%20Cowper. Therefore any subsequent attempt to refresh the page will prompt the user to re-send search information. Ahasuerus 12:00, 14 May 2006 (CDT). The new implementation issues a javascript redirect to the new page. Alvonruff 10:24, 11 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 8 June 06. When you pull up a Review record, it states that it's a "Review of: Time Tunnel" and lists the review's Author, but it doesn't mention the reviewed Work's Author, in this case Leinster. You need to go to the Publication level to get the Author. Ahasuerus 12:56, 8 Jun 2006 (CDT). Fixed as requested Alvonruff 18:35, 8 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 7 June 06. Reviews in the title-view display a bit oddly. Consider title 957; the reviews section lists a publication, and then the work's year of creation---which is already displayed above, just under the author link. It would be more helpful to put down the publication date of the review, and a link to the name of the reviewer. (In this case, since it's a magazine, the publication date is already in there, but this won't invariably be the case.) grendel|khan 09:44, 7 Jun 2006 (CDT). Altered date to review date; added review author. Alvonruff 19:28, 7 Jun 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 25 May 06. I tried to "Add a variant title or pseudonymous work to this title" for Budrys's False Night, to record Some Will Not Die; I got an Internal Server Error. Mike Christie 19:06, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Problem was execute permissions on the submit, moderator viewer, and moderator approval apps. Alvonruff 12:49, 25 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 23 May 06. When I moderate a submission, there's a "User: Mike" link that leads to a wiki page for a user "Mike". Perhaps this code is chopping at the white space in my user name? Mike Christie 11:38, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * This appears to be a Python bug in handling browser cookies. I have an alternative method, but I need to do testing at home first. Alvonruff 12:44, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * OK; FYI the chopped version is recorded in the DB as the user for the changes I've made, just in case you hadn't spotted that, so those records will presumably need to be cleaned after the bug is fixed. Mike Christie 12:54, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * It's probably showing up in the navbar as "Logged in As - Mike" as well. Alvonruff 19:45, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * I think this is fixed (I can at least login as "Mr Furious" and see the whole name in the nvabar). I'll leave this open until you verify that your full name shows up in the submissions. Alvonruff 20:51, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * It's fixed. Thanks. Mike Christie 22:01, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 23 May 06. Not sure if this is the right place to list it, but when I hit the "log out" on the isfdb page (not the wiki) I get an "Internal Server Error". Mike Christie 23:23, 22 May 2006 (CDT). Alvonruff 20:48, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * When displaying publications the title reference points to a title which *technically* is part of the publication (like cover art information), but isn't the desired title. Alvonruff 05:54, 17 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 17 May 06. SQL routine now looks through the potential list and selects a more likely candidate as the title reference based on title_ttype value. Alvonruff 06:17, 17 May 2006 (CDT)


 * When trying to delete a Publication with the "Delete this Pub" link in the navbar, the following XML code was generated:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?> <IsfdbSubmission> <TitleDelete> <Subject>Lord of Cragsclaw (Guardians of the Three, Vol 1)</Subject> <Submitter>Ahasuerus</Submitter> <Record>29452</Record> </TitleDelete> </IsfdbSubmission>

but no submission was added to the Moderator's list. Ahasuerus 10:19, 15 May 2006 (CDT)
 * Fixed 15 May 06. I think this was a leftover comment when doing some development this weekend. I've verified that it works now. Alvonruff 17:55, 15 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Adding a new editor to an existing publication doesn't seem to work. I tried adding Martin H. Greenberg to Catfantastic II, but the form had 0 changes. Ahasuerus 18:35, 3 May 2006 (CDT)
 * The bug also occurs when editing Works. Also when creating a Work with more than author, only the first one is added to the record. Ahasuerus 20:37, 9 May 2006 (CDT)
 * Fixed 12 May 06 - Uncapitalized the javascript attribute names which confused Internet Explorer; also fixed same problem for artists. Firefox and IE are verified to work. Alvonruff 19:13, 12 May 2006 (CDT)


