Re: autosave--and mysterious EOFs

[Carlo Caballero Carlo.Caballero@xxxxxxxx]

I'm glad a few people have been able to help Nikki--what a disaster for
her to lose that much work, especially while under the impression that
"autosave" was turned on. Nikki, let us know if the solutions Carl and
others suggested allowed you to find the orphaned files.

This week I had a peculiar incident with a file in XyWrite that I thought
I'd relate since it might help someone else.

I opened a file--a bibliography about thirty pages long--and found that
XyWrite gave me the "invalid formatting command" warning when I scrolled
about three pages into the file. The invalid formatting was a label (LB)
that had an opening guillemet but no closing one. Nothing else in the
file displayed after that point. I tried looking in expanded mode,
displaying the file by "typing" it in DOS, but to no avail.
Unfortunately, my last floppy back-up of this bibliography was about four
months old, since that was when I last used it for teaching. I had,
however, made a large number of little changes in the file which would be
impossible for me to recover systematically.

I noticed that the SIZE of the file still reflected its thirty-some pages,
not the three pages XyWrite was willing to show me, and since there had
been recent discussion of EOF markers, I wondered...

I made a copy of the damaged file, took it to one of the computers in my
office, and just opened it up in that evil thing called Word. Sure
enough, there was an EOF marker right in the middle of the offending
label, and the rest of the file continued after it. I deleted the EOF,
saved the file as text, and when I opened it up in XyWrite it was perfect
and intact. No data lost.

I know I could have used one of Annie's or Carl's or Robert's programs for
zapping EOFs, but that would have involved downloading those programs, and
I wasn't sure what I'd find when I opened up my Xy file in Word. It was
convenient to use what was at hand. Also, I didn't want to zap the final
(correct) EOF.

This particular file was in Xy3.56. I feel sure that this happened to me
about five years ago, and I just deleted the damaged file and reverted to
a reasonably recent back-up. It's nice to be aware of this problem
and an alterative way to recover the file. The question is, how did that
extra EOF get there, and why? I never remember having trouble with the
file, but I wonder if XyWrite didn't break it into two or three pieces and
then reassemble it wrong...

Carlo

P.S. to Carl DiStefano--I installed VPT a month ago and am delighted with
it. You didn't exaggerate its virtues--and it's so simple! Dark brown
text on a cream background--an elegant screen for bright rooms. Couldn't
do it with the prefab colors in Xy and DOS...

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Carlo Caballero, Ph.D.
Research Associate
College of Music
Campus Box 301
The University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309

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"Let's face it: dead people are busier than ever."

     -- Late-night TV advertisement for cellular phones (I had the
volume turned down too low.)