csfred@violet.berkeley.edu.berkeley.edu (/violet_e/csfred) (06/05/86)
>>>[ from Dave, the President of Living VideoText ] >>> >>>2) There is a bug in the Apple ROMs - and we've trapped it - and fixed it. >>>Version 1.3 will be available at no charge to registered users using Mac+ >>>just for the asking. >>> >> > >Altsys, makers of FONTastic (and the new Fontographer) are sending out a note >with their Mac+ compatible releases, that states there is a memory management >bug in the new ROMs. The effect is that memory is not freed or reclaimed >until the application quits. I'd be really interested in reading exactly what the note says. I called Altsys to find out what it said, but the two people I talked to didn't know anything about the note. I'm currently writing a Postscript Interpreter for the Mac that makes a LOT of calls to NewHandle, HLock, HUnlock, GetHandleSize, SetHandleSize, and DisposHandle. Memory is constantly being allocated and deallocated. In writing the application, I've also spent quite a bit of time cruising around the heap in TMON to make sure handles are the right size, are pointing at the right data, etc. I'd be pretty confident to say that on my MacPlus, memory is being freed and reclaimed. So if anyone has the note from Altsys, or knows specifically what the memory management bug is, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks, Fred A. Huxham Advanced Workstation Consultant - UCB
briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (06/10/86)
>>>>2) There is a bug in the Apple ROMs - and we've trapped it - and fixed it. >>>>Version 1.3 will be available at no charge to registered users using Mac+ >>>>just for the asking. >>>Oh. That's good -- you fixed it. What bug? Does Apple know about it? >>>If not, mind telling us so we can fix it too? I'm a Mac programmer >>>and I'd like to know about this. >>Altsys, makers of FONTastic (and the new Fontographer) are sending out a note >>with their Mac+ compatible releases, that states there is a memory management >>bug in the new ROMs. The effect is that memory is not freed or reclaimed >>until the application quits. >I'd be really interested in reading exactly what the note says. I called >Altsys to find out what it said, but the two people I talked to didn't >know anything about the note. OK, well, memory is a tricky thing. There IS a note of a bug from Altsys, but it does not involve MEMORY management, but DISK management. The note is the first item of the Version 2.6 FONTastic release notes, and is herewith re- produced in full: *FONTastic has been changed to work with the Macintosh Plus, which uses a different method of managing fonts. Due to an error in the Mac Plus ROM, temporary disk space is not reclaimed until an application quits. If running with a very small amount of free disk space, it may be necessary to Quit FONTastic after editing each font to reclaim the space used by FONTastic's temporary font file. The temporary font file uses as much disk space as the font being edited and is placed onto the startup disk. This bug does not exist on current Macintosh 128K or 512K systems. Upon rereading this, my response is "OK, so there's a bug, why not just DELETE the temporary file after editing each font and start over? Or is THAT the bug?" Anyway, now you know exactly as much as I do about this. -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc.