[DISCONTINUED] MATLAB Answers Wish-list #2 (and bug reports)
Walter Roberson
on 29 Jun 2012
This topic is for features you would like to see for the MATLAB Answers facility itself, and also for bug reports about the MATLAB Answers facility.
This topic is the follow on to the earlier Wish-list for MATLAB Answer sections. That topic grew large enough to become unwieldy; and Mathworks has made enough changes to make a number of the past points no longer of relevance. There was also a more limited purpose <http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/216662-new-design-of-the-forum-grey-on-white-wish-list-3-bug-reports
I suggest one wish (or bug report) per answer, so that people can vote their wishes.
227 Comments
For easy navigation and for the historians,
Anyone with edit privileges should feel free to update this whenever needed.
I sure wish Answers pages would load faster. Navigating the Answers section and sorting forum posts is remarkably slow, especially considering it's only text. And with the recent redesign of the site, there isn't even very much text at that.
Renato, this particular topic is about changes to the MATLAB Answers forum software, not about MATLAB itself.
Matlab lacks a more robust object oriented architecture that is related to how the majority of the myriad of functions are not structured in a hierarchical model, but rather exist on their own, loosely coupled one to another, even when there is a clear relationship between them.
In my simples example above, I compare the "Document Object Model" in a MS Office application (ie., Excel) with MatLab.
As you can see, if I want to graph a simple function, and at the same time change its axes, labels, and title... first, I have to know upfront the exact names of the specific five functions that would provide me those functionalities; Secondly, as I use the 'plot' function (the 'parent' function) by typing its name in the command window, the interface does not prompt me to the dependent ('child') methods and properties associated with the parent function; only allows me to complete the spelling (<Tab>)
What happens in more structured applications such as MS Excel, as you well know, is that beyond helping complete the spelling, there are more strict parent/child relationships between their (VBA) commands (objects). In such environments, a user could assume that typing 'plot' (or other meaningful command) in the command window's prompt, placing a period after the object handle and WITHOUT even pressing Tab, a dropdown list would appear revealing all of the associated / dependent commands (properties and methods) for the particular object/function to be immediately available for use.
In other words, there is no easy way to know what other commands I have available to use to manipulate/modify the graph/plot/parent object being used.
i wish matlab answer forum was quick and responsive as TI e2e community.
Are you talking about the speed of the forum software, or about the time it takes before a volunteer replies? Your post over here suggests that it is the time it takes people to reply that is your concern.
You have been posting questions about Simulink, PWM, Buck converters, PID control, and the like. There do not happen to be many volunteers who work on those topics. That is not the fault of the forum software or of the MATLAB language design.
The "Flagged Content" page is broken. It shows items that have been flagged but there is no way to get to them. When you click "an answer" it should take you to the answer that had been flagged but instead it just reloads the "Flagged Content" page.
It appears, on further reflection, that the case is this:
A Comment or Answer is flagged. The Question is deleted without deleting the individual Comment or Answer. Then the record of the flagging might still be in the list.
You can determine whether the comment or answer is still there or not by hovering over the "a comment" or "an answer" link: if it shows answers/flagged at the end of the URL then it is gone; it if is there it will have answers/######-Title-Here where ##### is the question number.
So at least the behavior is unexpected. I would expect that if a post has been deleted, that it would also be deleted from the "flagged content" list.
It is not always broken. As best I have deduced, if someone flags something and then someone else deletes it, the "flagged" entry in the Activity Log does not get removed at output time.
The contributor's page is broken, and currently only displays a bunch of # and commas.
Fixed.
I think that it would be better to have the forum adding automatically a target attribute
target="_blank"
to links present in threads, because we often want to keep the question/comment under our eyes when we click on such links.
I like it the way it is now.
Too_many_windows = clutter;
I just put in my vote!
@Walter: I know, but when it seems that we almost never want to open a link in the same window (which is often the case on forums where people answer questions), I think that it legitimately raises the question of whether it would be a good thing to have "open in new tab" implemented as a feature of the forum (by automatically adding a simple target attribute).
In Windows I have to right click and select "Open in new tab". I'd like that to be the default. On most web sites if you leave that site and go to another totally different site, it will open in a new window or tab, and if you stay on the same web site, it will open in the existing tab. Answers doesn't follow that de facto standard for some reason.
Firefox can be configured to either open links as tabs or windows. Then when I want to keep the original I open the new link using mouse-2 click (I think it is middle-button -- command-click on my MacBook Pro). Mouse-1 click (control-click, left-click) gives the menu option that includes the choice of new window or new tab for the link.
I don't know if it's just the two totally different computers I've tried it on (Dell desktop and HP laptop) or if it's due to some Java "upgrade" but in the last few days whenever I try to type an Answer or Comment into an edit box, the "Preview" box covers up almost all of the Save button. Disabling it doesn't help. All I can see is a tiny sliver of the left side and top side of the button. I've tried two different browsers (Firefox and IE) and tried changing the zoom level of the displayed page (control-mouse wheel) and nothing helps - it's still covered up. The Cancel button is totally covered so I can't see that button at all anymore. I have Java 7 update 25 (the latest version according to http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp)
Is anyone else experiencing this problem with Answers?
I came back in to Firefox, without clearing the cache, and the problem has disappeared. All is normal again. So I guess you fixed it somehow, at least for now.
Clearing the browser cache worked (on Chrome).
I have the same problem.
Please try clearing your browser cache and reloading an Answers page. Let me know if things are any better...
Others are experiencing this issue as well (see this Newsreader thread). I am looking into it. Thanks for reporting the problem, I will respond here with any updates.
I think that it would be very interesting to have the possibility to tag/flag/mark/attach/bookmark threads so we can keep track and follow them without posting an answer or a comment in the threads.
"Bookmarked" threads could appear in an additional (private?) tab in our profile, e.g. at the end of the current series of tabs:
/ Profile \/ Questions \/ Answers \/ Comments \/ Bookmarks \
Ideally, we could add a label (a string with same size limitation as threads titles) and have entries sorted by label, which would allow us to implement the classification scheme that we prefer (date, name, tags, main topic, etc).
At this point, I print relevant mature threads as PDF, which is not possible when threads are just starting; in such case, I leave a tab open on each relevant young thread, hoping that I will remember to look at them before I mess up with my browser and lose all my tabs, .. which is not ideal.
I understand. I use Firefox so that's not an issue with me. I set up the syncing (it takes entering a code at first) so now syncing bookmarks between home and work computers happens automatically - it's really a nice feature.
Just because I am working from/on several computers, and if I am sync-ing files, I find it more difficult to sync bookmarks (especially because some of these machines have restrictions on browser types). I might just jump on this occasion to learn how to sync them I guess, but I also think that this could be a feature of the forum in the sense that most of our forum activity and interests would be centralized here.
Why not just bookmark discussions in your browser, like I do? For example I have a folder called Tutorials (under my MATLAB folder), and in there I have bookmarked links to common tutorial discussions, like how to ask a question, how to upload files, how to format questions, how do I get help on homework, etc. You could have a folder "Discussions to follow" or whatever you want to call it. It seems certainly better than exporting to a PDF.
It would be interesting to be able to cast votes AGAINST Answers (or Questions?), as well as in favor of them :-)
I haven't decided whether this should affect rep points negatively, but it should at least help sink the Answer to the bottom of the display. It would be a good way for the community to collectively warn someone away from a bad approach (e.g., abuses of EVAL)
I'd like to buy an argument.
I like it!
Actually you missed it, but the feature exists already ;-p
Ah well, too bad. I'm all in favor of a negative forum ;)
I used to (pre-MathWorks-employment) just write "-1 vote". This was discouraged since we want a positive forum.
Instead now I politely write why an answer is not the best...
Apologies if this has been suggested. The list has grown long and difficult to search....
I think there should be a privilege (earned at 1000 reputation points or so) that allows contributors to transform an Answer into a Comment (and vice versa?)
All too often, newcomers to the site don't understand how things work and instead of responding to Answers with Comments, they respond with Answers of their own. It would be good for trusted contributors to have the power to fix this.
On my display this is currently directly over my duplicate suggestion.
I knew I couldn't have been the first... Oh well, I +1'ed it. :-)
@IA, I think it sorts by number of votes (high to low) and then date (oldest to newest). It looks like you up voted my answer and it is now higher in the list...
Same here. I always wondered how it sorted the items. Like how this one could be added at some arbitrary place in the middle of a big long list, rather than at the end.
+1 !
Voting for comments would be a great feature to implement at the same time, by the way.
I think that's a great idea, and I voted for it. And I've always thought that the wish list and the bug list should be separate, rather than combined into one giant list.
