Re: Xy4 Setup

[Carl Distefano CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from "Adriano Ortile"  Tue, 19 Jan
1999 00:24:16 +0100

-> in opening a file I encounter many times the problem of the
-> truncation. As a small test, I attach the following 2 files.
-> The first one, TEST.DOC, generated by WinWord v.6; Dos reports
-> it is 6656 bytes long.
-> The second one, XYSAVED.DOC, generated by Xy4 following these
-> steps:
-> 	D 1A=1
-> 	call test.doc
-> 	save xysaved.doc.
-> Dos reports it is shorter (only 2836 bytes long).

Well, Adriano, I think that here you're trying to push default 1A
beyond its capabilities. The stated purpose is to enable one to
READ past the EOF marker -- that's all. If you SAve the file,
XyWrite will still add an EOF at the end of the file as displayed,
and anything on disk beyond that point in the file will be lost.

But your TEST.DOC adds further complications: it's full of Ascii-0s,
which are dropped when the file is displayed in XyWrite. As a
result, the number of bytes in the display will be less than the
number of bytes on disk by the number of embedded Ascii-0s. (The
same holds true when you read EDITOR.EXE into the display, and this
may account for the file-size discrepancies that you report.)
TEST.DOC also has a ton of free-floating Ascii-254s and -255s as
well as some Ascii-253s (not to mention all the Ascii-26s!), which
have special functions in XyWrite and can cause it to misbehave or
crash altogether when it encounters them out of context. The
"jumping cursor" or an inability to move the cursor to the End of
File or to move it past some characters is very typical with files
that contain control characters in combinations that are unfamiliar
to EDITOR. So, it doesn't surprise me that you see anomalies, and
that the anomalies are somewhat different as between Xy4 and XyWin.

-> I use Xy4 as often as I can for everything (i.e. not only for
-> genuine word processing)

Well, so do many of us. But there *are* limits, and your test file
illustrates a major one: Don't expect to use Xy as a file viewer
for files that contain XyWrite control characters -- notably, Ascii-
26, 253, 254 and 255 -- in odd combinations that EDITOR.EXE doesn't
"understand". Such characters will be misinterpreted, with strange
and unpredictable results.


--------------
Carl Distefano
CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/