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
wrd@tekigm2.UUCP (Bill Dippert) (08/28/86)
I have had several eMail conversations with Neil Harris on this, but I would like to get some support from other users of Atariwriter Plus. The problem that I have been experiencing, which I think is a fatal bug, is that on multipage documents AW+ does not correctly execute the page break. This is either a soft page break or control-E hard page break. Instead of breaking the text and placing it on the next page, it recycles it and inserts it at the top of the page (inserting it with the correct text for that area). I think that it might be related to L and R margins, but I have had it happen with the default margins, as well as when I have modified the margins. Neil and Atari Corp. were told of this problem by myself about six months ago but I have not heard what they have found out. I suspect that Atari is too busy designing new products (particularly 16 bit ST line) to fool with this problem. It is resolvable, by inserting multiple Control-E and C/R commands you can force a normal page break. But this is a pain and should not be needed -- I do not remember ever having the problem with the original AW cartridge program. --Bill--