Hi,

First up, the Copy command is supposed to be used to copy to another log book, as it says in the documentation, not a duplicate entry in the same logbook.  I've tried doing a copy into the same logbook, it appears to work (although I don't know about every circumstance, I just did a quick and dirty test).  Use at your own risk!  Don't use Preserve ID feature is one caution I would raise immediately.

As for renaming the command, I'd suggest defining a new language, "lenglish" or whatever, make all the files necessary as per any normal language; in the eloglang.lenglish file would be

New = New

Edit = Modify

---

Copy to = Duplicate

and so on.  I chose to call my eloglang "lenglish" as duplicate, modify etc as used in the example here derive from Latin, but other commands would still be English.

When specified in the config file (just like the languages that "come with the box") that should give you the alternative names for the commands.

David.

So did I [thankful there is no shame face icon].

Menu commands = List, New, Edit, Delete, Reply, Duplicate, Find, Config, Help

I have experience of elog hanging (under linux).  I'll describe my situation, although it may not apply to you.  I still use elog 2.9.2 but I am unaware of this issue ever being resolved although I have mentioned it in the past.  (Possibly because I'm one of the few who has this situation).  I certainly recall other person had this as the problem, and my reply on this forum solved their problem.  The cause is the following:

1.  A thread with a large number of replies - something over 40 I think.

2.  This long thread is deleted from the first entry.  This will crash elog,

3.  Once restarted, the later entries of the deleted thread (which survived the deletion attempt when elog crashed) are accessed.  This will cause elog to go into an endless loop and hang.  Until I learnt better, I had to reboot the computer.  Under linux kill -9 (process) does the job, but kill (process) does not.

The problem lays with the first entry that survived the attempt at deletion.  It has an "In reply to" line in the entry in the yymmdda.log file, referring to an entry that has now been deleted.  Manually editing the yymmdda.log file to remove that line does the trick, and then the surviving entries can be accessed and deleted.

A good work-around is that if you are about to delete a long thread is to delete it in sections, starting at the end.  It is useful to note the entry number or some other way to find it again after the last section is deleted, as of course it will now be back in with the even older entries.  Or have two tabs on your browser accessing the same thread.

If you want to move the long thread to another logbook, to avoid the problem, Copy the thread, and then do the deletion in stages.  Moving a long thread does the same computer crash/computer hang, although the Copying part is done fine, the deletion part is the problem.

You don't have to have a large number of replies to an entry to cause the hang in controlled conditions.  Just edit the yymmdda.log file of a new entry adding in a "In reply to" line referring to an earlier entry number that does not exist is enough to cause the problem when you try and access the thread.

If this is the cause of your issue, the problem is to find the orphan thread that is causing the hang, especially after all this time.  Also, you may have more than one orphan thread.  Even though I am aware of the problem, I do occasionally find orphan threads in my logbooks.  In my case I use the ticketing system, and searching by ticket number will find an orphan thread without hanging the computer, but if you then click on any entry found - hang.

There is a related issue, which I think I have now resolved.  If the entry in the "Reply to" field in the yymmdda.log file does not exist, that is a later entry (not earlier, as above), elog will cause a duplicate entry, always in bold, with entry no 0 to appear in the listings.  This entry is an artifact that appears in the listings, not a real entry in a yymmdda.log file.  Again, finding the rogue entry is the tricky bit.

Hi Alan,

Just to be clear (and for others) if any entry is a reply to a previous one, such as this one is to yours, then there will be "Reply to" and "In reply to" fields in the entry as found in the yymmdda.log files.  They are automatically generated as part of the elog program's internal structure, but are only there when there is a reply - so a new entry on a new topic does not have either field (at all) until there is a reply to that entry, when the fields start to appear in the log file.

David.

Hi Michael,

Elog purists, look away now.

There is an "official" way to do this, which is to have fields for entry date (so can be in the past), but the yymmdda.log file will be of the date and time you make the entry.  This is in the offical documentation.

If you are not bothered by the ID number being out of sequence (and elog does not really mind, although it occasionally throws a hissy fit/throws its toys out of the pram, which a restart sorts out), but you are one who wants the date of the entry in the log file to also be in the past, skipping the entry date fields issue, it's perfectly do-able.  So long as you can access the yymmdda.log files.

What I, and some others, do is to create a new entry now (for ease, the first entry of the day, but that's not critical), then go to the log files, and with an editor open today's file, find the entry, and edit the day, date and if necessary time; I always set the time as post 22:00, as code for an edited late entry.  I also then cut-and-paste the entry into the log file for the day it should have been entered in (creating it if necessary, in linux make sure the permissions are correct, specifically the user).

If you have attachments, and want those also to reflect the date, you'll need to edit the Attachments section of the elog entry headers (format is obvious), and also rename the attachment files in the directory.

I've not tried an ID number being other than an integer, I guess it would not work.  ID numbers not being in sequence with the date doesn't seem to matter.  Messing with ID numbers can have a number of consequences, such as elog running away, burning CPU time etc (looking for a previous entry that does not exist), or rogue listings of a entry ID no./# 0 (looking for a later entry that does not exist).

One caveat; I use Linux, and on elog 2.9.2.  Later elogs and Windows may have a different reaction to what I've written above.

Elog purists can now look again.

As a regular elog (ab)user, I have seen this behaviour from time to time.  So far as I recall, the cause actually is that a normal entry is looking for the entry in the "Reply to" field of the normal entry in the yymmdda.log file.  When that entry does not exist, then I see a duplicate line of an entry with entry "#0", in emboldened black type.  I did have a screenshot, but cannot find it for now. 

A quick (relative term, that) search usually finds the entry which references the missing "Reply to" line, and editing that, all is well.  I'm not sure how this can happen, but it does.  NB, I'm still on elog 2.9.2 so I don't know how the draft facility works and possibly enhances the possibility of this issue.

Note that this is different to the case (rather more frequent) where the entry in  the "In reply to" field is missing.  This causes elog to go into a continuous loop and only the strongest measures  ("kill -9 xxxx in linux) will break this out.  This can happen more frequently as if you delete a thread with a large number (>40?) of entries, elog crashes, but more importantly, hasn't finished the job.  Clicking on the remenents of the thread (which are usually the later entries) causes the endless loop.

I too have this as an occasional issue, although in my case due to a dodgy pointer.  I too manually delete the entries.

Interestingly, it gives double entries - and thus the start of a branch - even in logbooks were branches are not allowed.

May I slip my vote in for this, especially if it would allow more than 100 attributes (the default, and I do know how to increase it).

I even considered cutting that into two groups,. the first being words like "New", "Re-" and the second being actions.  Clunkey and binned.