opening a set of files, they open in random order

[zeira]

Every Sunday I open a set of six jpeg or tiff files (it doesn’t matter what format).

Regardless of the order I select them (hey are all in the same subfolder), they open in random order, never the same from one week to another.

The names of the files contain the dates they were created - from Monday to Saturday, for example today is November 15th, so the filename contains the following: 201115, etc.

That way I know the order of opened files is random and different from one week to another, even if I select them in the same order or not.

That should not happen, and it is a bug in the program.

[Chris B]

This is not a bug per se, as we program the app to open the files that would open the quickest first. It has not been programmed to open them in the order you requested so this is an improvement. I totally agree though that the preferred behaviour would be the order in which the user requires.

 

[zeira]

10 hours ago, Chris B said:

This is not a bug per se, as we program the app to open the files that would open the quickest first. It has not been programmed to open them in the order you requested so this is an improvement. I totally agree though that the preferred behaviour would be the order in which the user requires.

 

I tend to disagree!

I did an exercise to check the validity of your statement, I selected six files opened them and wrote down the order they were opened.

I closed all six files.

I repeated the above four times, and had four different order of files opened:

A) 5-3-4-2-1-6

B) 4-6-1-3-5-2

C) 1-2-3-4-5-6 only by a chance!

D)1-2-3-4-6-5

That simply disproves your theory.

Also, in my opinion files not opened in the requested order is not an improvement, it’s exactly the contrary, especially when the order of opened files is totally random without any logic whatsoever.

I have a reason why I want to open those six files in the order requested.

Those files are snapshots of Sudoku problems from the digital form of my daily newspaper, having all of them almost the same size, from 984x988 to 986x992 pixels.

So, I think that is a bug in the program.

 

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, zeira said:

That simply disproves your theory.

Or, perhaps you misinterpreted what Chris meant

What I think occurs:

1. You ask to open 6 files.
2. Affinity spawns 6 OS threads to do the work, allowing each thread to operate in parallel.
3. The threads that complete quickest display their files in the user interface.

In my theory, step 2 is the "programmed the app to open the files that would open quickest first." But it's not done by Affinity figuring out which will open first. It's done by letting the operating system open them, and letting them finish in the order determined by which opened first, second, etc.

And yes, this gives a random order as far as the user can see, but that does not mean the statement was incorrect. It's still programmed so the fastest ones appear first, but "fastest" is not guaranteed to be consistent or stable. Every time it could be different, based on OS and device considerations.

Others have asked for an improvement in this area, but it's not a bug; just a design that could be better.

[zeira]

This makes no sense at all, I mean the random opening of files, not the comment.

I’ve never had any application doing such a thing, this needs improvement.

[Chris B]

Just to clarify zeira, I agree that we should be opening in the order that you request them or do a better job of how it is currently. The reason it is not a bug is because there's no code to tell it exactly what to do—so it isn't broken. It's more of a missing feature or an improvement we need to make. This has been mentioned over the years numerous times.