Re: STRIPMD

[Robert Hemenway]

Dear Robert,

STRIPMD.PM worked nicely for me on a 12K file that I'd saved in both a messy
and a clean version, so that I could check against what STRIPMD produced. It
took out everything superfluous but one MDNM that had got well separated from
its brethren. Numeric MDs don't often turn up for me, and I'd substituted
XH,BX,(,M,D, I,T,) for XH,JM,(,I,t,a,l,i,c,) and so forth in the KBD when I
first got Sig because the additive modes drove me up the wall. So my files
should pose less difficulties than some.

But I ran into difficulties with longer files. Tried STRIPMD several times on
three different files of about 60K and got hangs consistently with each but at
different points in a file, sometimes close to the start and sometimes well in.
I have a 486/33 using 386MAX and got messages: "A Privileged operation
exception at 676C:0C08 (or 6522:0C08; the location varies) has occurred." I
looked at that area with RAMVIEW and found what appears to be XyW code. Can
tell you nothing beyond that. I have only very rarely got hangs with Xy4, but I
haven't pushed it.

So STRIPMD.PM should work for me but doesn't, and it looks like the difficulty
might be in EDITOR.EXE. But I can't say more. No idea whether this is a bug or
a quirk in my system.

If there's anything you'd like me to try, let me know. Though I won't have free
time for a few days.

You've made it clear that I won't be able to go much further in automating file
conversions without writing programs that are more than simple sequences of
S&Rs. I can't even read your program, I'm sorry to say. Hope I'll be able this
summer to sit down with the docs and programs you and Carl and others have
uploaded, and Herb Tyson's book, and the XPL manual, and see if I can get the
basic principles at least through my head.

There are loads of small nuisances in these format conversions. For instance,
when Word for Word, including I assume the XyW module, converts from MSWord to
XyWrite, it can introduce 38 superfluous TS deltas into a 55K file. They have
no effect on printouts, just clutter the files. This sort of thing is easy to
strip with the W wildcard, but it's a pain. Wouldn't a common language be
great? About as likely as universal peace.

Many, many thanks. I'd love to see this work out, but it's not worth your time
unless you think it would be useful to others.

Best, RH2


To: DAVID AUERBACH
Subject: OO|OX STINKS
01: Check out my public msg 8655 (or slightly higher, I haven't checked the
02: actual number) and especially the paragraph about OO|OX. This is a
03: problem for STACK, and STACK must be changed. I'm just not sure which way
04: to go, whether to ignore OO|OX or to hardcode a preference in STACK.INT
05: with the possible consequence that some PMs that permit STACK to execute
06: as a child process will get fucked up... It's pretty amazing to me that
07: they didn't think this thing through better