Problems during group renaming/changing in some cases

[claell]

Is your suggestion for improvement related to a problem? Please describe.
When I rename a group, I am asked whether I want all old entries to that group. However, the old group name remains assigned to this group.

Describe the solution you'd like
I had expected that the old group gets removed from the entries, at least an option for that should be provided.

Additional context

[ThiloteE]

Edit: I now CAN Cannot reproduce. See #8824 (comment)

JabRef 5.7--2022-05-16--6a2332f
Linux 5.4.0-110-generic amd64
Java 18.0.1
JavaFX unknown

Maybe you have run into an index out of bounds issue and then the UI will depict weird stuff?
I would suggest to restart JabRef whenever you run into an index out of bounds issue.

[claell]

Hm, interesting. Not sure whether that is what happened. I'll do some other tests, then.

[claell]

Just tried again and couldn't reproduce, either. I think, I experienced this problem already before. So it was not the first time, I ran into it.

What do you mean with "the UI will depict weird stuff"? That did not happen to me. Possibly, I got an exception that I ignored. But I am not confident that it was an index out of bounds exception.

I'll leave this open for a few more days in case I run into this again. At least, it seems clear that this behavior is not normal (so no need for improvement).

[ThiloteE]

See e.g. issues #8012 and #8527 for "weird stuff"

• 8012 will probably (hopefully) be fixed soon. There is a pull request in the pipeline
• 8527 seems quite complicated and would require some more debugging I guess.

In general: As far as I understand it, if there is an out of bounds syntax error (which are somehow connected to the bi-directional binding), the UI will either depict an old state as compared to what you entered or it will depict a new state, but on disc there is still old data. So you can't trust what is shown on the UI. If you get one, restart JabRef, the best thing you can do.

Of course, right now, we don't know if it was an index out of bounds issue. I was just speculating.

[claell]

From what you describe, that is not what happened to me.

I saw this looking at the .bib file itself. So the old category was still in there.

[ThiloteE]

refs #8826

[ThiloteE]

I assume you renamed groups by right clicking on a group and choosing "edit"?

[claell]

Yes, that is how I renamed the group.

[ThiloteE]

I can now reproduce:

1. Create group.

   • Name group 1.
   • Choose "Collect by" with Explicit selection.
   • Add entry to this group.
     Resulting data in {}biblatex source tab: groups = {1},

2. Edit group. Change "Collect by" to Searching for a keyword. Example:
   
   Add old entries to this group.
   Resulting data in {}biblatex source tab: groups = {1, 2},

Desired result:

groups = {2},

[ThiloteE]

It also works the other way round:

Do the same thing, except

1. first choose "Collect by" with Searching for a keyword
2. then edit to "Collect by" with Explicit selection