Re: NBWin and U2 routine GetXyOs workaround

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Mary Bernard  on Mon, 30
Sep 2002 11:23:19 +0100

Mary:

I'm using NB v6.0. I didn't know there was a v6.1. They have some nerve
bumping it up to v6! There were seismic differences between 3==>4 and 4==>5.
But 5 to 6 is -- what? Looks to me like a one hundred dollar refresh to the
income stream, and not much else. (The poor bastards -- I feel for them,
they're such nice people, and I really want them to succeed, but sadly they
never put energy into fixing the guts of the thing, they just add more and more
frilly baggage to what was once lean and mean.)

Yeah, SWSYS.DLL, the SmartWords library, i.e. the basic word processor. That
bugger traps all the time -- a trap is an exception in the code, a disciplined
treatment designed by the author, who deliberately brings a program down when
user input or user action takes the program beyond what its designed to handle:
"if the input meets the criteria for A, do A; if B, do B; if C, do C; if D,
we'll just call it an error and output an error msg; but when user executed E,
user did something so unexpected or outlandish that it overwrote critical parts
of the program's memory (or whatever), so we're obliged to halt the program,
lest things get worse."  Also known as a crash. Sometimes it isn't the
program that triggers it, but the Operating System, which finds its own space
or properties threatened.

NBWin is TOO DELICATE! It drops dead at mosquito bites. Previous versions
were far more robust. Plus, WHY won't they simply fix that %$&!ing keyboard??
Put a switch in there to allow us to turn off all recognition of reserved
Windows keys! I mean, Xy4 works just fine under Windows, and pays zero
attention to those blasted keys. It is SOOO simple, and SOOO obvious. What's
the matter with them?


Anyway, give me a few days, I want to explore this more deeply, but I'm
travelling now...

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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