Re: XY and Memory Weirdness

["Bob Brody" rabrody@xxxxxxxx]

On 29 Jan 97 at 16:08, Stephen A. Carter wrote:

> I swap personal
> spelling dictionaries in and out a lot depending on the technical
> field of the document I'm working on, but I don't usually remove
> DICT.SPL unless I need the space for working with a really big
> file. I'll report back to the list if anything "interesting"
> occurs. Thanks very much for the tip.

If I recall correctly, you don't need to keep dict.spl loaded
while working unless you have auto spell (don't remember the
actual name of the feature) turned on to flag misspellings while
you're writing. Reason being, when you issue the spell check
command (Ctrl-S or whatever, function call SO), it loads the
dict.spl file for you. If you unload it, you reclaim a bunch of
memory (100k or so) for XyWrite. You don't need dict.spl loaded
to use auto-replace since that info comes from your pers spl
file(s), not from dict.spl.

I worked it like this: I mapped my memory usage screen (function
call ME) to a key, say, Ctrl-M. Spell (function SO) was on
Ctrl-S. In the memory usage screen I think the Standard
Dictionary (dict.spl) was the first Feature listed and was
numbered with a dash (as opposed to an integer). Simply, -

To unload that "File" you'd cursor down one entry to the Unload
File offering, then type the number of the file you want to
unload. Since Standard Dictionary is numbered with a dash, not an
integer, you'd type a dash and it would unload.

So, since I always wanted it unloaded when I wasn't spell
checking, I had this on my Ctrl-M kbd assignment:

50=me,cd,-

When I hit Ctrl-M therefore, ME would bring up the memory usage
screen, CD would cursor down one time thus land on Unload
File, and - (dash, hyphen, etc.) would be the "number" of the
entry I wanted Unloaded from memory (Standard Dictionary).

I don't recall if you can issue UNLOAD - at command line since I
seem to recall the UNLOAD command wants numbers and the dash
character wouldn't take. Maybe there's a way, I don't recall. But
I wanted to view the memory usage screen anyway to keep tabs on
memory usage. So I'd hit Ctrl-S to spell check something (or
issue the SPELL command, etc.), which automatically loads
dict.spl if it isn't already loaded, do my spell checking, quit
the speller, then would hit Ctrl-M (ME,CD,-) which would bring up
the memory screen and automatically UNLOAD the Standard Dictionary
(dict.spl) from memory. Pressing Esc removes the memory screen
and you're back where you were.

Because XyWrite then put everything in conventional memory, that
dict.spl was a big user of memory and could slow other things
down and is why I'd zap it as soon as I was finished with it.
The above approach is one way, other ways no doubt exist as well.
 While on the subject of XyWrite memory, you can reclaim a few
bytes+ of working memory in XyIII+ but just shelling to DOS (and
returning to XyWrite at some point, of course).

Call up your memory screen and note the Available Memory figure.
Esc to quit it and issue the command: DOS at command line to shell
to DOS.  When done, issue Exit in DOS to return to XyWrite. Call
up your memory screen again and you'll see that the Available
Memory should have increased. Not by much, a few K bytes to
maybe 10k or so plus/minus. XyIII+ would do some memory
housekeeping when shelling out, so you could grab a few K more
memory by just issuing the DOS command and returning. Issue

  DOS /C

and XyIII+ would shell and return in one action. (The speller,
among other things, even after UNLOADed, leaves a footprint in
memory. Shelling out to DOS cleans that up, oddly enough.)

Bob