Re: CLIP and OOM and Winword

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Si Wright  on Mon, 16 Jan 2006
13:14:59 -0800 (PST)

Very nice Subject line! Impressive. Although... what does WinWord have to do
with CLIP? OOM and Clip, maybe. But keep at it, you'll catch on.

Putting aside the problems with your STARTUP.INT, let me try to focus on CLIP.
It's really a pretty simple utility. The principle is, if there is a file in
Editor's directory called CLIP.TXT, then CLIP.EXE reads that file and stuffs
the contents into the System Clipboard; if no such file CLIP.TXT is found, then
it extracts the contents of the Windows Clipboard and stuffs it into a new file
in Editor's dir called CLIP.TXT. The ClipW* frame in U2 performs a
complementary action, although it determines whether to Copy or Paste based on
the condition of XyWrite at that moment, and the specific keystroke that you
hit, rather than the presence or non-presence of CLIP.TXT in Editor's
directory. But basically, if ClipW* understands that you want to Paste, it
first erases an existing CLIP.TXT (if any), then shells to CLIP.EXE, which
fetches the contents of the Clipboard, then ClipW* looks for a newly-created
CLIP.TXT in Editor's dir, and MErges the content of that file at the current
cursor location.

To debug the Clip process, you first have to make sure that CLIP.EXE is working
properly.

So:

I'd like you to start XyWrite, then Shell to DOS:
 DOS/NV

At the DOS prompt, command:
 SET PATH
Does the DOS Path include Editor's dir? It must. (Even though you KNOW that
all these things are correctly configured, do them anyway -- it makes me
happy.)

Now command
 CLIP
You should get a Desktop (GUI) error msg. It should say CLIP v2.0.6 -- does
it? If not, get the newest version for Xy4:
 http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/CLIPW32.ZIP
While you're at it, get the latest U2 fileset also, and swap latest U2 and INF
files for your present versions. I've been updating this sporadically during
the last month...

While you're on the Desktop, toggle to some other app, or open Notepad or a
browser or whatever, and Copy (Ctrl-C) some text onto the Clipboard.

Now, still in DOS, command DIR CLIP?.TXT -- if there are any CLIP*.TXT files in
Editor's dir, delete them all. The non-existence of CLIP.TXT will force
CLIP.EXE to Paste, according to the principles stated above.

CLIP.EXE requires several parameters to function (that's why you get an Error
msg when you command "CLIP" by itself). The error msg actually spells out
those parameters, for people who want to perform these sorts of tests:

CLIP [optional A|B] TargetCodePage SourceCodePage [optional ChunkSize]

If you're *Pasting*, the "Target"=XyWrite, so the TargetCodePage is probably
either 437 or 850 -- let's use 437, the default CodePage of XyWrite, and also
the CodePage of expanded view even if your default is 850 (we're ignoring the
possibility of 1252, for ANSIfied XyWrite or NBWin -- not relevant in your
case).

The SourceCodePage is probably 1252 -- let's assume that it is. The "Source"
is the Clipboard itself, most immediately duh, but the ultimate source is
probably some Windows app, and they all use 1252. I'm sure you know all this...

We'll use the default ChunkSize of 8192 bytes. We'll ignore the optional A|B
params.

So: your test command line will be:
 CLIP.EXE 437 1252

Do it. What happens? *Nothing* apparent should happen! But file CLIP.TXT
should now be in Editor's directory. LIST it (or TYPE it or view with NOTEPAD
or whatever). Is it a faithful copy of whatever you Copied from a Windows app?

Now, if we've gotten this far successfully, then what we're left with is an
inability to MErge a disk file into XyWrite! Since that doesn't seem
plausible, I can only surmise that something is wrong in REG or in your setup
(you gave ample suggestion yesterday, and Carl discovered additional evidence,
that your setup is fubar). So at this point, I suggest that you ZIP up your
STARTUP.INT, XYWWWEB.REG, and SETTINGS.DFL files, and ship them to me privately
-- you *MUST* ZIP them (into a single ZIPfile).

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------