[Flem72]

I don't understand why the entirety of fields made available for bid descriptions can not be utilized--I get half way across the field and the software stops accepting text.
Is there a workaround?

[mycroft]

the "space" is illusory - your limit is the character length of the field. If you're writing "wwwwwwwww", it'll run off the edge, whereas if your comment is more like "iiiiiiii", there might be lots of space at the end of the line, but if the line is 8 characters long, you've hit your limit both ways.

It is frustrating that the line lengths chosen are so small; I assume they are stored full-fixed-length, so they had to choose lengths that work 95% of the time. Unfortunately, with 30 of those fields, it's very likely that one of them is too short on every card - but a different one on each card.

[Flem72]

mycroft, on 2021-February-04, 09:24, said:

the "space" is illusory - your limit is the character length of the field. If you're writing "wwwwwwwww", it'll run off the edge, whereas if your comment is more like "iiiiiiii", there might be lots of space at the end of the line, but if the line is 8 characters long, you've hit your limit both ways.

It is frustrating that the line lengths chosen are so small; I assume they are stored full-fixed-length, so they had to choose lengths that work 95% of the time. Unfortunately, with 30 of those fields, it's very likely that one of them is too short on every card - but a different one on each card.

Interesting. So what's wrong with providing a large number of allowed characters so that folks can utilize all of it and trim if they run over? or am I missing something about the natrue of fixed character length fields?

[mycroft]

CHAR(N) vs VARCHAR(N). I assume that, for reasons of speed, ease and type of database 30 years ago, or because these are all internal blocks in a C structure, these fields are fixed length. The problem with fixed length fields is that all that space is used up, every time, even if you write nothing into it. Thus the "30 fields, all of which have to be long enough for most entries, even though in a majority of them it will be zero-length" problem.

The other problem, that applies even if they do use variable-length fields, is that in order to have enough characters to fit a very narrow text (or many suit symbols, each of which "costs" two characters), there will be more people who have more normal-width explanations, that will run off the end, and either they will complain "why can I enter something that can't be shown?" or their opponents will complain "why can't I read what they wrote?"

Writing as a programmer who has to deal with C's lovely attitude to characters and structs (though I normally write in Python these days) and various SQLs only, not anyone with access to the BBO code.

[paulg]

I suspect this is an old piece of code, and associated storage, that would be difficult to change now without impacting other parts of the code. And it is not a priority at the moment.

[barmar]

The CC is stored as an XML file, there's no limit there on the size of fields there. These limits are entirely in the design of the CC form, and I think it was intended to prevent the contents of a field overflowing the area allotted for it on the screen. As mycroft points out, some letters are wider than others, so a conservative approach was taken.

[morecharac]

Flem72, on 2021-February-04, 08:39, said:

I don't understand why the entirety of fields made available for bid descriptions can not be utilized--I get half way across the field and the software stops accepting text.
Is there a workaround?

I think your question is about the CC that looks like the convention card found on the back of ACBL scoresheets. My answer's based on that.

One of the more experienced players found the workaround for me.

Go to Convention Cards in Account.

Select BBO Advanced (2/1=GF).

Erase everything that's there.

Now you have large fields available where you can write descriptions the way you want, within reason. Keep in mind that even if you enter linebreaks when you're typing, they won't appear in the CC that's saved; I use pipes to separate calls in the same field.

Hopefully this helps.