dmt@pegasus.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman) (03/25/90)
Two orders of business here: 1. Why Stevie masks the eighth bit, and what's happened since. 2. Robert Osborne's comments on PD software. 1. STEVIE AND THE EIGHTH BIT I'm the person who "did" Stevie 3.69a (made the enhancements, and posted the source). I responded the the person who started the thread about "Why does Stevie mask the eighth bit?" by Email, we exchanged a few polite notes, and his problem seems to be solved. The gist of our discussion was: - Stevie masks the eighth bit because it was programmed years ago by an American programmer, before internationalization of software was an issue. Hey, folks, this is version 3.69a, and it was originally written for the Atari ST as a private hack. - Stevie 3.69a masks the eighth bit because (a) I never noticed that it masked it (didn't open that particular code), and (b) being an American, none of my uses of it turned up that deficiency. (I agree it is a deficiency.) - The person who complained has the source. He took the very reasonable path of making some simple modifications to unmask the eighth bit. Last I heard, he had something that worked for him. Which brings us to.... 2. WHAT TO DO WITH PD SOFTWARE In article <337@isgtec.UUCP> robert@isgtec.UUCP (Robert Osborne) writes: > >Why don't you two guys stop your bitching, pool your money, and ship >some 8 bit systems to the guys who wrote/maintain STEVIE. Why do you >expect somebody who is doing YOU a favour by suppling a PD vi to >go out of their way to support YOUR language; one they probably >don't even speak! Better yet, shut up, make the necessary changes >for 8-bit support and send the diffs to the maintainer! Very nearly a good point, Robert. I wish it hadn't been made so shrilly. First the good news. You have the source. The program is TRULY PD. Make the changes so it does what you want. Share it with the rest of us. (Hey, that's how 3.69a came into being.) Now the bad news. I don't know that you can "send it to the guys who wrote/maintain Stevie", and expect something reasonable to happen. - Tim Thompson (the original author) is long since out of the loop. - Tony Andrews (the author of 3.69) is pretty busy these days. (Either that, or he's moved, since he hasn't responded lately to my communications.) - True to the philosophy above, I've got Stevie where I want it, and don't consider myself the "maintainer" of it. There are a number of people who have wrote me that they're making enhancements to 3.69a. Such things as a VMS port, international (8-bit) version, "restricted shell" version for BBS, keyboard macros, etc. It would be nice if there were someone to coordinate all this into the next Stevie package in another 6 months or so. Does someone want to volunteer? (No, don't volunteer me. See above.) Probably the person with the largest enhancements should integrate the others into his/her version, and post it. (...the way I integrated Larry Shurr's BIOS and color features with my 3.69a stuff.) You see, having software that is truly PD is a mixed blessing. If nobody owns it, then NOBODY OWNS IT! Dave +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Dave Tutelman | | Physical - AT&T Bell Labs - Lincroft, NJ | | Logical - ...att!pegasus!dmt | | Audible - (201) 576 2194 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (03/27/90)
In article <4565@pegasus.ATT.COM> dmt@pegasus.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman) writes: >1. STEVIE AND THE EIGHTH BIT >I'm the person who "did" Stevie 3.69a (made the enhancements, and posted >the source). I responded the the person who started the thread about >"Why does Stevie mask the eighth bit?" by Email, we exchanged a few [stuff deleted] Thanks Dave. I am the one that started it all. I must apologize for any misunderstanding that might have occured. I posted the original 'why does stevie mask the 8th bit?'. In that posting I was trying to raise some discussion about software in general. (I'm sorry if I was misunderstood. Stevie is great and the changes to make it 8bit aware were trivial. Now I might try to learn 'vi' ? :-) No, the real motive for the posting, was the 8bit question in general. It is surprising how many software from the U.S. is only aware of 7bit ASCII. Even DBase, (at least db III), isn't fully operational. Whenever a DBase program contains ASCII character 141, DBase consider it self at the end of file. When you consider that, on the IBM and clones, character 141 is 'Thorn', a special icelandic character, then you might understand my feelings when suddenly the 'great DBase' program just stop working when it reaches 'Thorn'. :-( In the future, please don't mask the 8th bit. Or at least make it configurable whether the user uses the full 8th bit or is happy with the 7 bit ascii. Stevie looks great. Now all I have to do is to learn 'vi' :-) --- I just learned a new curse: "You #$@! son of SCROLLBAR!" Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | 'Just give me my command line and throw UUCP: ..!mcsun!isgate!rhi!einari | the GUIs in the dust-bin!!!!!!!!!'
kjones@talos.pm.com (Kyle Jones) (03/28/90)
Dave Tutelman writes: > There are a number of people who have wrote me that they're making > enhancements to 3.69a. [...] It would be nice if there were someone > to coordinate all this into the next Stevie package in another 6 > months or so. Does someone want to volunteer? [...] > > You see, having software that is truly PD is a mixed blessing. If > nobody owns it, then NOBODY OWNS IT! As someone who lived through the disarray and subsequent firestorm of ill-conceived, incompatible, and buggy patches that followed Dave Taylor's parting with Elm, I suggest that a group be formed similar to the Elm Development Group to take over the maintenance of Stevie. Do it while there are still uncorrupted copies of the software out there.
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (03/28/90)
[firestorm of bad elm patches remembered] remember that there's a "jStevie", the Japanese version. If I were to hack I'd start from there. --Ed