dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (02/25/88)
For the last few weeks, my wife has had substantial problems while
running WriteNow (version 1.07) on our Mac II system. The problems
would begin whenever a WriteNow document exceeded about 7 pages in
length, and after she had been editing for more than about 10
minutes. All of a sudden, whenever she hit the "i" key, WriteNow
would insert a burst of "i i i i i i i", occasionally interspersed with
square-block ("missing") characters. When selected, the entire burst
of garbage behaved as if it were one single character.
The only way we could find around this problem was to save the document,
Quit from WriteNow, relaunch, and reopen the document. This would
cause the problem to go away for some period of time; it would
reappear after varying lengths of time. The speed with which the
problem reappeared seemed to depend on the size of the document; once
the document exceeded 25 pages, WriteNow would run for only about 5
minutes before glitching in this way.
The problem does not seem to depend on the presence of MultiFinder (it
occurs even when running under the single-task environment). I tried
removing all of my nonstandard INITs; the problem still occurred.
I've spoken with the folks at T/Maker several times during the past month
or so. They suggested:
- Running the "WN Version Installer" to add a 4-byte resource to the
WriteNow application; this avoids certain problems with MultiFinder
(e.g. system crashes when WriteNow is launched under MultiFinder).
Didn't help this problem; installing the VERS resource did, however,
permit a different copy of WriteNow (same version) to work under
MultiFinder on my Mac SE at work.
- Running with the screen set to two-color mode, rather than 256-color
mode. Didn't help.
I called them again today, described the symptom again, and was told
that the "Easy Access" INIT (part of the standard system) has been
seen to cause this exact symptom, down to the key affected ("i").
So, I'm going to try removing Easy Access from my configuration, and see
if the problem goes away. I'll post a note in a few days and let y'all
know whether getting rid of Easy Access has fixed the problem.
--
Dave Platt
UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com
INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.netdplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (03/02/88)
Last week, I posted a note saying that I was going to remove Easy Access
from my Mac II's system folder, on the advice of the folks at T/Maker;
I was told that Easy Access could be causing some problems with WriteNow.
It appears that T/Maker was correct. The problem that my wife and I had
been having with WriteNow (garbage appearing on the screen when the
"i" key was typed) has not recurred since I removed Easy Access;
the documents we've been editing are well above the size threshold
(7-8 pages) at which the glitch was occurring previously.
So... if you're using WriteNow on a Mac II, and have been having
problems with garbage appearing on the screen when you're entering
text into a not-small document, try removing Easy Access and see if
the problem goes away.
--
Dave Platt
UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com
INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.nettecot@Apple.COM (Ed Tecot) (03/03/88)
In article <1835@coherent.com> dplatt@improper.UUCP (Dave Platt) writes: >Last week, I posted a note saying that I was going to remove Easy Access >from my Mac II's system folder, on the advice of the folks at T/Maker; >I was told that Easy Access could be causing some problems with WriteNow. > >It appears that T/Maker was correct. The problem that my wife and I had >been having with WriteNow (garbage appearing on the screen when the >"i" key was typed) has not recurred since I removed Easy Access; >the documents we've been editing are well above the size threshold >(7-8 pages) at which the glitch was occurring previously. I just researched this problem. Easy Access is not the cause of WriteNow's problem, although it does make it more likely to occur. To reproduce the problem, simply type control-i i. From then on, all i's are inserted in tab-fill mode. I suspect this is a bug in WriteNow's tab-fill code. I suggest that a WriteNow user alert T/Maker to this. If you find yourself in this mode, simply type tab-i to undo it. _emt