[SJAAboard] Version1.1 of Auction program completed

[Rob Hawley]

The 2008 edition of the auction program is completed.  This fixes a list of
bugs and improvements from our use last year.  The program was again tested
on all of the auctions since 1986, a large auction scenario, and a number of
other scenarios to test fixed and unusual donations.  I did not feel that
anything changed enough to warrant a full manual test.

This year I can not make a pretext of this working on Win98.  I needed to
change the development environment since my development machine is now
Vista.  The Vista compatible environment only supports Vista and XP SP 2.
Sorry Gary.  I was all set to test this on Win98, but can not.

Here is the revised spec.  Text in Blue are additions or changes from the
previous version

http://www.sjaa.net/rh/Auction11.pdf



This is what changed this year.  I did not have to modify the
database/computation engine so most of these changes are just user
interface.  If this is not very readable since it is plain text then you can
look at the formatted list in the PDF.

Bugs

1.	Could not delete bidder with no registered items. I used the wrong
bidder number when I registered some items.  I corrected this error using
the Edit Items to change the seller to the correct bidder number.  That all
worked correctly.  I should have then been able to delete the bidder created
with the wrong number.  I could not. 
2.	Restore Problem A $0.01 max donation did not restore correctly 
3.	Incomplete Spreadsheets produced. The program produced the
spreadsheets even though a bidder was in the "checkout required" state.  The
old rule was not to include bidders in the "checkout required" state.  He
was in this state because the sale of one of his items was changed and the
program is super conservative. It did warn me that the user's state was
going to change and that it had changed. 
4.	Verify that $0 donations operate correctly.  All other cases that
used non-standard max donations worked correctly, except for the restore
problem. 
5.	Verify fixed donations. Checked that fixed donations can be greater
than calculated.  Deleting copies with fixed donations did not work. See
what happens when fixed donation > sale price. Insure that the global
donation stats are not corrupted by fixed donations.

Feature Changes

1.	Show Max Donation Value on Sell Item Window 
2.	Make a list for items that did not sell.  I need to add another item
state for items that did not sell.  What I did during the auction was to
cancel the sales attempt.  That did not provide us with a list of which
items had never been offered.  The Sell Item window needs a button for
marking "Not Sold". 
3.	Handling of Multiple Checkouts.  The current design for printing
modified receipts assumes that the person has already settled the previous
receipt with the treasurer.  It provides a delta to whatever payments
occurred settling the previous receipt.  What happened several times was
that the second receipt was generated before settling with the treasurer.
The correct figures were there, but not obvious.  A checkbox is needed in
the checkout to say whether the previous receipts were settled (current
design) or whether they should be printed as original receipts. 
4.	Relabel the "Total" Column to be "Payment" in reports 
5.	Don't use the sign convention on the receipts.  When this is an
incremental receipt, the signed number convention is used for previous
payments.  This needs to be replaced with explicit We paid them or you paid
us 
6.	The sign convention for payments must explicitly appear on all
reports and the spreadsheets. It is too confusing in reports to remember
whether negative numbers mean the bidder owes SJAA or the bidder will
receive proceeds.  
7.	Disable Mass Checkout feature. In 2007 mass checkout did not work
very well since the original design also printed all of the receipts.
Printing took a long time. We have disabled this feature, but left the code
in place in case.

8.	New report for Treasurer The reports that exist are useful to me.
For you I think the best answer is to do as you suggest provide a check type
register with deposits and withdrawals.

Bidder	name		Bidder	SJAA
   #                      owes       owes

11. Zoom the print previews so they are easy to read

Documentation and/or RTFM issues

All comments refer to 12/29/06 version of the spec

1.	Bidder Number window not labeled. The spec describes the Sell Items
Window starting on page 14. The spec does not explicitly state that the text
box next to the Copy number is for entering bidder numbers.
2.	The Sell Item Window is a large window which covered the main window
on the hardware I was using.
3.	Enter Key works only when clicking on a button. The user uses the
tab key to move between fields. Using the tab like this is a convention
going back to mainframes. It is in accordance with the Windows user
interface.  The Enter key is only used to fully accept a transaction (just
like ESC is used to cancel a transaction). This rule insures the transaction
is complete before being accepted. Nothing in the spec specifically states
that the User Interface works this way, which needs to be changed.
4.	Provide Examples of all "Show" reports



Rob Hawley