Hello,

I installed this module in the very end of the dev stage of a website. I've been carefully ordering the fields in the normal 'Manage fields' section of some 20 content types. Now with this module enabled, it throws around the order of several fields in every content type. I'm re-ordering all of them now, but it would be great if I wouldn't need to to that by default.

Cheers,
Danny

Comments

Danny_Joris’s picture

Apart from that, I think this module is excellent and it will be in every website I build, now that Rubik supports it.

Francewhoa’s picture

Confirming this issue with Drupal Open Atrium https://community.openatrium.com/issues/node/811#comment-9110

mikebell_’s picture

Confirmed. It would be great if by default it didn't touch the setup of any existing content types.

voxpelli’s picture

You mean that Node Form Columns doesn't default to the CCK order but instead does something completely random and unexpectable?

Would be great if you instead of just confirming the symptoms also could elaborate on what the core issue to solve might be :)

mikebell_’s picture

When you enable the module it shifts the following fieldsets into the right hand column:

Menu settings
Authoring Information
Revisions information
Publishing options
URL path settings
Comment settings

Ideally when you enable the module it shouldn't move any fields/fieldsets into the right area. The default should be to keep everything in the main column and then let the user/admin move stuff as needed. This would be especially helpful when working on sites with a large amount of content types as then users wouldn't have to move all those fields back into the main column.

voxpelli’s picture

Category: bug » feature

Then it's not a bug report - since that is a feature and it's not obvious that it's a bad one. I understand your side of it though - this might need some reconsideration.

mikebell_’s picture

My personal opinion is to let the user decide what to change rather than having defaults setup. This can be quite destructive if enabled on a production site (I know it's not ideal but some people don't have the luxury of dev/stage). Overall it's a really useful module.

On a tangent would you be interested in a patch for left column support?

AaronBauman’s picture

digital006: I noticed weird behavior on a site in which i installed some Features modules, which included strongarm'ed nodeformscols variables.
Here's what happens: when the feature gets exported, it exports field weights for any exported fields, and the weights are all positive values.
When any new fields get added to the content type - either cck or other moduels - they get the default weight, 0.
This causes them to appear in the second position from the top, or some other random spot based on their order in cck ordering, which doesn't correspond to the actual values assigned by the content type's nodeformcols settings via strongarm.

So, there are a number of things that could be done to work around this issue.
One would be to have nodeformcols use negative values for field weights.
Then, when new fields come into the form, they sink down to the bottom.

A different approach would be to update nodeformcols so that if the fields setting (in variables or strongarm) doesn't contain entries for all the fields on the node form, then the setting simply isn't used to order the form at all.

Anyway, i'm not too familiar with the guts of nodeformcols or what these changes would imply, but I suspect that digital006 is having a similar issue.
Anyone using a distribution like Open Atrium or Drupal Commons would probably experience the same issue, since they're heavily features-based.

asherry’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Updating all 6.x tickets as they are no longer supported. Feel free to re-open, I will commit any needed patches still.