halp@TCGOULD.TN.CORNELL.EDU ("Bruce P. Halpern") (04/02/88)
The "upgrade" to the Beagle Bros SuperMacroworks, The TIMEOUT series, automatically patches AppleWorks 2.0 such that Control-Reset leads to the AppleWorks main menu rather than to the machine-language monitor. ****DISCLAMER: My comments, etc., are my own shakey opinions ******** | Bruce P. Halpern Psychology & Neurobiology & Behavior Cornell Ithaca | | INTERNET:halp@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu BITNET:D57J@CORNELLA D57J@CRNLVAX5| | UUCP:{vax135,rochester,decvax}!cornell!batcomputer!halp | | PHONE: 607-255-6433 Uris Hall, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 |
AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS.BITNET ("David A. Lyons") (04/03/88)
>Date: Thu, 31 Mar 88 03:18:00 CDT >From: MCL9337%TAMVENUS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU >Subject: Various and sundry stuph... > >My case in point... AppleWorks! WHY CAN'T YOU HIT RESET!?!?!? This program >(all $250 non-worth of it) is in at least it's fifth or sixth version! Why >doesn't Apple pull its head out and realize that people don't want to use >buggy software!? "Oh, who ever hits RESET anyway..." Jeez! > >mcl9337@tamvenus.bitnet I certainly agree that AppleWorks has more than its share problems of silly problems that Apple (er...'scuze me...CLARIS) could (and hopefully will) fix. So little effort on the part of the people with the source code could make things *so* much easier for so many people.... But--The way AppleWorks handles RESET is not a bug. It could be improved (see below), but it would *not* be good if RESET simply put you back at the main menu. This would encourage people to hit it a lot, and sooner or later you're going to hit RESET in the *middle* of an important operation on your document! RESET is a hardware thing, and any piece of code running when you hit RESET gets instantly stopped (well, at the end of the machine language instruction currently executing) and *no* information is recorded about exactly what the processor was doing at the time, so the program can't just pick up where it left off, even if data has been left in a corrupted state! There *are* times when you need to press RESET--if you're in the middle of printing and your printer unavoidably goes off-line, you want to abort, and AppleWorks doesn't have control (your interface card's ROM does and isn't going to give it up). So it would be nice if AppleWorks would give you a warning message saying that hitting RESET isn't generally a great idea, but then putting you at the main menu after doing a few checks to see if your documents are still in one piece (or however many pieces they are supposed to be in). By the way, Super MacroWorks (Beagle Brothers), and at least some other AppleWorks enhancement packages, traps RESET for you. This doesn't make it a good habit, but it's good if you need to abort printing while your printer is offline. ProDOS can get pretty confused if you hit reset during a ProDOS call, by the way. --David A. Lyons a.k.a. DAL Systems PO Box 287 | North Liberty, IA 52317 BITNET: AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS CompuServe: 72177,3233 GEnie mail: D.LYONS2
jetzer@studsys.mu.edu (jetzer) (04/05/88)
In article <8804012258.aa12228@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA>, AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS.BITNET ("David A. Lyons") writes: > RESET is a hardware thing, and any piece of code running when you hit RESET > gets instantly stopped (well, at the end of the machine language instruction > currently executing) and *no* information is recorded about exactly what > the processor was doing at the time, so the program can't just pick up where > it left off, even if data has been left in a corrupted state! > [ .... ] > > ProDOS can get pretty confused if you hit reset during a ProDOS call, by the > way. It seems that the earlier versions of ProDOS had this nasty habit of trashing something like block 2 (the key block of the directory). Way back when I wsa still programming under DOS 3.3, I would sometimes hit reset to stop a disk access (I've matured since then :-)). When I first started programming under ProDOS, I did the same thing, until I trashed a couple of disks doing this.... don't you hate line counters ? -- __ Mike Jetzer "If you can't be right, be forceful" uwvax!uwmcsd1!marque!studsys!jetzer