Outlook 2003 rules don't support wildcards

I use MS Outlook 2003's rules to sort notification e-mail from a bug reporting system into different folders, one folder for each combination of product and major customer. Each message is sorted based on a keyword in the message subject or body. Sorting by product name easy because it is a sub-string in the subject. Sorting by customer name requires a rule to examine the body of message and find a string whose pattern is release: <version> <customer>. Here's a simple regular expression to match this string: release: ... name (assuming that version numbers are always in the form x.y).

But I got ahead of myself. After a fruitless half an hour, I realised that Outlook 2003 rules don't support regular expressions, nor do they support wildcards, for pattern matching. If you can find a reference, please send it to me.

Rather than spend more time hacking a VBA script, I just created rules that matched the product name in the subject and the customer name anywhere in the body of the e-mail. These rules work almost all the time, and only fail when someone enters the customer name somewhere in the body of the e-mail, which is different from the release name generated by the bug reporting system.

Writing a good bug report

Have you ever reported a bug to a forum or mailing list, only to have developers pester you with dumb questions or, even worse, no one seems to be interested in helping you? Why do they keep asking you for more and more information? Aren't they interested in fixing bugs? Why won't anyone help you?

Being on the sending and receiving end of bug reports for years, I find that most developers take pride in their software and want to fix bugs but can't action bug reports unless they have at least the following information:

Software version

Quote the version string of the software. For Windows software, you can usually find the version string in the Help / About dialog. If you're using command-line software, check the on-line help for the required command-line option. For example, GnuWin32 utilities display their version string if you use the --version option.

Operating system configuration

If you're using Microsoft Windows, you can open a command console and type systeminfo. You'll see plenty of information about your computer, include hotfixes and hardware information. Some of the information may be private, so you decide how much you want to share when you write your report.

Input data

Sample files or parameters used to cause the problem.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Provide every step you took.

Expected results

What you think should have happened when you found the bug instead.

Often, users (and testers) balk at the thought of writing down every step or the expected results because they seem superfluous. "Don't developers know how their own software works?" you ask? Can't you just write, Stratoblaster feature doesn't work. Fix it! Problem is that unless you write down all the steps and what you think should happen, your bug will probably be ignored (if it's free – beer or libre – software) or developers can't figure out what you're going on about and write back asking for more information (if you're paying for support). Put yourself in the developers' shoes: how can they (1) figure how to reproduce the bug and (2) know if they have fixed it?

If you accept that you have to provide all the steps, then how much detail do you have to give? My rule is to imagine that I want to explain to a friend how to use a feature. For example in Firefox, let's pretend there's a bug moving a bookmark from one folder to another. Here's how I would write the steps and expected results of a bug report:

1. Select Bookmarks / Organize Bookmarks menu item. Firefox should open the Library dialog.
2. In the Library dialog, select the bookmark you want to move using your mouse pointer.
3. Click and drag the bookmark to the destination folder.
4. Release the bookmark. BUG: Bookmark remains in original folder. EXPECTED: Bookmark is moved to destination folder.

Happy bug reporting!

Beginning Firefox Ubiquity

Been playing with Firefox Ubiquity add-in for the past month and found myself using these commands:

define (def) word

Gives definition of a word in Ubiquity popup.

map <location>

Shows Google Map in Ubiquity popup. If you press Enter, it opens Google Maps in a new tab.

tab <tab name>

Displays the named tab. For example, tab gmail would display the Gmail tab. Useful if when I open too many tabs and can't see tabs that are off-screen.

translate (tr)

Translate selected text to English in Ubiquity popup. I browse Malaysian news sites but my BM is rusty, so I like to check that I read some text correctly. The translation fails if there are proper names in the start of the text, so I still have to visit a translation site.

twitter (tw)

Update your Twitter status. You have to provide Firefox with your Twitter user name and login to send the update.

Firefox spell check requires dictionary

Maria H.'s version of Firefox didn't highlight misspelt words in multi-line fields, although the Check my spelling as I type option is checked. I found that I had a English / United States dictionary installed (probably from a previous installation) while she didn't, so the spell check worked on my PC but not on hers. It seems that the Firefox spell checker only works after you install a dictionary; another one of those things that are obvious in hindsight.

Microsoft Visio 2003 insert page annoyance

When you insert a new page in MS Visio 2003, the page added in the right-most position, after all other page tabs. This behaviour is different from MS Excel, where a sheet is added before the current sheet. Visio's behaviour is annoying because after I create a new page, I have to move it to the position I want.

Microsoft Word 2003 symbol dialog

By accident, I found that if you double-click on a symbol character in your document in Microsoft Word 2003, the Symbol dialog is displayed. However, how does MS Word define a symbol? For instance, the dialog doesn't appear if you click on a copyright symbol but it appears if you click on a smiley face symbol.

References

• 6 tips for adding international characters and symbols to your document

Dispatch, Static versus Dynamic, Single versus Double or Multiple

I read Stuart Holloway's Java.Next #3 Dispatch and decided to make clear to myself the concept of Dispatch and how it is used.

Dispatch means to call a method of an object and is normally applicable in the context of object-oriented programming. The rest of this summary assumes that there is more than one function with the same name and revolves around selecting the function (or method) to call (see Multiple Dispatch).

Static Dispatch that the system can pick the function to call at compile-time, as opposed to Dynamic Dispatch where the system has to choose the function to call at run-time. Dynamic dispatch can be supported by the programming language (e.g. polymorphism) or implemented in a program (e.g. case-statement).

Single Dispatch means that the system picks the function to call based on one parameter. In common object-oriented languages (e.g. C++, Java or C#), that parameter is the type of the object (see Dynamic Dispatch). For example:

class A { fn(); }
class B { fn(); }

A a;
B b;

a.fn();

When the system encounters a.fn(), the system calls the function fn() in class A because the object a is of the type A.

Multiple Dispatch (or Multimethods) means that more than one parameter is considered when calling a function. Multiple Dispatch gives mentions some languages the support this feature but I'm only familiar with Groovy, so I found this example by Danno Ferrin where the function chosen depends on the types of the object and function argument.

Double Dispatch is a special case of multiple dispatch (see Double Dispatch) where two parameters are considered and it is often implemented using the Visitor Pattern in single dispatch languages.

References

• Java.Next #3 Dispatch
• Dynamic Dispatch
• Multiple Dispatch
• Groovy and (Dynamic Dispatch|Multiple Dispatch|MultiMethods): A Simpler Example
• Double Dispatch
• Visitor Pattern