** Reply to message from Si Wright on Mon, 6 Dec 2004
19:54:59 -0800 (PST)
Jon:
> Tonight I had two lines of text to paste, hit my
> hotkey and got the message Pasting (Be patient!), only
> to have the program stop completely dead: no cursor
> movement and only Windows End Program to quit.
I use CLIP incessantly (I wrote it, so I know how it works, and also why it
might not work), but I've never experienced anything like that (Carl hasn't
either). My guess is that you are the victim of a coincidental crash of
Editor, which can (and occasionally does) happen after numerous shell-to-DOS
operations. Which is not to suggest that you should be sparing in your use of
either CLIP or the DOS shell -- merely that the most important key in your KBD
file is the SAve key ( ~~ vote early, vote often -- something like that
anyway). If Editor is going to crash, it would leave you with the symptoms you
describe: the last PRompt issued before shelling displayed on an unresponsive
system.
Or am I misunderstanding your message? Are you saying it always, repeatedly
crashed when you tried to Paste near end of file? This was something you could
reproduce, after you restarted Editor? Xy crashed over and over? What's the
source of the pasted text, a web browser? There are characters that are legal
in HTML hypertext which would definitely give Editor pause, e.g. 26, 255, 254
-- however they are very seldom encountered (y daeresis, for example) (its
never happened to me, and I paste from HTML into XyWrite all the time). When
you say you "moved a few bits" I hope you're not referring to bits in the Clip
program(s)! Please don't do that...
There are a few other possibilities. To mention just one: most people are
unaware that there are actually five or six system Clipboards that can store
different clippings simultaneously. There are text clipboards, graphics
clipboards, etc. The Windows clipboard API is pretty primitive, and it's hard
to compel the clipboard handler to cough up the clipped *type* you require, if
you happen to be using more than one. Usually Windows just assumes on the basis
of the context, e.g. a DOS program always wants the text clipboard, no ifs ands
or buts. I have *never* seen it get confused in XyWrite. But it is just
possible, if you are multitasking with say a newfangled music or video program
that operates in ways not contemplated when the operating system was written, I
suppose you might have a problem. Not bloody likely... but possible.
Closer to the bone, you might be experiencing a near brush with OOM -- Out Of
Memory, XyWrite Death. Do you have a lot of different documents open? What's
the size of the document that was having the problem? I routinely work with
multiple 200-300Kb docs -- no problems at all. Do this for me: go to the
command line, type:
VA/NV $M+6
and hit the carriage return. On the PRompt line XyWrite will return a number,
like "2" or "8" or "14". That's the amount of XPL memory (in Kb) you
are
currently consuming. If you get over 8 or so, you're treading on thinner and
thinner ice. There are easy antidotes, you can permanently immunize yourself
against using too much memory -- but most people don't even know they have the
problem. Then they wonder why Editor crashes. Let me know... Also: are you
using the CLIP.VBS version, or the CLIP.EXE version? If you're running XP, you
should use CLIP.EXE (EXE is faster under WinNT+, VBS is faster under Win9x).
Is XyWWWeb.REG properly configured? There's an EXE_or_VBS variable that should
be set to "E" sans quotes.
Re "twitchy": you're talking about the hesitant/jumpy cursor action in XP
(only)? Use Win2K! (he said, helpfully) Are you running SP2? It reduces the
problem, a lot. (Much hesitation expressed on this maillist about adopting
SP2, but... what the hell, you're gonna do it sooner or later, might as well do
it now. I've upgraded five machines -- zero problems. A lot of annoying new
security "features" in SP2 is my main complaint. And, of course, its slower.
Micro$oft just piles it on, more and more -- open a typical XP machine, and
there are 50 services running all the time in background that Task Manager
doesn't even tell you about, mostly stuff you will _never_ use. What's the
point of buying these 3Gb machines if the operating system is just gonna drag
it down with all this garbage? Not to mention the gazillions of files sitting
in caches on C:! grrr )
-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------