In my latest push to the master branch, I've added a feature update from Sebastian Koslowksi for GRC. Previously, every change to an edit box in a GRC Properties box would cause GRC to reevaluate the entire application to tell you if your entry was right or wrong. If wrong, it would show up immediately in red and turn black when it was correct.
This seems fine, but I've run into two major issues with that behavior. First, certain changes would cause errors that would change the focus in the dialog box. So you would then have to re-click the edit box to enter what you wanted to in the first place. The second problem was that you could find yourself in the midst of typing a Python function, like, say, editing a filter definition, that would incur a huge calculation only because you weren't finished typing. GRC immediately tries to run the calculation and causes everything to freeze. Both very annoying when they happen to you.
Sebastian's tweak is to change from on-change to remove-focus. Basically, now, when you edit a field, the field label turns blue to indicate a change, but it doesn't try to run anything until you've removed the focus by tabbing to or clicking on another box in the properties list. It then evaluates it and produces any error messages.
I personally like this new method a lot. The downside is that if you aren't paying attention, you might enter the wrong thing and hit ok or enter only to find out then that you made an error and will have to reopen the properties box to fix it. I see the upside to this behavior as beneficial to this downside. But I think that Sebastian and I would appreciate thoughts on this or alternative ways to handle things.
Thanks,
Tom