ludis@m2-net.UUCP (Ludis Langens) (06/06/88)
I may regret this, but here goes. Someone on the net expressed the desire to contact the FullWrite development group via the net. Well, I'm one of the programmers and have been lurking for a while. However, please don't send me your bug reports, feature requests, usage questions, etc. Contact the A-T tech support people for that. The machine I read news on is far from reliable. In the past it has expired articles the moment they arrived, sent them to the bit bucket because of the lack of free disk space, or been down for days at a time. When it does arrive, the news is a week or two old. In addition, I rn at 2400 baud through another Unix box that drops characters when it is busy (assuming that the phone lines were not all busy and I could log in.) Here are some comments about issues that have appeared on the net: FullWrite will run on a 1M machine. More memory is highly recommended though. In a pinch, try an older version of the System File. FW does run with versions as old as 3.2 or 3.3, however there are bugs in pre 4.2 versions that will crash printing. Older versions leave a lot more room for programs. Removing modules like the draw environment will not decrease memory needs (while you are not using it.) It segmented fairly well. (Removing it will make the program smaller on disk though.) FW will probably never work with the Script Manager or anything other than 8 bit per character languages. We do not call QuickDraw when formatting text, it does not have the functionality or accuracy. Most of FW should work with 'roman' languages though. The spelling checker internals and the thesaurus are by Microlytics which also sells them as stand alone products. A-T will probably buy any foreign versions of these that Microlytics produces. The hyphenator should work with other languages if it is given the corresponding data resource and has a few problems (which also affect the US version) fixed. We didn't find out until very late that the hyphenator code (which we purchased) was sh*t. This did not leave enough time for me to fix the big problems. Saving a file as 7-bit ASCII will work for foreign languages if you add the correct XLAT resource with an ID the same as the country code. The resource maps characters with codes 128 - 255. In the original shipment, the Dictionary and Thesaurus files had the bundle bit set. This has or will be fixed. The person who set up the dictionary disk was sloppy in converting the Microlytics supplied files (which had a real bundle.) To fix the problem yourself, just clear the bit with ResEdit and rebuild the DeskTop. The importing files problem with dash characters may also affect non-breaking spaces (Option-Space.) This is because the person who did the formatter wanted both of these characters specially identified (as other than ASCII) and importing files probably does not convert the bytes as needed. Someone suggested using a QuickDraw print spooler to allow printing from a machine without a hard disk. This probably won't give the desired results since FW sends 90% PostScript if it sees a LaserWriter. Future versions may send 100% PostScript to get around bugs in Apple's print drivers. Having the code segments packed does not decrease available memory space by much (probably less than 1K.) The sign-in stuff (the dialog that appears when you first run the program) does take up 2.5 to 3K every time the program is run. (This is courtesy of the legal department and also happens in dBase Mac.) The code segments could be unpacked (resulting in a 1.1 to 1.2M application) with the same method that would remove copy protection from 90% of protected programs a year or two ago (i.e. the original FullPaint.) Of course, your license prohibits modifying the program. BTW, there are two code segments in the dictionary file. :-( (They could have been in the main program due to a last moment optimization in the compression code, except that people were too paranoid about something going wrong.) I don't know if this will make it out to the net. I'm also not certain of the path to here, m-net does talk to itivax (sometimes) and umix is a nearby smart mailer. Ludis Langens