[comp.sys.mac.hypercard] Serious problems arising in HC 2.0v2

mrx@dhw68k.cts.com (Mark Murphy) (04/10/91)

   I've been using HC 2.0v2 for about 3 months now.  I've been using it to
develope a very important project at work.  I have written 4 custom XCMDs,
used several other XCMDs not written by me, and use Dialoger Pro.

   The project is just about finished up... except for one thing.  I am
getting some very strange crashes, alerts, and bugs!  At first I thought it was
my XCMDs or others that might be leaving the heap messy.  After some tests,
the stacked seemed to stay clean.  Then I thought my XCMDs might be writing
over memory within the heap, thus clobbering some other resources... but I've
looked at my code over and over.. cleaning up where needed but still have the
crashes.

   These crashes do not happen right after the XCMDs are called.  They usually
occur at some other point while scripts are executing.  One such bug is I
constantly get an alert box saying "Don't understand put_XCMD_name_here".
In other words, if attempting to use the XCMD folderContents I may get the
alert "Don't understand folderContents".

   One time I had the following error... an Ask command messed up... it went
something like this

...
  ask "Please modify file name:" with fileName
...

   This was the code... well, normally it does what you would expect... it
produces a dialog box with the prompt and the edit box contains whatever is in
the variable fileName.  Well, this bug was pretty fun... for the prompt it had
the variable fileName... with nothing for edit text.

   Other bugs are just plain crashes out of nowhere.  I've traced once such
crash to some sort of JSR (A0) within the HyperTalk code resource.  I get
ID 3's, ID 1's, ID 10's... you name... I get the nasty ones.

   I've tested my XCMDs by calling them over and over with a script... in
other words, repeat until the shiftKey is down.  I can't reproduce the errors.
I've called the XCMDs over and over and over with no crashes.  Then one time
out of the blue (at least it seems that way now), bamb... it doesn't know
one of the XCMDs or I get 'expected end if' (when the actually code has worked
previously) or I get funky stuff happening with HyperTalk... or I just get
a good old fashioned crash.

   It would be nice if I could reproduce these problems consistantly.  To clear
th problems, all I need to do is quit HC or reboot (depending on the
seriousness of the crash) and bamm.... it works... the same sequences that
caused the crash work... over and over.

   I need some serious help here... is there something I'm missing?  Did I
do something wrong in my XCMDs?  What would cause HC to not know it has
XCMDs that are in its resource fork?  What would make it do that funky
ask command bug?

   I recommended HC 2.0 for this project and I'm gonna get my butt kicked
(in a corporate sense) if I can't get this thing stable!  This software will
be running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with a server.
The company I work for does home health care, so it is important this thing
is stable (what software isn't in need of being stable???).

   Kevin... someone on the HC team... someone with any ideas... PLEASE....
I'm at my endz of figuring this one out... e-mial me or leave public
replies (I usually check this newsgroup about everyday)



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