Journal Sorting?

[SDShannonS]

I'm confused about how HLO is supposed to be sorting journal entries. I've dated them, per the instructions, with dates formatted like "January 28, 2020" in the "Real Date" field but the entries all seem to be sorted instead alphabetically by the Title field which would, at first glance, appear to be the worst possible way one could ever conceive of sorting journal entries.

 

[dacoobob]

i get the same thing, appears to be a bug.

 

[SDShannonS]

Submitted.

 

[flyteach]

I submitted this bug over a year ago. Hope you get a better response.

 

[SDShannonS]

Well, here's the text of the bug ticket I submitted:

I've dated my journal entries, per the instructions, with dates formatted like "January 28, 2020" in the "Real Date" field but the entries all seem to be sorted instead alphabetically by the Title field which would, at first glance, appear to be the worst possible way one could ever conceive of sorting journal entries.

This, just today, is the infuriating response I got from the development team:

Hello,

You accomplish this by using the Journal Tab. Once there add a new Journal Entry and open it. Once open, I suggest naming it beginning with a numerical Entry in the Title or Game Date Field so it will sort itself easily and adding any wealth, XP or notes you wish to have included with the Journal and confirm the entry with the button on the bottom of the Panel.

We will be working towards having this reviewed for updates in the future to help users more easily and intuitively sort the Journal Entries but I wanted to be certain to get some instructions for you to use for the time being.

--
Ryan Furnas
Lone Wolf Development Support - support@wolflair.com
http://www.wolflair.com

My reply was as follows:

Ryan,

There are three possible fields that Hero Lab Online could select for sorting Journal entries: Title, Game Date, or Real Date.

Players do not want to be forced into giving every journal entry a title starting with "001...", "002...", etc. The Title field should be used for a one- or two-word description that encapsulates that journal entry such as "Boss Fight" or "Completed Quest."

It makes no logical sense to sort the entries by Game Date as one's homebrew game may have months entitled "Hassenpfeffer" and HLO is going to have no possible way of knowing how to order that chronologically. Additionally, a game might have characters moving forward or backward in time which, if journal entries are being sorted by game date, would have a drastic impact on the user's ability to read through the journal entries in the order that they actually occurred in the game.

Therefore, the only reasonable option for sorting journal entries is by Real Date. On the Journal page, the instructions specifically state that one should use a format such as "MM/DD/YYYY" or "Month DD, YYYY" but when using that format in the Real Date field, journal entries are NOT sorted properly. Please address this concern by correcting the behavior of HLO to do what it says it's supposed to do rather than telling me, the customer, that I should alter my behavior to fit the code.

Thank you.

Dunno if that's going to have any impact whatsoever but I suppose we shall see.

 

[SDShannonS]

I did receive another reply from Ryan. It was along the lines of: sorry it doesn't work the way you want it to, small team with limited resources and lots to do, we'll put it on the pile.

In the meantime, I guess we have no choice but to modify our behavior to fit the code. <shrug>

 

[dacoobob]

I did receive another reply from Ryan. It was along the lines of: sorry it doesn't work the way you want it to, small team with limited resources and lots to do, we'll put it on the pile.

In the meantime, I guess we have no choice but to modify our behavior to fit the code. <shrug>

the journal sorting thing is annoying, but it's not exactly a game-breaking bug. LW really is a small team and they have much bigger fish to fry at the moment. they'll get to it eventually and in the meantime a workaround does exist.

we all have our "pet" issues that bother us more than others-- mine is the lack of an in-interface generic dice roller. however it'd be unreasonable to expect the devs to drop everything and work on mine first.

 

[flyteach]

Agreed, and that's the same response I got. I tried what he said, and it doesn't work. This isn't necessarily a pet issue, but when the suggested action doesn't work, that ratchets up the annoyance level because it indicates that the solution wasn't tested and/or the person writing it doesn't use the tool. No offense, but renaming the title does NOT allow re-ordering....they seem to be stuck in the order that they were created. I can live with it, now that I know, but leading us down false trails can become a pet issue in itself when it's done several times over.

 

[logsig]

My journal sorts itself just fine in order of Game Date (not Real Date).

 

[seansong]

I solved this by using my chronicle sheet number to start the title, but that’s a society specific fix.

 

[slate]

My journal sorts itself just fine in order of Game Date (not Real Date).

Interesting. I just put in the "real date" into the "game date", and it converts the year to the game year, then sorts that way. That is a good enough work around for me for now!

Thanks for pointing that out logsig