ACB.COR@OFFICE-2.ARPA (Alan Bomberger) (09/03/85)
Is the MIX editor written in Turbo? I have a quarrel with whatever medium level language it is written in (at least the CP/M implementation). It seems that the stack is mismanaged so that, should your system run with interrupts enabled, MIX won't work (and other software using the same language,I assume). Seems most likely that the stack pointer is being manipulated via arithmetic and that POPd values are assumed to remain valid. Other possiblity is that small stacks are allocated and interrupts cause these to overflow. Some other explanation? Whatever, MIX is unusable on my system because of interference with interrupts. I am curious what langauge is involved so that I don't waste my money buying it. Other comments about MIX are that it is reasonably powerful. I got it to behave like Magic Wand (my favorite editor) and its macro capability seems very nice (especially for the price). It is, however, VERY slow and VERY large (medium level languages again). Even with tons of overlays only a 16K buffer is left on my 59K Northstar system (Magic Wand leave over 40K). I got it because it handles split screens and was programmable. I will probably use it for those tasks that require those features. Must be a lot better with bigger memories and faster CPU's. Is writing fast, compact, and powerful code a lost art?
ACB.COR@OFFICE-1.ARPA (Alan Bomberger) (10/23/85)
Based on the recent interest in MIX C and Editor, I would like to reask a question I posted earlier. Just after posting I lost my network connection due to a change in address. So I repeat the questions. Sorry if I cause much repeating of answers. Is the MIX editor written in Turbo? I ask because the MIX editor does not run on my system and I want to avoid buying the language that it was written in. Why does it not run you ask? My system runs with interrupts active so that I can have console type ahead. The MIX editor does everything but work with interrupts active. Either the run time code is mismanaging the stack (say by fetching values from the stack "below" the stack pointer) or switching stacks and not leaving room for entries caused by interrupts. I have no trouble if I run without interrupts. I guessed at Turbo because of the strange run time error messages I got about heaps and stacks that printed out when I tried it with interrupts enabled. Other comments about MIX are that it is reasonably powerful. I got it to behave like Magic Wand (my favorite editor) and its macro capability seems very nice (especially for the price). It is, however, VERY slow and VERY large (medium level languages have this problem). Even with tons of overlays only a 16K buffer is left on my 59K Northstar system (Magic Wand leaves over 40K). I got it because it handles split screens and was programmable. I will probably use it for those tasks that require those features. Must be a lot better with bigger memories and faster CPU's. Is writing fast, compact, and powerful code a lost art?
w_smith@wookie.dec.com (Willie Smith, LTN Components Eng.) (08/03/86)
In a previous article, Dick (kodak!gardner) Gardner sang the
praises of the MIX editor ($30 through MIX Software), and I
thought I should give equal time to an opposing view. I bought
the MIX editor about a year ago and had all sorts of problems
with it. A quick look at it with a debugger, and the setting
up of a new stack pointer at the beginning of the program helped
some of the more serious (random) crashes, but I still had some
problems with it. It seemed to crash if you reached the end of
the memory buffer without _manually_ swapping buffers, it took
_forever_ to do a block move, there was no easy way to back up
in large files, and it would occasionally go away at random
times. I have renamed it to the MIXmaster editor and stuffed
it into a drawer somewhere. I called the company to tell them
about my partial fix (the stack pointer) and they denied there
was a problem, treated me like an idiot {I may be one, but I
resent the attitude of 'there couldn't be anything wrong with
_our_ software, dummy'}, and made me call their 'technical'
line (my dime) with my bug report.
Admittedly, this is a (potentially) wonderful program, as
when it was working, it worked really well, I was able to set
it up about halfway between RSX KED and Wordstar, and was very
powerful and extensable. However, unexplained random crashes
and serious problems with large files made me put it aside and
purchase Wordstar...
My system is a (primarily) Compupro S-100 machine running
CP/M 2.2N with (at the time) 64K, 6MHz Z-80, no interrupts, and
2 8 inch floppies.
Willie Smith
UUCP: decwrl!wookie.dec.com!smith
Internet: smith@wookie.dec.com
The opinions above are those of myself, and I have no affiliation
(other than that of a customer) of Compupro, MIX Software, or
Digital Research, whose trademarks appear above.ACB.COR@OFFICE-1.ARPA (Alan Bomberger) (08/17/86)
I must lend my support to the view of Willie Smith, as I too deposited the MIX editor into my lower left hand drawer. My syste uses interrupts and the crashes are not random. I cannot even run the configuration program. I did disable interrupts with a special BIOS and configured MIX. What I found was a powerful but incredibly slow editor. Every operation seemed to require an overlay to be loaded from disk. Furthermore only 8K bytes are available to edit anything. I use Magic Wand and have over 40K bytes resident with all commands resident also. I could not take the performance hit of using MIX in spite of its features (assuming that I could get it to run with interrupts). I am interested in the Stack Fix. Late in responding as I was in AUstralia for a month.