[comp.sys.mac.apps] Qued-M 2.09

owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) (11/27/90)

(somebody asked about the changes in Qued-M 2.0.9 from 2.0.7...)

Qued-M 2.09 has the following improvements (and maybe others):
- Open... now gives a standard dialog box. A long-awaited change
for us Boomerang users.
- Catalog gives the original Qued file opening window (with the original 
handy extensions such as opening multiple files).
- Fixes a bug in printing file with "hidden" text.

I have not tried it with system 6.0.7, but if Paragon says it works, I
believe them. Qued works well with 6.0.5; it's the most reliable Macintosh
program I've used.

Russell Owen
owen@raven.phys.washington.edu
Astronomy Dept. FM-20
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195

c3ar@zaphod.uchicago.edu (Walter C3arlip) (11/27/90)

I've used Qued-M from time to time in a lab at school for editing text and
the version in the lab (2.04?) has the irritating habit if inserting ^C
(Control-C) charcters at random places.  This is *particularly* annoying
with TeX files, since TeX thinks ^C is some undefined symbol.

Has this been fixed in the new releases?

--Walter
_____________________________________________________________________________
Walter Carlip 		        	**** carlip@ace.cs.ohiou.edu ****
(the "3" is invisible)                   **** c3ar@finite.chi.il.us ****
_____________________________________________________________________________



_____________________________________________________________________________
Walter Carlip 		        	**** carlip@ace.cs.ohiou.edu ****
(the "3" is invisible)                   **** c3ar@finite.chi.il.us ****
_____________________________________________________________________________

eacj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Julian Vrieslander) (11/28/90)

In article <11709@milton.u.washington.edu> owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) writes:
>I have not tried it with system 6.0.7, but if Paragon says it works, I
>believe them. Qued works well with 6.0.5; it's the most reliable Macintosh
>program I've used.

I could not let this pass.  I have had more problems with QUED/M than with any
other major-label non-PD software that I use.  And I have tried to live
with several versions - I am now on 2.09 and some of the problems have still
not been fixed.  Just a few that I can remember off the top of my head:

Printing via SuperLaserSpool fails unless one of the header options is
enabled.  Sometimes it fails anyway.  Sometimes it bombs.

The catalog window fails to display existing text files that other programs can
readily locate and open (yes, they have filetype = 'TEXT').
 
QUED/M sometimes gets into a mode where it seems to suck up a lot of CPU
cycles, even though it is not doing anything: no windows open, not even in
the front MultiFinder layer.  How do I know?  Other programs bog down (Pyro
goes into slow motion stop-frame animation, for example).  Quit QUED/M and
everything is back to normal.

There were other problems that I cannot recall right now.

On a couple of occasions, I have called Paragon to report my problems.  The
folks I spoke to were courteous, and gave me the usual advice about trying
to identify conflicts with INIT's, etc.  They sold me update disks with
newer versions (at a very reasonable $10 price).  But the bugs remain.

I cope by only using QUED/M when I need the powerful text-manipulation
features that I cannot get from my other text editing programs.
-- 
Julian Vrieslander 
Neurobiology & Behavior, W250 Mudd Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853    
INTERNET: eacj@theory.tn.cornell.edu     BITNET: eacj@crnlthry
UUCP: ..cornell!batcomputer!eacj

siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (siegman) (11/30/90)

Julian Vrieslander writes:

>  I have had more problems with QUED/M than with any
>  other major-label non-PD software that I use.
>
>  Printing via SuperLaserSpool fails unless . . .
>  Sometimes it fails anyway.  Sometimes it bombs.

When I use QUED/M 2.04 with SuperLaserSpool on a multi-page document,
the last line at the bottom of each page gets printed again as the
first line on the following page.  Neither Paragon or SuperMac seems
to understand why.

And Walter C3arlip writes:

>  Version (2.04?) has the irritating habit if inserting ^C
>  (Control-C) charcters at random places.  This is *particularly* 
>  annoying with TeX files . . .

YES!!  This has been happening to me all the time lately.  Strings of
10 or 20 [03] ASCII characters inserted right in the middle of words.
I haven't changed anything major in my system; it doesn't happen in
any other applications; there's no key I can accidentally rest on to
cause this; and of course it doesn't show up in the "Show Invisibles"
menu selection -- you have to "Show ASCII" or "Zap Gremlins" or print
the document to find and get rid of them.  Plays hell with TeX files,
mail messages, and so on.

