[comp.lang.smalltalk] Smalltalk/V on Macintosh and Digitalk support

goran@funsys.UUCP (Goran Fagerstrom) (01/05/90)

Would be interested in your comments on the following:

1. Anybody knows of bug fixes to the text editor windows in Smalltalk/V Mac?
When a line is too long to fit within the current window, the line position
totally screws up (added text is positioned incorrectly, display is wrong..).

2. From initially having been very happy with the Mac implementation, I 
have experienced more and more bombs and/or system freezes. It is not a main
memory problem, though I am using a Mac Plus with 2,5 MB of RAM. I suspected
that the image file was fragmented since Smalltalk/V writes continously to it;
so I tried compressing changes, copying the file, running defragmentation
programs and compressSources.

I realize that the description might not point to the possible error in a 
crystal clear way, but would be interested in knowing if anyone has had
similar problems.  The only particular characteristics of my application 
(which is small with only a few new classes) are that I use some long array
objects (about 7,000 elements) and have a lot of small arrays. The bombs
usually occur when I have to enter the debugger, possibly because that
strains the system since it has to maintain the context; and it either bombs
or comes to a standstill with the cursor unmovable. I have built other
applications before with no such problems.

3. Digitalk support - your experiences.  To make the question somewhat leading,
I will mention that I have sent three FAXes to their FAX number (and they
were received by some FAX at the other end).  And the answer has been total
silence.

Goran Fagerstrom
Stockholm, Sweden

cca@pur-phy (Charles C. Allen) (01/06/90)

> 1. Anybody knows of bug fixes to the text editor windows in Smalltalk/V Mac?
> When a line is too long to fit within the current window, the line position
> totally screws up (added text is positioned incorrectly, display is wrong..).

I just got version 1.1 installed, and it appears to fix the problems
with proportional fonts.  It always worked fine for me if I stuck to a
mono-spaced font (Monaco or Courier).  If you don't want to get the
upgrade (?), start looking for places where they calculate the width
of a string by {(string length) * (font width)} rather than {font
stringWidth: string}.  CharacterScanner also had some bugs.

Charles Allen		cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu