Re: XY and Memory Weirdness

[scarter@xxxxxxxx (Stephen A. Carter)]

In article <199701301401.GAA15896@xxxxxxxx>,
Bob Brody wrote:
>I would be curious as to how much RAM you have before you load
>XyIII+. Run chkdsk from DOS and note what it says for total
>bytes memory and bytes free. Then run XyWrite without a file;
>editor.exe. Go to the memory screen via
>
>  func me
>
>on command line, and note Available Memory. It all depends on
>what you've got loaded into XyWrite (as well as how much free DOS
>RAM you have going in, of course) so Available Memory in Xy is
>obviously going to vary, especially due to various printer
>drivers and such. I'd be inclined to say you should have at
>least 400k Available Memory when XyIII+ starts (sans any document
>files) and still be fully functional. Again, this will vary
>among users and their respective overhead (such as print driver),
>TSRs, etc.

Roger that. When Xy is started bare-bones style (accomplished by
temporarily renaming STARTUP.INT), "func me" reports 430 k free.

I'm running Xy 3.55, almost always in a virtual DOS machine under the
English or Japanese version of OS/2 Warp 4.0, but using Norton's
NDOS.EXE instead of IBM's COMMAND.COM that came with Warp. The only
help file I regularly use is a single stripped-down frame -- the one
for selecting ASCII characters, somewhat modified -- which takes up
only 1,205 bytes. I sometimes load LONG.HLP (especially just lately
), but never ALACARTE.MNU, though I do have a line in STARTUP.INT
to load ALACARTE.DFL.

My usual printer file is 3POSTPLS.PRN, modified a bit to work with the
Japanese-spec Oki printer that I share with a Japanese Macintosh
operator. Right now it's loaded in STARTUPINT, though after reading
your advice I think that's going to change. Most if not all of my
default settings were long ago relocated from the printer file to
ALACARTE.DFL anyway.

So just where is all the memory going to? I'll do some more
experimenting to make absolutely sure, but I'm pretty sure that my
personal spelling dictionaries are to blame. I use the auto-replace
function extensively, and I've got several different .SPL files that
I'm always swapping in and out depending on the subject matter of
whatever I'm working on at the moment. Most of these speller files
are maxed out -- just as close as I can get to the 64-kB ceiling
without going over. (I don't suppose there are any workarounds for
*that*.) I've always got at least one speller loaded at any given
time.

Your remark about commented lines in files taking up memory was a
real eye-opener. I stupidly just sort of assumed that because
comments are IGNORED, it means they're not LOADED. At any rate,
there's a good bit of room for improvement here, especially in my .KBD
files, which are all conscientiously documented with complete sets of
individual ASCII-graphic keyboard layout maps and charts for every
available key combination. Good grief.

In any case, changing DOS settings under OS/2 is easy enough, thanks
to Warp's setting-notebook format, and you've given me some really
great leads on what settings and drivers I might should look at first.

This is the upshot so far: Starting XyWrite with its new and improved
STARTUP.INT file, then unloading the user dictionaries and printer
files (3 and 7 on the Memory Usage screen), nets me 428 k of free
memory. And I bet some judicious tinkering will get me even more.
We happy.

BTW, to follow up on your earlier suggestion, "default MX=8" works
just dandy on the office machine and my Thinkpad notebook. A little
trial and error showed that, in STARTUP.INT, the MX setting has to
come after all the lines that load files, or it becomes impossible to
load the files at all. I've put the "BC default MX=8" line right
after the one that does a "dos /c" number. On my work machine --
a P6-200 -- there isn't even a hint of screen flicker as it swaps out
to DOS and back. You've got to think that somewhere, someplace, the
Great DOS God is smiling. I am, anyway.

So far, though, MX doesn't seem to work quite the same way on my home
machine, a homebrew 486DX/66 with 20 MB of slowish RAM and a quirky
motherboard from Taiwan, but I haven't had a chance yet to spend much
time on it. It's high on my list of projects for the weekend.

You've obviously put a lot of time and thought into your posts, and
I'm much obliged. I hope I get the chance to return the favor
someday.

>(if it ain't broke, break it)

That I can do, more's the pity.

Have a good weeekend,

--
Stephen A. Carter      High-Tech Information Center Ltd., Nagoya
                   Nagoya, Japan
http://www.hticn.com