rcbamhl@rc3.urc.tue.nl (Marc Heijligers) (08/29/90)
All events in this story are purely fictional. Any relation to actual events or systems are coincidental. Names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved (Mac = Mac, nisus = nisus). When I bought my Mac, I really thought I'd buy a user friendly computer. So why not work with it immediately? The first couple of months I really loved it. The next couple of months some questions arose. The months thereafter ....: One day I wanted to rebuild my harddisk. So, let's create some new folders to reorganize. Little surprise! If you put a file into a new created folder, you can always see a gray scroll bar at the bottom of the window. You must always manually scroll the window to make your windows look like windows you can show to your friend. Organizing hard disks always means cleaning up some disks. You'll never do many disk to disk copies then, but I did (I like to have some nice colored disks for some nice programs). A disk to disk copy can be very 'funny'. If the Finder has fully copied the source disk, my disk drive starts to make eject sounds every 3 seconds. If I put the destination disk into the drive at a 'not so good timed moment', the destination disk will be ejected. Another disk to disk copy error is when the destination disk had some files on it, which are completely removed (7K in disk, 779K free). After almost completing the copy, the message 'disk could not be completely copied, unknown error'. Unknown error? How about unknown bug? And when I sometimes try to copy some files from a 800K to 1,4Mb disk, you can observe those splendid "sorry, it's an ID=27 error' messages. It sometimes depends on the order of inserting these floppies. Maybe it is in one of the "How to use a Mac" manuals? I do like multifinder. But does multifinder likes the user? How about trashing a file if you have a lot of windows of other applications open? How about unmounting a disk (Try eject with option key pressed. Do you know that a PC user also talks about control-alt-shift-magic?). How about inserting a disk within an application, ejecting it within an application, and getting the request to put it back in your drive again? How could you be so cruel to eject a disk!! Desktop updating is not one of multifinder favorites. Copying a not updated file from HD to disk results in a gray bar that immediately fills the read/write copy space. The copying then goes on by portions of about 10k or something. And look, the gray bar is coming back on the other side! Advantage: you do know that copying is still in progress. By the way: How can I rebuild the desktop (why must I?) under multifinder? Like to grow muscles? Try to start up application xxx from one floppy disk. Please insert the disk System, Please insert the disk ....... aaargh. I have to make a pretty advanced picture out of a PICT. But that's were I have Claris CAD for. So, I open the PICT. Pling: PICT contains less data....., press OK. So, I work on this PICT, want to save it in it's own format again: Ping, A dialog box insists that I must save it in it's own format, but luckily I get the opportunity to save it in PICT format. Ping, replace existing file? (the one I just opened) Ping:PICT contains less data than ....OK. Ping, The document on the disk is not a Claris CAD document and cannot be replaced. So, every save must have another name? Is it's own format that good? Oh yes, if I copy/paste a PICT from claris cad to a word processor about everything shifts a little bit. Just try it out, make some circles of the same size at an equivalent interval. Save as a PICT (ping), and open it again (ping). Shiftie shiftie shiftie!!! The same counts for MacDrawII. So I better use DeskDraw now (90k, but better 90k). However, do you know what happens if you have a lot of fonts installed in your system, and you want to draw some lines very fast. You only miss a couple of events. In other words, do it very very slowly, otherwise you cannot draw anything. Discard all your fonts and it works OK. I tried to explain this, but all my brains got boiled. The most beautiful bug I noticed was the bug in Digital Darkroom. I tried to print a file on my DeskWriter with the gray-scale option turned on. I pressed OK, waited for a second, and my hard-disk motor was just turned off!!! Do you how this sounds when you are working! A little scary, and very un macish! Well, well, well. Now it's time to do some serious work. Let's do some testing for the next week. Stay tuned for Nisus! Dr. Bug "A bug a day keeps the Doctor away"