An optional chat room with a main channel and thread-specific channels or user defined channels would be awesome. The rational is that sometimes/often we would be able to pinpoint much better the needs from the beginning after a short chat, than when we refine the question statement iteratively through dozens of comments (and it doesn't always converge!). The quality of answers could be significantly improved.
For thread specific channels, the log of the discussion would be saved in the thread in a way that we can edit (e.g. remove irrelevant entries and edit remaining entries, so we keep only relevant content).
It isn't the easiest feature to implement though, and it would be difficult to prevent people from just chatting without saving answers if they can create user defined channels. A solution could be to limit the creation of user defined channels to Editors, and keep the main room as well as thread specific channels for the rest of us.
I agree with that and this is why I added "optional". I didn't explain it well, but the typical situation that I had in mind was: I see that the OP is present on a thread at a given time and I propose to switch to chat if I am in the mood for that, in order to refine the question more efficiently. This interaction is logged (it ends up e.g. in the body of the question) and if I cannot answer on the fly, I can always say that I will think about it and post an answer later, and close the chat.
I know some people like chat systems a lot, and find them to be quite useful.
Speaking entirely for myself: I do not happen to like to use chat systems for technical matters, or use them with people I do not know relatively well. I end up feeling "locked in" to the conversation window, with its slow progress. With posting systems, I can concentrate on the material solidly, flipping windows as I need to to check something in help documentation or to run an example in MATLAB... or to go down and pick up a snack in the middle of doing something.
A failing formatting of code:
Here the formatting fails, when the space between "BC" and ">=" is removed:
|find(BC >= 2) .* find(BC <= 36)|
Working: find(BC >= 2) .* find(BC <= 36)
Failing: find(BC>= 2) .* find(BC <= 36)
Well, when dealing with regexp in MATLAB, aspirin is more important than even "indexing" itself ;) Therefore, I have a toolbox full of them..
But I should explain this pattern. Even if you are familiar with the topic, it might be useful to someone else.
The pattern can be seen as
(?<=expr_1)\|(?<content>expr_2)\|(?=exp_3)
----------- ------------------ ---------
look-behind token look-forward
where
\|(?<content>expr_2)|\
defines that I want to match something that lies within pipes "|" (that have to be escaped because pipes have a special meaning otherwise). This "thing" will be characterized by the pattern expr_2 and I want to save it as a named token (which I chose to name "content") that I can reuse later in the replacement (see in the def. of rep). In the expression
.*?[^\s\|]
. is a wildcard for any single char, * means that it can be repeated between 0 and infty times, ? makes the * lazy, meaning find as little as possible, otherwise we have a greedy expression that will roughly take everything between the first and the last pipe of str. The [^expr] matches any character that is not listed in expr, which means that we won't match pipes as closing pipes if they are preceded by a whitespace \s or a pipe.
The first part
(?<=\s|^|\<.)
is a positive look-behind; (?<=expr_1) defines that whatever comes after the look-behind is a match only if it is preceded by something that is matched by the look-behind. Here, expr_1 matches whitespace \s, or the beginning of the string ^, or the beginning of a word \<..
The last part
(?=[\s;,\.])
is a positive look-forward; (?=expr_3) defines that whatever comes before the look-forward is a match only if it is followed by something that is matched by the look-forward. Here, expr_3 is a set [expr] of possible matches, that contains whitespace \s, any punctuation ":", ",", and "." (that has to be escaped because . have a special meaning otherwise).
@Cedric: I do not have the toolbox, which contains the aspirin command. However, '(?<=\s|^|\<.)\|(?<content>.*?[^\s\|])\|(?=[\s;,\.])' looks like something harder than aspirin, or like you have rolled an angry armadillo over your keyboard.
I played a bit just for the fun of using regexp+aspirin..
EDIT: last update 02/06/2013 @ 3:22pm EST
str = ['|A|, \t |A| \t |A|..\n', ...
' |A|, \t |A| \t |A| ..\n', ...
'|A B|, \t |A B| \t |A B|..\n', ...
'|A|B|, \t |A|B| \t |A|B|..\n', ...
'|A||B|, \t |A||B| \t |A||B|..\n', ...
'|A | B|, \t |A | B| \t |A | B|..\n', ...
'|A || B|,\t |A || B| \t |A || B|..\n', ...
'|()|, \t |()| \t |()|..\n', ...
'|[]|, \t |[]| \t |[]|..\n', ...
'|{}|, \t |{}| \t |{}|..\n', ...
'|32|, \t |32| \t |32|..\n', ...
'||, \t | \t |..\n', ...
