Re: File problem....

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "M.W. Poirier"  on Sat, 27
Jul 2002 08:36:50 -0400 (EDT)

OK, next several suggestions. First, I'd try Tom Hawley's idea, of adding or
subtracting some dummy text -- a good chunk, say 500-1000 characters -- before
the errant footnote, and see if the specific problem disappears. It won't solve
your problem, but it will be diagnostic. This usually happens (when it happens,
which isn't often) because text, such as your footnote or a programming frame,
straddles a segment barrier in memory. Right around 64K, for example -- also
around 57-58K, for reasons I've never understood. I'd be curious to know what
the beginning and ending character positions of the footnote are (if you have U2
installed, just command "pos"). Visual symptoms are dropped
characters, invisible characters, wierd formatting, truncated files (sometimes
the first pages are apparently missing). The underlying (filed) text remains
fine, but the misleading/erroneous visual formatting leads you make unnecessary
edits (in an effort to repair what isn't really broken except on-screen).

If this is the problem, just add a dummy, non-printing NoTe to your text:  That will move the memory positions around. It usually happens
that, in the course of normal editing, the memory positions get moved anyway,
and the problem disappears.

Second, you may have too many, or too long, footnotes. The size of the
footnote buffer -- total size of all footnotes -- is 63-64K, and that's an
absolute limitation, for which chain printing is the only solution. Try
eliminating altogether one of the earlier footnotes in the text (a lengthy one,
preferably). If the errant footnote suddenly reappears, and numbering is
correct (minus one, of course), then you've found your problem: split the text.

The third thing to do is to look at your footnote, and also right around the
edges of it, at the DOS level (with a file LISTer). Sometimes a three-byte
character will creep into text, for various reasons. And occasionally, that
3-byter will contain a guillemet or a screen control character (such as
Ascii-253) as the second or third byte in the "character". That can wreak
havoc. Somehow Editor "sees" that byte individually, instead of as part of the
3-byter, and responds to it -- even though it is never displayed.

> I've noticed that it insists on having the same note
> number as the immediately preceding note, which seems to mean that it
> is not recognizing the previous note.

Inspect the previous note as well at the DOS level. One thing to try, is put
it in Draft mode, go to TOF, and then page down manually, one page at a time,
until you reach your problem area, and see if the symptoms persist. Sometimes,
if you jump directly to a position late in a heavily formatted file, Editor has
trouble counting up all the previous footnotes (which, obviously, it has to do
-- it has to "read" the whole file up to that point, in order to render the
correct FN numbers, MoDes, fonts, well everything). It gets confused. It is,
after all, only human.

I don't think, with 291 guillemets, that you've reached the "too many formats"
problem, which IIRC is 873, and which generally tells you that on the PRompt
line anyway...

If it's any comfort, after you've fiddled with it long enough, you'll solve it
-- and it would be interesting to know exactly what the solution was.

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