Re: keyboard glitch, late of ill repute, still there

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Brucefelk@xxxxxxxx on Sun, 1 Dec 2002 15:09:01 EST

Bruce:

I loaded your misbehaving KBD file, but could not reproduce the problem. I got
"hell's bells". You know, XyWrite is extremely sensitive about KBD files:
when they're bad, even just one character bad, XyWrite knows it, and tells you
so, and won't load it. I think this is a good KBD file.

I seem to have a distant recollection of this happening to me also, long long
ago -- waaay back when. I can't recall the resolution. There are several
possiblities that occur to me, for example, it may be that your KBD file is
located right on a segment barrier on your hard disk, and that simply moving it
to another location on the HD will fix the problem. Sounds strange, but it
does happen. In any case, you're going to have to debug it on your machine.
Here's what I would do:

You have ten TABLEs in the "bad" KBD file. Ten in your good KBD file. Make a
*copy* of your "good" KBD file. CAll the copy, and your "bad" file, into
adjacent windows. One by one, I would replace whole tables, from key 1 to 105,
copying them from the bad file to the copy of the good file -- in other words,
one table at a time, replace the good with the bad. After *each* individual
table is installed, command "LDKBD newfilename.KBD", and test the
single/double quote phenomenon. Keep adding tables. If it suddenly
malfunctions, then at least you've located the lousy TABLE. If it happened,
say, on the 5th TABLE, what I would do, is reverse gears, restore the good
TABLE, LDKBD that and make sure it works (prove the hypothesis), then take
TABLEs 6 through 10 from the bad file and plug them in, LDKBD that and make
sure *that* works -- if it does, and it probably will, you've at least isolated
the problem. Now just scale down and replace ten *keys* at a time, from bad to
good, in TABLE 5 only, and LDKBD and test each time. You get the idea...
Standard debugging practice, is all it is -- and you know something? It will
work. When you find the 10 keys that screw up, scale down to *one* key (or
two, or three) at a time. Keep narrowing down, until bingo. It will go a lot
faster than you think: DeFine & wipe the good TABLE, DeFine and CoPy the bad,
LDKBD, test, boom boom boom. What *may* happen, is that you'll go through this
procedure, never find an error, and end up with a good KBD table! In which
case, delete the original bad file: it's got a gremlin.

Then send a msg to the list and detail your finding!

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