'"||", \t "|" \t "|"..\n'] ;
pat = '(?<=\s|^|\<.)\|(?<content>.*?[^\s\|])\|(?=[\s;,\.])' ;
rep = '$<content>' ;
newStr = regexprep(str, pat, rep) ;
fprintf(newStr) ;
Output:
A, A A..
A, A A ..
A B, A B A B..
A|B, A|B A|B..
A||B, A||B A||B..
A | B, A | B A | B..
A || B, A || B A || B..
(), () ()..
[], [] []..
{}, {} {}..
32, 32 32..
||, | |..
"||", "|" "|"..
That's maybe why I never use monospacing formatting. It never seemed to work right. If I want monospaced text, I format it as code. I wish we had the ability to specify whatever font (color, size, font name, underlining, etc.) we wanted.
Another feature that I would really appreciate is a select instead of the checkbox "Email me when answers are added to this question", that would offer more options. For example:
- Email me when answers are added to this question
- Email me when answers or comments are added to this question
- Email me when there is any activity on this thread
With that (and because the 3rd option could generate a lot of emails), I would also be interested in being allowed to choose the frequency of the emails with a second select (or something in my profile options), e.g.
- Email instantly..
- Daily summary..
- Weekly summary..
The rational for me is: I don't ask that many questions, but when I do I am genuinely interested in any piece of information that I can gather from anything on the thread/page. I don't really make a distinction between comments and answers in fact, in the sense that I could often define The Answer as the outcome of multiple answers and comments. I am also interested in being warned if any answer or comment is edited, because if the person who answered/commented believes that it is worth bringing a modification, then the update is important to me. I would therefore set my default to be the last item of the list/select mentioned above.
I am game for receiving these updates as well; that would teach me English in addition to MATLAB! ;)
Though with respect to editing, the Community Editors often edit for format or to correct typos.
As mentioned here, I think that having the possibility for the OP and high rep. members to add a top entry in the thread (like an answer but with a different design, e.g. greenish background or some frame) called "Synthesis" or "Conclusion", that would contain a synthesis/conclusion of the thread, would be interesting. This should be optional and worth no reward, so we have only valuable information, but highly prioritized by the search engine. The name of contributors should also be recorded in the sense that, at least to me, they are often a search criterion as important as keywords.
You can find an example of what I have in mind here, where I edited the question with a top part that synthesizes the thread: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/59491-is-it-possible-to-set-watchdogs-memory-exec-time-in-matlab
The idea is really to allow people who care for that to bring added value to their threads. This could be especially useful for complicated threads, where finally a person is able to draw a conclusion out of dozens of answers/comments. The conclusion is really important information, yet it doesn't appear in the thread ultimately.
As a side note, I think that having the option not to prop. the thread at the top of the list when we edit the synthesis could be useful.. in my case, for example, I am pretty sure that people will start being tired about my "watchdog" thread if it comes back at the top of the list each time I add a coma to the text.. ;)
I think that if people were reminded (e.g. weekly) on a verified email that they have to come back to "close" their threads (or to actively indicate that they could still use help), more people would at least come back and see what was answered/commented. I am saying that, because I really suspect that many people actually find some way to do what they want after posting the question, and never come back to check their threads. All of you folks who have been active here for a long time, have roughly a 1/3 ratio of accepted answers, but when I look at the threads it seems that a significant amount of the answers that were not accepted are just a consequence of people not coming back..
Associated with this mechanism, there could be a special type of threads for open questions, in some sense a "discussion thread", like this one or any of those that should not have a particular answer chosen to be The answer.
Cheers,
Cedric
I am trying to find unanswered questions with 0 votes, but I want them listed newest to oldest. If I search for unanswered and sort by votes, I get all the questions with 0 votes sorted by date, but oldest to newest, followed by all the questions wit 1 vote, again sorted oldest to newest.
I am trying to close unclear and inappropriate questions which are unanswered. Basically I am trying to work through the unanswered questions. If the question is reasonable, I vote for it. If the question is inappropriate or unclear I add a comment saying what is inappropriate or unclear and close it. This leads me to needing the odd sort order/search capability.
I guess the first question is, is this filtering useful?
@Daniel, thanks for doing this!
Let Randy know if you notice any trends or anything else noteworthy or that could be useful to you.
I've asked hundreds of times for code formatting, but I definitely did not want the questions to be deleted, the users to be scared or the editors to waste time for checking.
