The X3 duplicate tabs bug.

[Tim Morrison]

I received an PM from LeviFiction asking about the bug in PSPP X3 that causes tabbed palettes to be duplicated when you go to the Express Lab or Print Layout and back again.
I'm not sure that I have ever set out the steps for getting the duplicate tab bug in this forum, so thought I'd write this.
In my PSPP X3 workspace I have several palettes set to "Autohide". This is done by clicking the pushpin shaped icon in top right of any palette, and it then rolls up into a tab. I have the Learning Center on the left side of the screen and the Layers, History and Script Output palettes as tabs on the right side. When you roll the mouse over the tab it expands to show the full palette.
The first thing you need to reproduce the bug is to have some palettes set to autohide and the Full Editor workspace selected.
Then all you need to do is click the Express Lab button in the top right corner of the workspace, and then in the Express Lab click the "Exit Express Lab" button.
When PSP returns to the main editor, there are two copies of each tab. Repeat the process and there are now three copies of each tab. Each time you go to the Express Lab and back you get another copy of the tabs.
The same thing happens if you go to File > Print Layout.
When you have two or more sets of tabs, only the bottom set works correctly. After you've got about four or five sets, the bottom tabs are off the screen, so you lose the use of your tabbed palettes.
When you roll the mouse over the upper duplicate copies, the palette continually unrolls then rolls up. The palette is only usable if you are quick enough to catch it while it's unrolled.
Normally, none of the Full Editor palettes are visible in the Organizer, but the tabs of the duplicates, but not the tabs of the originals, still show after changing to the Organizer. The tabs don't work at all in the Organizer.
Loading a saved workspace doesn't fix the problem.
Toggling the palette on and off in View > Palettes only effects the real palette not the duplicate.
The only way to get rid of the duplicates is to close and re-open PSP.
As you can imagine, it very quickly becomes a complete mess if you keep adding useless copies of tabs as you work.

[LeviFiction]

Ooooh, I completely spaced when you said tabs that I didn't realize you said paletted tabs. Okay that explains why I never saw the problem. I thought you meant regular image tabs. My bad.

Of course the palettes don't hide themselves that quickly when I roll over the top tabs so it would be a simple matter to roll over them but it's not worth it. And with the need to conserve screen reality the ability to auto hide palettes is big. So yeah. Has Corel acknowledged this bug and added it to their list at all? Or do you think it's another gang up on them sort of thing? Since I can reproduce this terrible flaw you can bet I'll be reporting it on Monday if it helps push up the need.

[Tim Morrison]

I did report it only a few days after X3 was released, but the two patches since then haven't fixed the problem at all.
The initial response I got was very strange. It was as if the support person hadn't read the question. Further prodding got the reply that the problem had been reported to Engineering, but I'm afraid I'm not sure if I trust that particular support person. His replies to me and to a number of questions from various people have been poor, nonsensical, slap-dash things. Support people seem unaware of long standing defects that are supposed to have been reported and so many bugs seem to have gone unfixed for so long, I'm starting to wonder if something is going wrong with the process. Perhaps there are just too many bugs and too few resources to fix them.
Despite all that, I'd encourage you to report it. I think the volume of numbers can only help.

[LeviFiction]

Well I too have finally reported it. So that's something. Just hope it's enough. The guy told me he'd attach my pin number to the bug report and send me an email when it's fixed though. I'm skeptical but that sounds pretty cool.