NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/bit/listserv/notabene/801

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 11.6 KB | 370 lines

Comments: Gated by [e-mail]
Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!HELIX.MGH.HARVARD.EDU!JASPER
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Date:         Thu, 3 Sep 92 08:35:26 IST
Sender:       Nota Bene List <NOTABENE@TAUNIVM>
From:         "Michael J." <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Jasper's list of bugs and general whining
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene
Lines: 354

As per Bob's request, here is a copy of my list of bugs and suggestions
compiled after about 3 days of playing with NB4. (Incidentally, they
sent it to me right quick after I informed them that I had lodged a formal
complaint with my credit card company re: getting charged months ago for
something that hadn't been shipped. I believe the term for this is
fraudulent use of a credit card). I've probably spent more time on this list
then on the damned NIH grant I'm supposed to be writing. I think I'll hold
that against NBI, too. :-)



Well, I don't think you'll find this exciting reading, but let me know if
anyone has any comments. Also, someone requested more info on getting
papyrus - what did you want besides the address, phone, and e-mail
address?

Michael
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              Bugs in Version 4.0 of Notabene

1)After deleting several marked files via file management
system, program reported "Too many program calls" and locked
up system.

2) After customizing printer drivers, video palettes and
text colors, or using keyboard reassignment facility, the
menu help system frequently gets stuck in a mode where the
menu can be called up (first level), but any further action
simply results in a beep, with no action. It happens a lot
if you try to change the symbol set with files open. This is
only fixed by quitting the program and restarting. Sometimes
the program starts up in this state, particularly under
Desqview (but not only). It seems to be a problem with load-
ing of the Help system into memory. At other times, when it
happens under Desqview, the problem may be fixed by loading
another program into a desqview window, or just switching
momentarily to a desqview window and then back. But please
note: This is not a Desqview problem - it happens outside DV
also.

3) Zip searches are not saved when program is quit. This
feature is pretty much worthless if you have to redefine the
search strings every time you reload NB and the document
you're working on.

4) When entering paths to look for files in (Set-Other-
Files-Regular), paths in slots 1-5 are saved, but 6-9 are
not. If I enter additional paths, save them as permanent
changes, and then immediately re-call the set up, the new
entries are gone. This happens regardless of whether other
files are open or not when I make the changes. Note however
that if the paths are entered manually into the NBCUSTOM.set
file, they work fine. There is a problem with writing to
this file from the menu.

5) When logging window names via the Window menu/Manage/Log
names procedure, if one chooses a Log set that has already
been defined (i.e.  to update that setup), the program does
not offer the previous name as a default but instead offers
a blank field, making it necessary to keep typing in the set
name each time it is updated.

6) Defining a single word (CTRL - Scroll Lock), then hitting
Alt-F3 for the phrase library menu, causes an additional
word to be defined. This also happens if you hit F1 after
the define,  then Options-Phrase Library Assign. The result
is that an additional word is assigned to the phrase
library. This doesn't happen if the define is done with F2-
F2.

7) If text is defined by word (CTRL - Scroll Lock) and CTRL-
Pad 5 is hit to call up the goto menu, the define is changed
to italic mode - that is, the CTRL-Pad 5 is interpreted as
CTRL-5. However, if defining is done by line (just hitting
scroll lock) or with the F2 method, the GOTO menu comes up
normally.

8) Despite having set the directory for spelling files
(*.SPL) to \Nota\spell, when I go to check a word, the
program looks to find DICT.SPL in the main program directory
(\NOTA), and when it isn't found there, reports: Not found
C:\QPR\DICT.SPL. When I use the menu sequence F1-Check-
Dictionary-Select Dictionary, the window is too narrow,
causing the status to wrap, and when I indicate U.S. English
as the correct dictionary, I get "Not found English.OV3".

9) When I try to load a phrase library from the command
line, the program does not look in the designated library
directory. Again, it says: Not found c:\QPR\File.lib. I have
no idea where the QPR comes from. The library loading does
work properly when done from the menu.

10) A problem that has existed for the last two versions has
not gone away: changing print mode by word (CTRL-SHFT 1,2,3,
etc.) works for every mode except underline. I have found
this with different versions of NB, with and without
Desqview, on different machines, including pure bred IBMs.
Why don't you fix this already?

11) When a file is called with fonts not found in the active
driver, NB offers various linking options. However, when you
choose the option to change the deltas in the file and no
link list has been set up, the change is not made, but the
file on disk is renamed to *.bax, and the program sub-
sequently is unable to find the original file.

12) Subscripting and Superscripting are not properly imple-
mented in the Deskjet 500 driver. In the previous driver
(version 3, dj500pre.prn), scripts were done with a smaller
font. However, the subscript was lowered too much and over-
printed the next line. In the present driver (dj500.prn),
the scripts are done in full size fonts, resulting in their
interfering with lines above or below. The ideal would be
too use the smaller font as in the older driver, but not
lower the subscript so much. In any case, they need to be
adjusted.