But to stay on topic: More powerful search options would support your useful project to cleanup old not answered questions. And I appreciate your work.
According to about closing means that if the OP does not edit the question within 10 days, the question gets deleted. My feeling is that when we add comments like "format your code" or "what is your question" or tag it "doit4me", we should close the question. This has two effects. First the question disappears from the front page and other won't waste time looking at the question. Second, if the OP doesn't deal with it in 10 days, it gets deleted. I think both might cut down on the noise.
I have decided that what I am saying when I vote for an unanswered question is: Hey other contributors this question is not rubbish. There is potentially enough information to answer it.
Does closing mean, that an admin should decide if the question is deleted? If so, an excessive closing of question would be less useful than spending the time to answer old questions, which have not been answered already.
Only 2242 of 51314 questions have been voted yet, what is a sad ratio in my opinion. Therefore more votes are something I appreciate. But I'm not sure if all not unclear questions without an answer deserve a vote. Anyhow, your idea is useful, I'd prefer the criterion "vote for everything which you, Daniel, is worth to be voted", and a more flexible sorting would be very important to handle such a large and growing database as the answers forum.
I've struggeled with the search in the FileExchang today: I've searched for submissions concerning Excel, but searching for excel or "excel" got 1604 hit, which mostly contain the term "excellent".
I wish to have a matlab answers website on my cell phone (a mobile version)
The RSS feed contains just a question, you can't read the comments and answers.
You can get an RSS feed of Answers.
I wish that questioner could have possibility to change his mind about his(her) acceptance decision. At least for a certain period.
New issue, I just noticed today. If I use the Link button to copy a link of a comment that is not one of the last 3 posted, then have that link be a link in another comment (referring reader to the first comment), OR even just paste that link into the address field (of two different browsers, IE and Firefox), it goes to the top of the posting, it does not scroll directly to the comment. An example of this is the link which is http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/42413#comment_102678. Some investigation leads me to think that the problem occurs when the comment referred to is not one of the last 3 comments posted, in other words, it's one of those that are normally hidden and you have to reveal by clicking "Show n older comments." Can this be fixed? Otherwise we can't link to "hidden" comments.
The #togglecomments apparent URL is javascript. The contents are already on your system, and are expanded or collapsed by your browser. But something changed and now those sections are treated more like internal HTML than like something that can be acted on.
By analogy: you cannot search HTML <- comment -> style comments using your browser find function, even though the HTML is there.
Well that I can understand because your browser only looks at what characters actually got returned from the web server. If they aren't there, it won't find them. But you'd think if you asked the web site server for a "hidden" URL, it should give it to you directly (all expanded), not send back the "parent" page with the actual URL hidden inside it and collapsed / not exposed.
I have seen it.
Related to this is that now my browser Find function can only find content that is expanded.
Can I at least get an acknowledgement that the Mathworks has seen and reproduced this bug or undesired feature?
It should be possible to change and save the default sort order.
I would like it if a person ended up on your profile (by clicking the link that is your name) that, in addition to the profile privileges, questions, answers, comments, and email, it also had a link to my File Exchange. If I didn't have anything in the File Exchange then the link wouldn't be there but it would be there if I did have something in the File Exchange. It makes sense that if someone is interested enough to look up a person's profile and all their answers, etc. that they might also have an interest in visiting the person's File Exchange to see what useful programs the person has uploaded. I'd also like to see my own. It would be convenient for me, if I want to recommend one of my File Exchange submissions to someone, that a link to my File Exchange were right there on the left side below My Questions, My Answers, My Comments. It would save me from having to bring up my bookmark toolbar, locate the bookmark to my File Exchange and click on it.
Now that we have a "My Comments" tab, I realize this is not what I wanted (although I appreciate TMW improving the interface based on our requests). I tend to use the My Questions and My Answers tabs to see if anything moved to the top. This way I know if something changed in a thread I am interested in. Since I rarely answer a question I ask, there is not too much redundancy.
Most of my comments are in threads that I have given an answer. This means there is a lot of redundancy between My Answers and My Comments. I end up looking at threads twice (once from the movement in My Answers and once from the movement in My Comments). I would like another tab of "My Threads" that lists all threads in which the user has asked a question, provided an answer, or made a comment. Ideally we could also "like" a thread which would add it to "My Threads". This would have to be different from voting since I vote on things that I don't want to follow.
Again, I am happy that we now have My Comments, but now I want even more ...
Thanks for the feedback—we are looking at better ways to keep track of questions that you're interested in.
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