VintageMachinery.org Bug Reports and Improvement Requests

Bug Reports¶

• 2014-03-01 - Something is broken in Emerson Electric's Photo Index. The "Filter results by Machine Type" dropdown does not have the correct list of machine types in it.
  

• 2014-03-01 - Non-US patents don't have their country-code prefix displayed (nor do US patents, but US patents should be the default, same as on datamp.org.)
  Example (out-of-order patent numbers are actually Canadian patents. Datamp.org has a list of patent country codes that are currently in datamp. This list changes, but only rarely.
• 2014-03-01 - Patent lists don't display UTF-8 characters properly. Example. (UPDATE 2016-12-29: This issue appears to have been FIXED. UPDATE 2024-03-01: This issue is back and has been for a while now.)
• 2014-03-01 - Patent lists don't display non-US locations properly. Example.
  

• 2014-03-01 - (updated Occasional bug when editing a Photo Index entry where the first picture (sometimes all of them) disappears and the entry can no longer be edited. THIS IS JEFF'S #1 MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE!! It is related to using the browser's Back button. Regular users can learn to avoid it but new visitors are still hitting this bug. I know that considerable effort has been expended already in trying to fix this problem. It would be helpful if this bug were made non-fatal—currently the page cannot display if an image link is invalid. It would be better if the page displayed successfully, minus the missing image(s), so that the error can be fixed by re-uploading the image(s).
  

• 2014-03-03 - RSS page feeds are not listing all entries, only the last update. Example
• 2014-03-03 - The e-mail notification when a page is updated isn't working.
  

  Email Notifications

  
  

• 2014-03-27 - Search box does not work, returns "An error has occurred, the page requested can not be displayed."
  

Enhancement Requests¶

• Prevent deletion of publication uploads—A member petulantly deleted all their Photo Index and Publications and then deleted their account. People should have the right to delete Photo Index entries, but not Publications. (Changing this will create an issue when an account is deleted. Perhaps we need a catch-all user account that gets assigned any Publication or Photo Index entries belonging to an account that someone is trying to delete.)
  

• 2015-01-27 - The two expansions that seen most logical are:
  1) The addition of handheld power tools (DONE!)
  2) The addition of European manufacturers (Sweden has been added)
  

• 2015-01-31
  

  Articles Page

  A new page category set up similar to the WIKI page format but using HTML. This would allow us to add longer articles and pages from WIKI that are specific to a manufacturer. A file storage page accessible to historians would also be necessary to store the images used.
  

• 2014-12-14 - I'm not sure the Manufacturers Index Home Page is really necessary. Perhaps any links to this page should be directed to the home page with the Manufacturers Index side-tab selected. Failing that, the current Manufactures Index Home page needs a makeover. The abbreviations section should be deleted. Text and graphics should be updated. Joel and Jeff can provide new text.
  

• 2014-03-01 - A box to enter a mfgid and get the corresponding WebPage would be very helpful when I am troubleshooting Datamp-VM links.
• 2014-03-01 - It would be nice to reposition the Manufacturers Index Admin Tools section closer to the top of the page. After scrolling down a couple of thousand times, it gets to be a pain (in the index finger).
  

• 2014-03-01 - A Datamp link-troubleshooting page would be helpful. It should have a total of the number of patents currently linked to VM and a list of manufacturers that have patents linked to them with the current number of patents linked opposite each manufacturer.
  

• 2014-03-03 -A series of report pages would be helpful.
  ● Companies with no descriptions
  ● Companies with no product listings
  ● Companies with no machine info
  ● Companies with no publication reprints
  ● Companies with no photo index
  ● Companies with no machine registry
  ● Companies with no images
  ● Companies with no patents
  ● Companies with no classified ads
  

• 2014-03-04 - It would be nice to have thumbnail images and show Machine Types, the same as the Photo Images Page.
  

  Thumbnail Images

  
  

• 2014-03-01 - MfgIndex alphabetical list. Ungainly, yes, but some people expect this and assume the "Manufacturers Quick List" has everything when it only has a small fraction of the complete list. The list could be set up by first letters and should include a current total of the number of manufacturers and their mfgid's.
  

• 2014-03-01 - Multiple names per MfgIndex entry. This is a big, big change and requires careful thought, but right now we have a problem that when, say, a new Photo Index entry is added for a "Pryibil Machine Co." lathe, it would go under "P. Pryibil". It would be nice if the MfgIndex entries for First & Pryibil and P. Pryibil could be combined and then when a new Photo Index or Publication or Image entry is added, the entry is associated with one of "First & Pryibil", "P. Pryibil" or "Pryibil Machine Co." Where it gets complicated is when there is not a tidy A-->B-->C relationship between company names. For example, Red Star Products and Porter-Cable were both bought by Rockwell; Red Star became part of Delta but P-C didn't, and then both were sold to Pentair.
  

• 2014-03-01 - A few companies have hard-to-search-for names. E.g., C. & C. Electric Motor Co., especially when you only know the "C. & C." part. There should be a better way to find these entries. For example, we could just have a page listing the hard-to-search-for names.
  

• 2020-02-27 - Improved text on first page of "Submit Photo Index". Suggested text:
  

Please Read Before Submitting Photos:

DO NOT submit photos of machines that you are only trying to sell. Violators of this rule will have their submissions deleted.

Things you MAY upload:

- Wood working machinery

- Metal working machinery

- Steam and gas engines

- Electric motors

- Water wheels and turbines

- Animal power apparatus

- Woodworking & metalworking vises

- Woodworking & metalworking hand powered tools

Things you MAY NOT upload:

- Machines not in the list above

- Things you are trying to sell

- Machine manufactured anywhere outside Canada, Mexico, USA and the UK.

Examples of items that we DO NOT cover include hand tools and agricultural equipment. Any photo submissions of such items will be deleted.

• 2014-03-03 - Allow Administrators to add Machine Types to drop down list.
  

• 2020-02-27 - Either there should be a separate MfgIndex entry category for electric motor manufacturers, or else the "steam and gas engines" category should be renamed to "Propulsion Apparatus".
  

• 2014-03-01 - Photo Images can not be transferred between manufacturers the way that photos can.
  

• 2014-03-01 - On the Image Pages, make the entry boxes longer and the Description Box larger. It is difficult to copy from short boxes that don't show the whole entry. When trying to correct a mistake in the Description, it's difficult to find the mistake by scrolling through the entry when only a small section of it is visible.
  

• 2014-03-01 - It would be helpful to have 6 image boxes instead of 3.
  

Deleting MfgIndex Entries

• 2015-07-15 - When an historian deletes an MfgIndex page, the code should first check whether there are any Photo Index entries, Images entries, Publications, or Machine Registry entries. If there are then the delete should fail with an error message.
  

• 2014-03-01 - Patent lists should display first image rather than the description field. Because some manufacturers patent lists are quite long, a Show Thumbnails box similar to the ones on the Photo Images pages, to turn the images on or off would be helpful.
  

• 2014-03-01 - Patent lists currently display multiple inventors in multiple table rows, which looks confusing. I would much prefer having all the inventors listed in the same row, or even just displaying an ellipsis after the first name. Locations would have to be concatenated or ellipsis'd as well.
  

• 2014-03-04 - Allow Administrators to delete publication listings that were uploaded and subsequently deleted before being appoved.
  

• 2014-03-01 - The Description URL Links don’t show up as Hyperlinks in the RSS feed.
  

• 2014-05-09 - It would be nice if the RSS feeds were changed from new additions to recent changes. That way the feed would reflect updates to histories and images in addition to new entries.
  

Typos¶