13) The deskjet 500 driver building facility does not
include second party cartridges like the Pacific Data 25-in-
1, nor soft fonts. Your literature very specifically said
these would be available for HP Deskjets as well as Laser-
writers. I purchased a Deskjet recently with this in mind
after consulting with the NBI staff.

14) The command stack doesn't always work. If I call up a
directory from the command line, then hit F1, and open a
file, then abandon it, then go back to the command line, the
stack is empty.

15) A menu or help screen of accent mnemonics for use with
the F6 compose key does not come up when hitting F1 after
F6.

16) The F6 del/BkDel function does not work in plain NB.

17) None of the special characters (legal, old English,
Portuguese), such as the trademark symbol, the daggers, the
open and close quotes, etc. are implemented in the Deskjet
500 printer driver. And something even stranger is afoot
related to screen fonts for these: when I enter one of these
characters (e.g. a dagger by CTRL-SHFT D), with the
Ascii/Italic symbol set, I get a substitute DOS symbol on
the screen. But if I switch to another program (using
Desqview) and call up the saved file (without unloading the
NB font), I find that the symbol is displayed as an actual
dagger. In other words, NB seems to be loading the video
registers with a font capable of displaying daggers,
trademark symbols, etc., but then not displaying them. What
gives?
18) Version 3 of NB had limited support for the substitute
multilingual and legal characters. While it is clear that
people with a frequent need for unusual characters will use
Lingua, those of us whose infrequent but occasional use of
such characters does not justify the expense of Lingua find
that version 4 has actually decreased our capabilities. You
seem to have removed these features from NB and made it
necessary to have Lingua to use features that were once
standard in NB without the SLS. This is unfair. What you've
done is create a situation where people who don't work in
other languages, but do occasionally need the odd foreign,
greek or math character are worse off than before the
upgrade.

  In general, one gets the feeling (and I've had this feel-
ing now for several months), that NBI really doesn't care
about customers who aren't upgrading to Lingua. Clearly,
some of the Lingua technology could be used in the base
program to provide additional symbol support for normal
English language use, without compromising your Lingua
customer base. Someone who writes texts in another language
will need Lingua regardless. Someone who uses a few legal
characters here and there, or has the occasional mathemati-
cal or scientific equation in their texts will not.

19) Your advance literature says that it is possible to
rename a file on-screen (as opposed to renaming a disk file
only). How?








































                        Suggestions



1) Is there no way under NB 4.0 to have italic, super-
scripts, and subscript fonts loaded at the same time - at
least with one of the newer ATI cards? You clearly have the
technology for this, since Lingua can switch between several
sets of 512 characters on the fly. I was under the impres-
sion that the added expense of Lingua was for the ability to
access special foreign language fonts and have these printed
- something which obviously took a lot of development - as
well as have the additional word processing support for
these characters. In contrast, super/sub script fonts and
italics already exist on the printers, and don't require all
that much new development on the screen, since they are just
shifted versions of normal characters. Yet you seem to have
kept the video font technology out of the base NB. This
seems like nothing more than stinginess - and you surely
aren't giving this upgrade away for free. Why not give NB 4
the capacity to load several fonts (italic, sub and super-
script) simultaneously or switch between sets on the fly,
just as in Lingua? Lingua will still be worth the extra
money for those who need the non-Roman characters, but the
rest of us won't feel so damned cheated.

2) When the program is running under Desqview and DV
switches to a different window, the NB fonts and palette
remain active. It is not too difficult to manually clear
these with CA-ESC, but it would be helpful if the program
sensed the change to the Desqview menu and did this automat-
ically, much as it does when going to DOS or quitting.

3) Also under Desqview, NB should be able to determine when
it is running in a non-full screen window, and adjust para-
meters like screen lines and screen columns automatically.
Otherwise, paging with the PgDn key doesn't work properly.
Setting the SL= parameter by hand doesn't entirely fix this
either. It is not difficult for a program to detect a window
size in DV (just takes a few simple calls to DV), and I was
told months ago that NBI was going to make an effort to make
NB run well under DV. Judging by the traffic on the NB e-
mail list, there are plenty of people running under DV, and
plenty are unhappy with NBI.

4) When will NBI stop using 10 year old technology and start
loading printer drivers, spell checkers, hyphenation dic-
tionaries etc. into EMS like every other program on the
market? Even simple shareware programmers  know how to do
this. Version 4.0 moves incrementally in this direction, but
is too little, too late. At the very least, you could put
printer drivers into EMS.















































































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P.S. - You will note that I was feeling just a little peevish as
I wrote all this. You should see the cover letter that is going on
top! Oh well - maturity isn't all its cracked up to be.

MJ