 * This may or may not be a Dissembler bug, but http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?WHNWRLDSCL1982 lists four Authors. Two of them are real, the other two are just permutations of the real Authors' first and last names. Ahasuerus 09:43, 12 May 2006 (CDT)


 * There was an entry in the database for a "How to Draw Manga Like the Japanese Do" guide of some sort. I deleted the Publication record and then merged the Work record into a randomly selected novel (_Seetee Ship_, in case it matters). However, that still left the Author record hanging out there at http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Comickers%20Magazine%20(ed) . I pulled it up in Author Data, blanked out the name and submitted/approved it. It is now gone, but I am wondering if that was really the right way to delete an Author record and whether it may have caused problems with database integrity? Ahasuerus 14:49, 2 May 2006 (CDT).


 * Fixed 07 May 06. Did the following:
 * Changed the author submission app to require a canonical name. So that shouldn't happen again.
 * There should not be an author delete app - too powerful and too complex. Authors should be deleted automatically when there are no references to it.
 * Modified the title merge tool to delete unreferenced authors. It previously presumed that merges would be by the same author, which isn't always the case.
 * Alvonruff 07:00, 7 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Lady Bluebeard: The True Story of Love and Marriage, Death and Flypaper was listed as by "Anderson" and "William C. Anderson". The first "Anderson" was in error, so I deleted Author1 and submitted the form. When I was approving the submission, I noticed that the submission was about to replace the Author field with a blank record, but I hit "Approve" before I could think it through. And sure enough, it looks like we now have a record with no Author, which causes the following error when searching on "Lady Bluebeard":

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/se.cgi", line 74, in ? results = SQLFindTitles(arg) File "/www/isfdb.tamu.edu/root/cgi-bin/SQLparsing.py", line 484, in SQLFindTitles results.append((title[0][TITLE_TITLE], title[0][TITLE_PUBID], authors[0])) IndexError: list index out of range

Apparently any search that selects this record, e.g., "Lady" or "Blue", will error out with the same error. Ahasuerus 23:22, 2 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Fixed 07 May 2006. Made the following changes:
 * Fixed both title and pub submission tools to deal with blank lines in the author list. This means you may now simple cut bogus authors out of the author list.
 * Modified the submission tools to complain if no authors are present (and no submission is made).
 * Fixed the search app to behave itself if no author is found.
 * Fixed the Lady Bluebeard record
 * Alvonruff 05:32, 7 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Something is not right with the way Serials are linked to their respective Works. For example, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?9672 links a John Brunner serial to an unrelated Sara Douglass novel. Ahasuerus 18:09, 5 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 06 May 2006. SQL query was matching on partial title strings. Alvonruff 06:45, 6 May 2006 (CDT)


 * There was an anthology (filed as a novel) in the database that listed "Robert Silverberg (Introduction)" as one of the authors. Consequently, searching on "Silverberg" resulted in this "author" coming up along with the real Silverberg. After changing "Robert Silverberg (Introduction)" to "Robert Silverberg" in the Work's record, the author record stayed in the system. When you click on "his" Long Works, you get the following message: "No long works found for Robert Silverberg \(Introduction\)". Clicking on the Short Works results in "Author not found: Robert Silverberg \\\(Introduction\\\)". Aside from some weirdness with parenntheses, shouldn't there be a way to get rid of bad author records once they have no works linked to them? Ahasuerus 08:46, 2 May 2006 (CDT)
 * OK, updating the Publication record did the trick and the bad author record is gone now. I am not sure if it is possible to make the update mechanism smart enough to clean up associated publications -- probably not because publications can have all kinds of other data -- but the need to change two+ records (1 for Works and 1+ for Publications) will likely be counterintuitive for editors. Perhaps prompt them to fix any associated publications once they have submitted a modification to a Work record? Ahasuerus 08:51, 2 May 2006 (CDT)
 * Instead of trying to make the editing tools too clever (which can lead to moments of "That's not what I had in mind"), I modified the summary bibliography to look for stray publication records if no long/short records are found. That should help make it obvious what needs to be deleted/altered. See http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Robert%20Silverburg. I've fixed the title, but deliberately didn't fix the publication.Alvonruff 06:34, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
 * Very nice, me likes! :) Ahasuerus 17:05, 6 May 2006 (CDT)


