Progress! Executive summary: if your students are losing their test results window, tell them to stop minimising it.
Quoth Robby Findler: > On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Don Blaheta <dblah...@monm.edu> wrote: > > This reminds me of a related problem my students often run into: losing > > the test case results. Â They see it because they all tend to maximise > > the main window, so if they don't close or dock the test case window it > > gets hidden, and it doesn't resurface the next time they click Run.[0] Â So > > they get confused as to why "none of the test cases are failing". Â I've > > learned that when they say this I need to look for the *absence* of the > > phrase "All X tests passed!" in the interactions, which means there were > > *some* failures and I have to go hunting for the window. > > > > I wouldn't want to see the test case window be sticky and impossible to > > send to the back, but it would be nice if it always came to front when > > you click Run and there are some failures. > > > > [0]Well, not always. Â Sometimes the window resurfaces, and I don't know > > why. Â Usually not. > > Sorry for the long delay in getting to this. > > I'm not sure if this has been fixed already, but when I try this with > simple programs I see the window reappearing every time and, as far as > I can tell, there should not be any race-conditions or anything like > that (at least I don't see anything suspicious in that direction). I'm glad you prodded on this, because I just did some experimenting and discovered that I had misattributed the problem---the problem was not that they had maximised the main Racket window, but that they had *minimised* the test results window. Here are the steps to reproduce: Open DrRacket. Type (check-expect 4 5) in the definitions pane Click Run or hit Ctrl-T Click the button on the test results window to minimise it (undock it first if necessary). Click Run or hit Ctrl-T again Interactions pane goes straight to prompt (without reporting on passing/failing tests); test results window stays minimised. This behaviour is OS-dependent; I see the issue on 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 in Windows 7 (can't test 5.1 there, sorry), but I do *not* see the issue on any of 5.0.1, 5.0.2, or 5.1 on Mac. This explains why it seemed intermittent---not every student was minimising the window (but most were). -- -=-Don Blaheta-=-dblah...@monm.edu-=-=-<http://www.monmsci.net/~dblaheta/>-=- Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, monsieur, but we're out of no cream. How about with no milk?" _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
