All's well

No further trouble; but whereas the UI at first showed your transfer as: 35 blocks 01/02/2009 16:25 Received with: !Me 1CHE5JRfc5mr8ZtVUP7nnsS5HC4bWcXoc6 +100.00 it now (the morning after) shows: 98 blocks 01/02/2009 16:25 Received with: Satoshi Nakamoto 1CHE5JRfc5mr8ZtVUP7nnsS5HC4bWcXoc6 +100.00 Regards, Nicholas

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote:

I hadn't touched "Change" in case of bungling something. When I did, it showed your name against what I took to be my address - some sort of default? By playing I see that I can have multiple addresses with different names; and if the idea is to use them to distinguish the origin of payments, I could of course name each with the name of the person I intend to give it to for payment purposes. This seems a bit uncertain, though - presumably if I give person A my address for payments, nothing stops them giving it to Person B; and then I'll think payments from Person B are from Person A. Or have I missed something? I need to figure out some way to convey that it's showing the address you received it with, in just one or two words Maybe: "Receiving address: " "Incoming address: " Or the way e-mail programs do it: "To: " "Recipient: " Which one do you think would work best, or is it just too much to overcome the predisposition to expect it to say who it's from no matter what it's labelled? This would probably work best: "From: unknown, To: Your Address 1cc...." or "From: anonymous, To: Your Address 1cc...." Please treat my comments with caution, as my grasp of Bitcoin is pretty superficial, to put it mildly; but I hope naive comments may still be useful. My preference is "From: unknown, to: your address 1cc...." I prefer "unknown" because I assume the system truly does not know the source; "anonymous" suggests that it was the choice of the sender to conceal their name. I would see some merit in keeping the record of well understood operations like receipts and payments on a separate page from the record of generation and maturity, which are operations quite different from those of ordinary bank accounts. (There could be separate tabs in the one pane, for example. Receipts and payments could have separate columns for the amount, like many conventional bank statements.) Is it useful to keep forever lines such as: 0/unconfirmed 02/02/2009 04:21 Generated (not accepted) 0.00 ? And I was initially baffled by legends like: 97 blocks 02/02/2009 19:23 Generated (50.00 matures in 23 blocks) because I thought that if it required 23 blocks to mature and I already had 97, it ought surely to be mature already. (I worked it out in due course; but I would have understood at once if it had said "matures in 23 more blocks".) No doubt in due course a User Guide and FAQ will tackle a lot of things like this. Regards, Nicholas

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote:

No, I truly hadn't clicked the "Change" button until after I got your payment and read your remarks. As you know, I first found it reading "!Me"; I then clicked "Change" and found your name against my address; I then went back to the main screen, and found your name instead of "!Me". So something odd is happening. I think I know what happened: if you copied the address, thinking it was my address, and entered it into your address book, it would have changed the label for your address. The entry would have failed to show up in the address book. I need to make it check the address when you enter a new address in the address book and if it's yours, give an error explaining it's one of yours. No, I'm sure that isn't what I did. The address labelling feature is inherently confusing. I've only stuck with it because it would be a necessity in advanced scenarios, but as an advanced feature it isn't really needed until much later. I'm thinking I'll hide it, at least for now. Let it be simple for as long as possible. Yes, I agree - keep it simple and see what enhancements are demanded. I'm still wavering between: "Received with address 18cc..." and "From: unknown, To: 18cc..." But if "Received with: (something) 18cc..." left 2 out of 2 people thinking the address was the sender's address, then "Received with address 18cc..." might not be different enough to overpower the natural expectation to see the sender's address there. What do you think? From/To still better? To me it does, yes. This seems a bit uncertain, though - presumably if I give person A my address for payments, nothing stops them giving it to Person B; and then I'll think payments from Person B are from Person A. Or have I missed something? True for e-mail, maybe less so when paying a bill. For instance, "send 9.95 to 18cc... to activate your account" or "please make payment for this invoice to 18cc...". Yes, I can see the tracking works well there. Perhaps a Bitcoin netiquette will develop in which you treat a payment address I give you as setting up your account with me, which you don't want other people paying into (though perhaps the incentive is the other way, as you potentially benefit if they do). Please treat my comments with caution, as my grasp of Bitcoin is pretty superficial, to put it mildly; but I hope naive comments may still be useful. No, that's exactly what I need, it's very helpful. I don't know how someone who doesn't already know all about Bitcoin will interpret things. You only get once chance to see how something looks for the first time, and I already spent all of mine. True; and I think I can remain clueless for quite a while. BTW, did you figure out that you could doubleclick on a transaction to open a details window? No, a nice touch, especially if in due course the details become context-sensitive. I did try right-clicking, to see if that would get me a chance to delete the failed items, which I find mildly irritating. but I would have understood at once if it had said "matures in 23 more blocks".) Good idea, definitely an improvement. Perhaps we should try a payment by me to you, if you would let me have an address. I would be interested to see how it works if the payment is not bc50 or a multiple, for example. Regards, Nicholas

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote:

No, I'm sure I didn't. BTW, did you figure out that you could doubleclick on a transaction to open a details window? No, a nice touch, especially if in due course the details become context-sensitive. I did try right-clicking, to see if that would get me a chance to delete the failed items, which I find mildly irritating. Despite the similarities to an e-mail program, it's not obvious to doubleclick on transactions. There's no critical info in there so it's fine for now. I hadn't thought of the context menu, I'll plan to use that in the future. Perhaps we should try a payment by me to you, if you would let me have an address. I would be interested to see how it works if the payment is not bc50 or a multiple, for example. Sure, it's 1GtkM4wviwohP192tec9g83hd9X5qtbk9j I'll send back +0.01 as a confirmation. Fine, I'll give it a try. It looks just the same with any amount. If you want to see more details of what's going on internally, run it as bitcoin -debug and it'll show a debug print with the transaction details. It basically selects the closest combination of coins to the amount and writes a transaction with the change going back to yourself. I uploaded bc015a.rar with the changes we've been discussing to: http://www.upload.ae/file/14702/bc015a-rar.html I'm going to release 0.1.5 soon. I'll look out for it. Regards, Nicholas

Just to say the sending seemed very straightforward, as was the resulting entry. And when you get used to the double-click, it's actually simpler than a right-click and selecting from a menu. So perhaps it's just a matter of user guidance. Regards, Nicholas