 * It looks like the MySQL data conversion may not have handled some Notes fields correctly, e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?28188 Ahasuerus 16:36, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Not a bug. The old ISFDB used that notation to generate external links without resorting to HTML. Worked on a similar principle as MediaWiki's bracket notation. I'll move this to be a feature request. Alvonruff 20:50, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * In the "Title Merge Results" screen, the error message displayed when you select no records to merge is "Error: You need to select exactly two records to merge." Since the software currently lets you select at least 3 records, the error message needs to be updated to something like "Error: You need to select at least two records to merge". Ahasuerus 19:03, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006. Carryover from the time when merging only worked with exactly two records. Alvonruff 20:46, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Change the way series numbers diplay on the Works page from "Seriesnum:" to "Series number". Ahasuerus 10:40, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006. Alvonruff 18:58, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Series names are currently displayed using underscores and not spaces as word delimiters, e.g. "Guardians_of_the_Flame" in the Title screen. Ahasuerus 11:26, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006. Actually had to do extra work to introduce this bug. Interesting that it only shows up in IE; Firefox neatly hides the underscores. Alvonruff 18:56, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * There is currently no way to unlink a title from a series. Clearing the series field in the title record doesn't stick. Alvonruff 05:50, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006. Alvonruff 18:50, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Deleting the date of death doesn't seem to work. Ahasuerus 18:17, 1 May 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006 - Turns out you couldn't delete any author record fields. Alvonruff 18:50, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Only the first 100 records in a Title Search list can be accessed, e.g. when you have http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/ta_search.cgi?exact%3D29 up, the link to the next 200 records at the bottom of the page (http:///www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/ta_search.cgi?exact%3D29+record%3D100) doesn't work. Ahasuerus 21:50, 30 Apr 2006 (CDT). Fixed 01 May 2006 - IE only bug - there were 3 slashes following the http. Alvonruff 06:02, 1 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Reported Jun 11 2005 by grendelkhan - On Oldest Non-Living Authors/Editors/Artists, there's a '101' at the bottom of the list, which should be at the top. Instead of a generated page, the various oldest/youngest lists have been replaced with applications that create the lists directly from the database, so that they are always fresh. The old derived.html page has been deprecated, and moved into the Wiki; the front page link has been updated to point there. (Fixed Mar 26 2006)


 * Reported Jun 17 2005 by Ahasuerus - ISFDB-2 doesn't seem to like apostrophes much. Example: Madeleine L’Engle. This should now be generally fixed for titles, authors, and series names. There might be some other cases (especially in data entry) that aren't handled correctly. (Fixed)


 * Reported Jun 22 2005 by Alvonruff - Unicode settings are busted again. Using UTF-8 doesn't seem to display correctly, but ISO-8859-1 does. Changed the UNICODE define in localdefs.py to "iso-8859-1" and all seems well again. This also allows ascii searches to match, so a search for China Mieville now matches on China Miéville. (Fixed Jun 23 2005).


 * Reported Jun 11 2005 by grendelkhan - The Jules Verne page says it's in Latin-1 (the meta tag in the head reads "content="text/html; charset=latin1"), but the text itself is in UTF-8. (Fixed Jun 14 2005)


 * Reported Jun 11 2005 by grendelkhan - Title pages are displaying markup in the title. (Fixed Jun 11 2005)


 * Reported Jun 11 2005 by grendelkhan - This page (the Editing Tools-->Titles one), all the links point to localhost. (Fixed Jun 11)