Re: This time a real clip bug: it crashes...

[Bob Zimmerman zimmerman@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
>It's easy to debug a kbd file. Just use a binary process--testing half,
>then half of half ... lather, repeat.

Thanks Harry for the suggestion. Programming just doesn't come natural to me, so I don't think of
doing these kinds of very obvious debugging procedures until someone else suggests it. I'll give it
a try over the next few days to try to locate the cause of the CAPSLOCK bug.

As for the CLIP crash bug, Robert Holmgren had noticed that the End-of-File charactor (EOF) was in
the text of the messages I had been sending, making him think that was the cause of the crashes.
However, I now think that this character might be irrelevant to the problem.

To explain: When I finish writing an email in Xy4, I have a keyboard macro that first saves the
email text to a file, then selects the text, then uses CLIP to clip the text into the clipboard,
then closes Xy4.

If CLIP causes a crash, I can still get the text by loading the saved file into Notepad where I can
cut-and-paste it into the blank email in my Eudora email program. However, that saved file is going
to have the EOF character in it. When I did later tests where this email text caused CLIP to crash,
I was selecting the entire text in Windows, with the EOF, and thus pasting it into Xywrite.

To do some correct tests of the crashing emails, I have to do them with the actual text, not from
the file. Thus, I will have wait for some further crashes to do some additional tests.

Robert Holmgren wrote:
>Only old suggestions: 1) Reassign your CapsLock in KBD to its proper hardware
>position. 2) Get a real operating system.

Robert's suggestion that I solve the CAPSLOCK bug by putting the Capslock key back to its standard
position might work, but isn't this listserv made up of people who stick with Xywrite because they
want to do things their way? My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. I used it for
almost a decade. I got very used to its keyboard layout, one in which the up/down keys are on the
left side of the keyboard and the right/left keys are on the right side. It is very fast and
comfortable arrangement. It has even probably helped me avoid carpal tunnel problems, considering I
have typed far more than a million words in the last two decades.

When it finally came time to upgrade to Windows, I searched for a program that would let me
reprogram my Windows keyboard to match the Model III's keyboard. One day I was in the office of a
magazine editor (who is probably still subscribed to this listserv), telling him what I wanted to
do. He said, "Xywrite can do that."

I said, "Can Xywrite put the up/down keys where the Tab/Capslock keys are?"

He said, "Watch." And in less than two minutes he had reprogrammed the two keys and was
doing it. From that moment, I was a born believer in Xywrite. It lets me do things my way.

And as for getting rid of Win98, I totally agree with Robert's dislike of this operating system.
However, as you can see, I don't like to change things for no reason. For me, Win98 works fine. Xy3
exhibits none of these bugs. Moreover, I have heard enough about the problems using DOS programs in
XP to make me hesitate about going to that operating system.

Nonetheless, Robert had given me a great idea a few years ago: network two computers together, each
with a different operating system. I am planning on setting up a second Linux computer on my
desktop, linked through our home network to my Win98 machine. The second computer will also have a
Win98 box inside Linux. (Several Linux people I know have done this, and have actually told me that
Win98 runs more stably as a Linux box then on its own.)

I will then start playing around with Linux, with the goal of someday abandoning Windows entirely.

All the best,

Bob
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