A very nice program, but . . .  (Is QUED/M ever going to have an
upgrade?  Or is it only Nisus from now on?)

jon@weber.ucsd.edu (Jon Matousek) (11/30/90)

In article <1990Nov27.185602.3441@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> eacj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Julian Vrieslander) writes:
>In article <11709@milton.u.washington.edu> owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) writes:
>>I have not tried it with system 6.0.7, but if Paragon says it works, I
>>believe them. Qued works well with 6.0.5; it's the most reliable Macintosh
>>program I've used.
>
>I could not let this pass.  I have had more problems with QUED/M than with any
>other major-label non-PD software that I use.  And I have tried to live
>with several versions - I am now on 2.09 and some of the problems have still
>not been fixed.  Just a few that I can remember off the top of my head:
>
>Printing via SuperLaserSpool fails unless one of the header options is
>enabled.  Sometimes it fails anyway.  Sometimes it bombs.

Hmmm. Two things. 
1) Qued/M has a built in print-spooler, try turning it
off. File menu, Printing Format..., uncheck Background Printing. 
2) If I remember correctly, SuperLaserSpool has a crashing bug, that
can cause any application to crash. This is becuase, in programming
lingo, SuperLaserSpool dereferences off of location 0x0000, almost always
indicative of a bug. If the value in zero is an odd address, this is enough
to crash most Mac's. There are other values that you can store in location
0 that are specific to MacIIci. If your interested in trying to rig this
location let me know.

>
>The catalog window fails to display existing text files that other programs can
>readily locate and open (yes, they have filetype = 'TEXT').

I find this hard to believe. Try unchecking the "Text only" from the Popdown
"Other" in the catalog window. If the menu has changed behind queds back
in MultiFinder I'm not sure if qued is smart enough to know about it and
refresh its list of files. If you still think you are having problems
with this send me a bin/hex of an offending file.

> 
>QUED/M sometimes gets into a mode where it seems to suck up a lot of CPU
>cycles, even though it is not doing anything: no windows open, not even in
>the front MultiFinder layer.  How do I know?  Other programs bog down (Pyro
>goes into slow motion stop-frame animation, for example).  Quit QUED/M and
>everything is back to normal.

True, QUED/M can be an MultiFinder hog when it is run in the background.
This is because QUED/M can run its macros in the background of
MultiFinder. Unfortunately the code was never honed, and QUED/M sucks
CPU even if no macros are running. The solution:
1) Boot ResEdit.
2) Open QUED/M
3) Open "SIZE" resource #0.
4) Toggle the truth of "Can Background" to be 0.
5) Open "Size" resource #-1.
6) Toggle the truth of "Can Background" to be 0.
7) Quit res-edit and save the changes to QUED/M.

That should solve your stop-frame animation. It will also not allow you
to run macros in the background. Ah well.

>
>There were other problems that I cannot recall right now.

I'm all ears. Send your complaints to me.

>
>On a couple of occasions, I have called Paragon to report my problems.  The
>folks I spoke to were courteous, and gave me the usual advice about trying
>to identify conflicts with INIT's, etc.  They sold me update disks with
>newer versions (at a very reasonable $10 price).  But the bugs remain.
>
>I cope by only using QUED/M when I need the powerful text-manipulation
>features that I cannot get from my other text editing programs.
>-- 
>Julian Vrieslander 
>Neurobiology & Behavior, W250 Mudd Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853    
>INTERNET: eacj@theory.tn.cornell.edu     BITNET: eacj@crnlthry
>UUCP: ..cornell!batcomputer!eacj

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

-jOn

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owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) (12/01/90)

The latest version of Qued-M is 2.09, not 2.04. 2.09 has been out for
months, and the version before that (2.07) was out for years. 2.04 is OLD.
So I'm a bit puzzled to find complaints about it now. Call tech support
and get an upgrade. The ^C bug was fixed years ago, and I think it was
fixed only a few months after it was reported (but I could be wrong).

2.09 seems to be very solid. I've never seen it crash (beat that, Microsoft!)
and only has two problems that I've found:
- the Open... dialog box wasn't implemented fully correctly; if Qued is 
running under Multifinder and you double-click on an arbitrary file, Qued 
won't find it unless it is in the current directory (similar problems with 
opening files under Boomerang). I'm not too upset about it since Paragon 
added the standard open dialog box at the last minute, at least partly 
because I made a pest of myself begging them to do it.
- it won't print with SuperLaserSpool 2.02 unless some header information 
is also to be printed. However, it works just fine with SLS 2.0, so it 
isn't clear whether the problem is a bug in Qued or in SLS.

I do wish Paragon would finally release Qued version 3, or make a few
improvements to Nisus so it would work better for plain-text files.
Paragon has rather neglected  Qued while getting Nisus up to snuff.

But even in its  current incarnation, I find Qued very pleasant to use,
and far better than any other text editor I've  tried. It is powerful
and reliable, and has a reasonably well integrated  set of features
(I wish I could say that about products from a certain company in Redmond).

Russell Owen
owen@raven.phys.washington.edu
Astronomy Dept. FM-20
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195