Back in September 2004, I posted about the longest running bug in BitWise. At the time, that bug was about a year old. It wasn't an awful bug, but a noticable bug and one that definitely needed fixing. I am almost embarrassed to report a bug that is coming up on its third birthday.
This bug is actually very easy to reproduce, which leads me to ask a few questions. (See below.) Open a whiteboard, and draw a freehand object. Make sure that you draw some content up or left from the starting point. Then, duplicate the object. A nasty little addition will be made to the duplicated object.
So, those questions I alluded to earlier. First, why did it take so long for it to be found? Second, does this mean that nobody is duplicating freehand objects? I know people use the whiteboard. Lastly, how many people found this bug, but didn't report it? It was patched in about 15 minutes, and could have been easily included in any release. Don't people know that we respond immediately to bugs and generally fix them for the next release? Oh wait, everyone's used to [insert big corporation here.] Things are different here.
If anyone has any answers to any of these questions, please, enlighten me! I may not sleep until I know! ;)
My guess: nobody duplicates freehand objects.
When I think about it, that makes sense, I can't think of much where I would want to duplicate one. Usually, you would draw one freehand object and use that, and then you would draw different ones. Duplicating images and polygons I can see happening much more often.
I'm not sure if I would have duplicated a freehand object in a real world situation. When I found it I was just testing all features with a friend because I'm that kind of person who explores something before using it, to accommodate to unexpected behavior, and there is plenty of that in the world of [repeat big corporation's name] and others.
I can see the use for duplicating a freehand object though. Say I'm mapping out a network with an internet cloud and I need to map out that same network a bit different, I would not redraw the cloud but rather just create a duplicate.
I can also see reasons against duplicating. The main reason would be a lack of usability in the duplication process. I have to click the duplicate tool, click the object, then click the arrow tool and drag the new instance. two steps could be eliminated by having the duplicate tool behave in a way that when you click and drag the object, you can position the copy directly following its duplication in a single step, and could thus easily repeat the process several times without switching tools or the original drawing area getting cluttered. Also one "object" in a drawing usually doesn't consist of one line, but multiple whiteboard objects, so grouping / duplicating a group would certainly be helpful.
Just my two cents as a design student. The programming itself is superb, though, I must say, minor cosmetic bugs like this one aside.
-- loclghost