[net.micro.atari16] Atariwriter Plus Bugs

wrd@tekigm2.UUCP (05/22/86)

Originally I send an abbreviated form of this letter to Neil Harris (neil
@ atari) but have not been able to get an answer so am now putting it on
the net in an expanded version.

*****************************************************************************

Neil Harris or anyone else on the net:
Are you aware of a bugs in the first version of Atariwriter+ that was sold?
I bought one of the first copies in the plain white and black envelope.  It has
several bugs, one of which is fatal.  
1) it does not consistently recognize the control E for ending a page.  You
   must do repeated c/r's and control E's before it will go to next page.  I
   often do this to insert blank pages in text for photographs and it is
   annoying to have to add more than one control E.
2) the fatal bug is its's incorrectly handling of text longer than one page
   long.  It should go onto the next page, instead it takes the last few lines
   and places them at the top of the same page, clobbering commands and the
   first few lines.  I do not know whether it has anything to do with control
   T, control B or control Y.  I suspect, however, that it is tied in with the
   control E problem mentioned above.  The end result is that you have to hand
   end every page in a long document.  Sometimes control T or B works fine,
   then the next thing you know it causes the program to partially crash.
   When it crashes then condition 3) occurs and other commands also seem
   to go away.
3) one final bug, it occasionally loses the ability to save a file.  You can
   sometimes get out of this with a RESET, but usually you must reload AW+ and
   if you did not already make a backup, you have lost your file.  I have not
   yet been able to figure out what causes the save command to go away.  It
   also looses other commands at times [see 2) above].

The net result of this is that I am quite unhappy with laying out $50 for AW+
and having these quite fatal bugs in it.  Are these bugs known to Atari and is
there a fix or can I obtain a new disk, with the errors fixed?

Thanks in advance,

William Dippert
tektronix!tekigm2!wrd

neil@atari.UUcp (Neil Harris) (05/25/86)

In article <696@tekigm2.UUCP>, wrd@tekigm2.UUCP (Bill Dippert) writes:
> Originally I send an abbreviated form of this letter to Neil Harris (neil
> @ atari) but have not been able to get an answer

It is probably my fault, but my mail to some people keeps getting returned
by the malificent mailer daemon.  You'd think if it can get to me, the reply
function will get it back to you, but in about 50% of the replies it does
not. <sigh>

> Are you aware of a bugs in the first version of Atariwriter+ that was sold?
> 1) it does not consistently recognize the control E for ending a page.
> 2) the fatal bug is its's incorrectly handling of text longer than one page
>    long.
> 3) one final bug, it occasionally loses the ability to save a file.
> 
> The net result of this is that I am quite unhappy with laying out $50
> and having these quite fatal bugs in it.

None of these problems should be occuring.  There is either something wrong
with your copy of AW+, or something funny about your hardware.  Please send
me your AW+ disk so we can examine it, and I will send you a replacement.

Send to:

   Atari Corp.
   1196 Borregas Ave.
   Sunnyvale, CA 94086
   Attn: Neil Harris