Macwelt 1/Macwelt DVD 1.toast/Web-Publishing/HTML-Editoren/Alpha ƒ/Help/Bug Reports and Debugging

Text File | 2000-12-16 | 30.5 KB | 734 lines

================================================================================

          Bugs and Bug-reports

Alpha has a sophisticated bug reporting and tracking system.  Please
use it, since it will help us (and you) to keep track of bugs,
potential workarounds, and when they are finally fixed.  To use the
system, go to

    <http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/~steffen/Alpha/bugzilla/>.

The Alpha-D mailing list is also a useful venue for discussion
possible problems/workarounds/bugs in Alpha.  However for the highest
likelihood of getting a bug fixed, the bugzilla system should be used.
It maintains a public record of what has been done to fix the problem, and
has mails direct to the Alpha-D list as bugs are reported and fixed.

Bugs in Alpha are generally of two types: a problem in Alpha's compiled
C code, or in Alpha's supporting libraries of Tcl code.  The latter can
usually be fixed more easily.  In either case it is essential that you
provide a detailed sequence of actions which can reproduce the problem.
IMPORTANT: For Tcl problems, it is also invaluable to have a 'Stack
Trace'.  In fact, without a 'Stack Trace' it is ALMOST ALWAYS NOT
POSSIBLE to track down problems in Alpha's Tcl code, unless they lead
to very 'visual' problems, or unless you can give extremely precise
instructions on how to reproduce the bug.

It is also important to know precisely which version of Alpha (and
AlphaTcl) you are using -- see the Readme, or Changes files for this
information.  It is usually worth checking if there is a newer release
available: the problem may already have been fixed.

Also, please try to distinguish between a 'crash' in which the entire
Alpha application quits or your machine locks up, and a more typical
'bug/failure/error' in which some operation inside Alpha simply doesn't
do what you expected (in the latter case you can always make a stack
trace, in the former that will be quite difficult).

           Reporting a bug

Here are the steps you need to take to produce a useful bug report:

• Try to find a 100% reproducible set of circumstances which show
  up the bug, which hopefully don't depend on your particular
  machine's configuration.
• Does Alpha crash or does Alpha simply do something a little wrong?
  If it crashes, use the bugzilla bug reporting system to enter all
  pertinent information.  The bug will be recorded, and we will try to
  fix it.  On the other hand, if Alpha does not crash, you will have
  to do more to produce the most valuable bug reports, so keep
  reading...
• Do you have the most recent version of Alpha and AlphaTcl, its
  supporting libraries?  If you are using a beta release version,
  you should check <ftp://ftp.ucsd.edu/pub/alpha/PreRelease/> to
  see if a newer version is available.
• Is the bug documented towards the end of this file?  If so it
  is a known bug which will hopefully be fixed in the future.

If you got this far, you have the latest release of Alpha(Tcl) and have
a reproducible set of circumstances in which Alpha doesn't do quite
what you want.  Assuming a single action triggered the bug, you will
need to find out what "procedure" that single action is calling, and
then perform a trace on that procedure.  So there are now two steps to
follow:

• you need to determine which procedure to trace
• you need to carry out the actual trace.

           Which procedure to trace?

If a menu-selection causes a problem, then there are three ways you may
be able to determine which procedure to trace:

(i) if the menu item is called 'Cmd Double Click', then the procedure
is probably called 'cmdDoubleClick' (i.e. scrunch everything together
and make the first character lower case).

(ii) if the menu item has a keyboard shortcut, then use the F7
'Describe Binding' functionality below to find the procedure.

(iii) ask on the Alpha-D mailing list (you should probably also ask to
whom you should send the stack trace when you have it).

If the problem occurs with a key-press (say you press 'return' and the
wrong thing happens), then you can find out which procedure is being
activated with the 'Describe Binding (F7)' menu item:

(i) hit F7, followed by the offending key-press.  Alpha will give you
the name of the procedure which would be triggered by that key.

Through one of the above steps you will now know the name of the
procedure to trace.  So the next step is...

           Performing a stack-trace

A stack trace is a detailed list of each internal command called
together with the parameters used for that command, and the results of
the command.  A stack trace records everything that happens inside a
given "procedure", so if that procedure does something wrong, the
stack trace should contain the information to understand the problem,
and hopefully to fix it.

For experienced Tcl programmers, a stack trace usually lets one diagnose
even very subtle problems.  More blatant errors can be diagnosed even
by inexperienced Tcl programmers.  Either way stack traces are a good
way of beginning to understand what goes on in Alpha's internals.

The first step is to get access to the suitable debugging commands.
These are mostly located in the Alpha Developer Menu.  If you debug a
lot of Tcl code you might have that as a global menu, but if not, the
easiest way to activate that menu is to open a Tcl shell (in 'Shel'
mode that menu is active by default).  To open a Tcl shell, hit
'cmd-Y' ('Shell' in the Utils menu).

The top few items in the Alpha Developer Menu are for stack traces:

(i) select 'Trace Tcl Proc…' from the menu.
(ii) from the listbox which appears, select the procedure you need
to trace
(iii) now go back to a situation in which the bug occurs and repeat
the action which shows up the bug/causes the problem.
(iv) finally go back to the Tcl shell, and select 'Dump Traces'
from the Alpha Developer Menu.
(v) mail the resulting window trace dump to the person designated by
the Alpha-D list (usually stack traces are very large, so it is not
nice to mail the whole thing to the list).  If the trace dump is
empty, you probably traced the wrong procedure.  In this case ask
for help on the Alpha-D list.

With some errors it may be worth rebuilding your Tcl indices and then
quitting and restarting Alpha (again use the Alpha Developer menu to do that).

Please include the version numbers of Alpha and other packages which you are
using.  If they are not the latest you should consider upgrading first too.

           Other debugging tricks

Looking at errorInfo: Sometimes you can get a first estimate at what
went wrong by examining the 'errorInfo' variable which Tcl sets.  If an
action you perform fails, hit 'cmd-Y' to bring up the Tcl shell, and
then type 'set errorInfo' and <return>.  The value of the errorInfo
variable will be dumped into the shell window.  It may help you to
debug things.

Automatic shell dumps: The help below tells you how to get a stack
trace under the most general circumstances.  One quick trick you may
try is the following.  Open a Tcl shell (cmd-Y for 'Shell' in the Utils
menu) and then repeat the action which caused the problem.  Some
internal problems are trapped by Alpha and errors dumped to the shell
window if it's open.  If you're lucky, your bug is trapped like that
you'll have the trace to report automatically.

================================================================================

More technical debugging information follows:

           Using Trace-func

Usually it will be easiest to use 'trace tcl proc' and 'dump traces'
from the Alpha Developer Menu, but just in case you want to use the
underlying trace functionality directly, this section describes the Tcl
function-tracing command 'traceFunc'.  traceFunc allows you to trace a
specfic function whenever it is called, sending the output to another
window.  The indented trace of the function includes all parameters,
each argument enclosed within single quotes, as well as the function
result.

The syntax of the function is:

    traceFunc on <funcName> <winName>
    traceFunc off
    traceFunc status

For example, if I want to trace the proc 'nextFunc' (defined in
procs.tcl), the following might be a log of my activity at the Tcl shell:

    Welcome to Alpha's Tcl shell.
    Alpha> traceFunc on nextFunc traceWin
    Alpha> traceFunc status
    Func-tracing on, func: nextFunc, win: traceWin
    Alpha>

Now I create a new window, "dirty" it so that I can get a save dialog,
and save it as 'traceWin'. Note that tracing is only sent to open
windows, so I must leave 'traceWin' open.

Then I open any random non-C file (because I want the function to fail), go
to the beginning of the file, and type escape-x 'nextFunc'.  The output
should look something like the following:

    nextFunc
     searchFunc '1'
      getPos
      OK: 38530
      select '38530'
      OK:
      saveVars
      OK:
      if '(1==1)' '
            nextLine
        ' 'else' '
            previousLine
        '
       nextLine
       OK:
      OK:
      getPos
      OK: 38573
      set 'pos' '38573'
      OK: 38573
      setVar 'regExpr' '1'
      OK:
      setVar 'forward' '1'
      OK:
      setVar 'ignoreCase' '1'
      OK:
      search '^[^ \t\(#\r/@].*\(.*\)$' '38573'
      ERROR: Search unsuccessful
     ERROR: Search unsuccessful
    ERROR: Search unsuccessful


The trace output shows that the problem was an unsuccessful search. In
this case, a dialog informed us of this fact anyway, but many Alpha
routines are not as friendly when it comes to error messages.


Another way to debug Tcl routines is to insert statements that print
values to another window. For example, one could use the following
routine:

    proc out args {
        insertText -w "*tcl shell*" $args
    }

Whatever you do, don't use 'puts stdout' or 'puts stderr' since these
tend to crash Alpha (hopefully to be fixed at some point...)

           Here's some debugging advice from Tom:

Hi All,

This is so simple that I hesitate to admit that I missed it this long, but
I'll swallow my pride an mention this in case anyone  else has missed this.

When you want to get a handle on what a proc is doing, you can use a
combination of the source in one window and the shell in another.

First, figure out what values the parameters of the proc would take on in
the case you want to investigate, (perhaps from a trace while running
things normally).

Now go to the shell and set variables with the same names as the parameters
to the values you discovered through the trace.

Now go to the tcl source file and select a subset of the proc's internal
code and just load it.

After each sucessive part is run you can pop over to the shell and use it
to check out the state of any variable with a simple set statement, or,
even easier, just cmd-dbl-click or a variable name you want to inspect the
value of.

I've found this real useful for investigating menu routines, you can change
the menu creation string that the proc gave you and just select and reload
it to see if your changes will do what you want.

Tom

===============================================================================

          Known Bugs

(As of Alpha 7.4)

These are all bugs with Alpha's internal compiled code, _not_ with the
Tcl scripts which come with Alpha.  You will have to work around them
where possible.

()    Dead-key followed by delete removes several characters.

()    under  MacOS 8 or 9, sometimes when Alpha is already running and you
    double click on a file in the finder to open Alpha, you can get
    an error -917 (in the finder) and the file isn't opened.  I think
    OS 8 sends a different aevent to an application of it is already
    running, and this may be the problem.

()    If I hit the key equivalent of a menu-item, it is called even if the
    menu item has been disabled.  (This is a MacOS problem and will probably
    never be fixed in Alpha)

()    Multi-line edit boxes in dialogs should allow 'return' to be pressed,
    without triggering the 'OK' button.  Otherwise there is no way to enter
    a return.  (sure you can enter '\r' and have the calling procedure
    manipulate the result, but that's not a good solution; also the above
    is standard MacOS behaviour).

()    gotoTMark often scrolls the window all the way to the top (0),
    before scrolling back to a TMark!  This gives the window a
    horrible up/down jerk motion when moving from one TMark to the
    next.

()  addMenuItem has a bug when given '-l ""' -- see the procedure
    rebuildFtpMenu for an example.  You can workaround it with
    '-l " "' instead.  The problem is with <O being added when it
    should not.

()    'replaceText' on a large block of text which overlaps the top of
    the window (i.e.  half a big paragraph is off the top of the
    window, half is still visible, and we now replace the paragraph
    with some different text) causes a re-draw error in which the
    replacement text is all drawn in the window (from the top down)
    when only some of it should be visible.  This gives the illusion of
    over-writing other stuff in the window.  All is ok if you scroll up
    and down to refresh.

    This is most often manifested when using 'fillParagraph' on a large
    paragraph which overlaps the top of the window.

()    I tried out Adobe Type Reunion Deluxe 2.0 the other day, and it thinks
    the 'modes menu' towards the right end of the status bar is a font
    menu!  Most peculiar.

()  Several people have reported these two problems, but not everyone
    sees them:

    >Just a quick note...  I am using 7.0b2 on my 9500/132 and 8100/100AV.  On
    >my 8100, the tear-off menus are chopped off on the right side when you tear
    >them off to stand alone.  This happens on a friend's 8100/80 as well.
    >

    I'm using Alpha 6.52 on a Starmax 4100 with 7.6.1 and Aaron and I
    experience the same menu tear-off problem.  I also experienced it with 6.5
    and 6.51 (I think).

===============================================================================

          Pseudo-Bugs

These are things which Alpha perhaps ought to do, but doesn't and hence
can be considered suggestions for the future or just bugs.

()    Indentation tends to move the current cursor position.  It probably
    shouldn't.

()    The filesets menu 'Hide' menu shows filesets which can't be
    unhidden, and gives an error message if you try to do that.
    Probably best just to remove them from the menu.

()    The colours Alpha uses are incorrect for 'yellow' and 'cyan'.  You can
    fix them if you want using 'config->redefine colors'.

()    If you use 'killWindow' from within an 'openHook' proc, Alpha will
    often crash (MacsBug tells you it's in 'rowColToPos' or some such proc).
    There's no way to abort the open window from within that proc that
    seems to be entirely safe.

()    Extend 'matchIt' to cope with '/* ...  */' pairs as well as normal
    braces.

()    Let a window scroll at least so that the end of the document is
    half-way up the window?  Currently the last line of text must lie at
    the very bottom of the window and this is disconcerting when typing a
    long latex file (one can of course just add a whole bunch of returns,
    but that shouldn't be necessary).

()    When Alpha's memory is low, put up a warning dialog that you should quit
    and restart.

()    'getModifiers' opened up some new possibilities for interface routines,
    however, in a couple of places where I would like to use this, things
    are done directly with alpha and there are no Tcl proc's that we can
    hang modifications off of.  Specifically, neither of the function
    pop-up's allow you to dectect if a modifier key was held down, (you
    could then offer a different menu, say the structual marks vs.  the
    alphabetical mark recently introduced via toTclMarkFile).  Once a menu
    is presented, there is no way to detect that a choice has been made
    with a modifier key depressed, this would be useful to provide an
    automatic mark stack push (such a mechanism does work in the status
    line <mode> pop-up, if an option key is held while selecting an item
    there, the help file (if any exists) for that mode will be opened.

()    It would be nice if matchIt could put on a little bit more of a display so
    you are better able to pick it up with your peripheral vission as you are
    typing. Maybe "halo' the matchIt position before flashing the character,
    or form a cross of hilited char positions (above and below, both sides)
    before flashing the matchIt character.


          Fixed but not released.

Things which have been fixed in Alpha 8.0 (release date unknown)

()    There's no way to know which application it was which replied to an
    event which was passed to 'handleReply'.

    This limitation still exists in 'handleReply', but the '-Q <handlerProc>'
    option to 'tclAE::send' permits unambiguous reply dispatching.

()    There is currently no facility to get a list of eventHandlers which
    have been defined.

()    Have a flag to allow reporting of errors which hit the top level.
    Currently such errors just vanish and you're left wondering what exactly
    did/didn't happen.  I.e. the user should be able to define a 'errorHook'
    procedure which is called with such top-level errors.  (This is
    effectively the 'bgerror' feature of Tcl 8)

()  'eval ... $args' where the last elment of args was
    something like "} " converts the trailing space into a backslash.
    This is a bug in Tcl 7.5, which has since been fixed.

()    When saving large files, the window sometimes goes blank.  Cmd-L
    brings the text back again (it's a visual problem only).  This
    actually only occurred when you had 'update file header' active
    in the document projects package and is due to a bug in replaceText.

()    During status prompts, clicking in the scrollbar, or anything which
    doesn't actually affect the window shouldn't reset the status
    prompt which it currently does.

()    Implement find/replace in the current selection (there is a proc
    to do this in "procs.tcl", but far more convenient would be a check box
    in the standard find dialog box). (in supersearch)

()    Move the replace-in-fileset facility to the standard find dialog as
    another option.  In fact why not combine this with the above
    suggestion and have a pop-up option menu with 'search this document'
    'search current selection' 'search entire fileset' as options, instead
    of the current 'multiple files' checkbox?  'Replace All' should replace
    all occurrences in the current selection/file, whilst for filesets this
    is rather drastic so I'd suggest there be another checkbox, which says
    'replace in all files' and changes the meaning of opt-cmd-R in that
    case. (in supersearch)

()    If we have a menu item with a key-equivalent and a mark-charcter,
    like this: "!≠/=<Ineq", the 'item' sent to the menu proc is
    not 'neq' as it should be, but rather '!≠neq'.  This is a bug.

()    Cursor-key-bindings can't appear in menus.  More precisely the glyphs
    for the arrow keys can appear, but the menu doesn't create the
    appropriate binding for the keys, so the shortcut doesn't function.
    A workaround is to define 'Bind ...' statements in addition to the
    menu, but this is a bug.

()  the GetTMarks list doesn't contain the duplicate window markers
    <2>, <3> etc, as returned by [winNames -f].  This could be considered
    a bug or a feature.

()    GetTMarks thinks non-file windows are in the '[pwd]' directory,
    rather than in no directory at all.

()    You can't make a menu with both menu-form-conversion and not, unless
    you build it with 'addMenuItem ?-m?', but then you can't add dynamic
    items or sub-menus.  What is needed is a code, like '&', to go in
    the 'menu' command which says "don't convert this item".

()  Error replies to 'dosc' are not always handled correctly:

    Welcome to Alpha's Tcl shell.
    «Alpha ƒ» dosc -c 'WIsH' -s "file asfasf"
    Error: Error: 1
    «Alpha ƒ» dosc -c 'WIsH' -s "info asfasf"
    Error: Error: bad option "asfasf": must be args, body, cmdcount, commands,
    complete, default, exists, globals, hostname, level, library, loaded, locals,
    nameofexecutable, patchlevel, procs, script, sharedlibextension, tclversion,
    or vars
    «Alpha ƒ»

    One might think this was a problem on 'WIsH's end of things, but
    if you replace the above by the equivalent 'AEBuild ...  misc dosc
    ...'  then it is clear the reply is correct.  Therefore Alpha is
    screwing up somewhere in 'dosc'.

()    The dialog command (i) fails when given a huge number of items in
    more than 8 panes. (call 'global::allPrefs' to see this happen --
    that's why the prefs have to be subdivided now). (ii) isn't
    documented completely: '-n' option needs explaining.

()    Also there's no command to disable an entire menu in one go.

()    Furthermore, matchIt fails when matching the '{}' begin and end 'proc'
    pair of a large function.  'balance' works still!  As a concrete
    example, look at proc TeX::Completion::Cite.  matchIt has a built in
    default of 3000 char max to search, which has been worked around
    in Alpha7.x.  Alpha 8.x has an unlimited default.

()    Let 'diff' work on files with Unix eol's as well as just mac ones
    (it 'works', but treats the entire file as a one line).

()    'dialog' doesn't cope with _very_ complex multi-page dialogs

()  Menu names can't be longer than 24 chars.  Can be problematic
    for filesets menu.  Maximum is now 31 chars (max length of a file
    in MacOS at present).

()    The optional parameter to 'matchIt' doesn't seem to have any effect
    for me.  E.g. the following two procs (when bound to a key) both can
    take up to 10 seconds to return in a large (200k) file.  Presumably the
    first is only supposed to search 200 characters so should be quick.

    proc matchFast {} {
        if ![catch {matchIt ")" [lineStart [getPos]] 200} paren] {
            alertnote "yes"
        } else {
            alertnote "no"
        }
    }
    proc matchSlow {} {
        if ![catch {matchIt ")" [lineStart [getPos]]} paren] {
            alertnote "yes"
        } else {
            alertnote "no"
        }
    }

()    The 'time' command reports ticks not microseconds.  Ticks aren't
    much use (too coarse-grained)

()  The string returned from any 'dialog ....' edit box is not
    appended to the result correctly.  The result should be a list
    of items, but I guess 'append' rather than 'lappend' is used
    internally.  Example: if a dialog has an edit-item as the
    first item, and I enter '} then {' (to search for obsolete Tcl
    syntax), the string returned by dialog '{res1 res2 ...}' is
    actually '{} then { res2 ...}' which is obviously completely
    wrong.  It should have been {{\} then \{} res2 ...}.  Alpha
    should be using 'lappend' internally which will do all the
    hard work of quoting the result for you.  I think the same
    problem occurs with many of Alpha's standard dialogs.

()    the '-c' menu option to ignore all meta-characters also ignores all
    sub-menus (or rather it puts some weird character in the menu and
    there is no sub-menu).

()  rememberPatternHook is called without quoting its arguments correctly
    This means the call fails if either search of replace string contain
    unquoted '{' or '}'.  (see bug a few lines up for probable solution)

()     Add commands/options: (Vince _really_ wants these!)

    'GetTMarks ?-w win?'
    'replaceText ?-w win? ...'
    'getPosOfTMark ?-w win? name'

()  'matchIt "\]" $pos' never works --- the ']' argument to matchIt
    isn't handled correctly; the proc always returns 'no match found'

()    Menu key bindings to items which contain square brackets '[]' do not
    work.  This is because the binding is evaluated, which tries to
    evaluate the '[xxx]'.  When creating the menu item, the text should
    have been surrounded by '{}'.  This is most often manifested in the
    window menu, for which keyboard equivalents cmd-0-9 do not work if
    a window's name contains square brackets.
    (There is a pseudo-workaround for this in the Tcl code).
    Again this is probably a problem with append vs lappend used
    internally.

()    removeTMark doesn't seem to work

()    Almost none of Alpha's file/glob/cd/... commands support aliases
    This would be fixed with Tcl8.0

()    grep, scanfile etc. basically fail on Unix format files: they think
    any match is on the first line of the file.  This is especially
    useless for batch searches in which every match is listed as being
    on the first line.  Upgrading to Tcl 8 should help this!

()    icGetPref has some problems (other problems listed below too):

    «Alpha ƒ» icGetPref Helper•http
    lG1MacLynxphervigator™ 3.0

()    icGetPref on many items returns 'ic err: -670' which is the following
    error:

        icTruncatedErr = -670,    /* more data was present than was returned */

    This happens for 'DownloadFolder' for example (_many_ others too).

()    posToRowCol doesn't deal with tabs.  Is this a bug or a
    feature?  Basically on a line beginning with a tab, I'd expect
    [posToRowCol $start] to be "X 0", and [posToRowCol [incr
    start]] to be "X 4" (or "X 8" or whatever).

    To put this another way, 'posToRowCol [getPos]' does not have the same
    value as the row/col indicator in the status bar.

()  If you have an untitled dirty window which is not at the front, and then
    use 'Save all', you will get a save dialog for the window at the front, not
    the untitled one behind.

()    'regModeKeywords' colorizes keywords without regard to capitalizations, there
    are plenty of languages where capitalization is significant, it would be
    nice to have a switch to tell alpha not to ignore keyword capitalization.

()    Let 'scanfile' etc.  work on files with Unix eol's as well
    as just mac ones (they 'work', but treat the entire file as a
    single line, which isn't too helpful).  Also 'gets' treats an
    entire file as a single line if it's delimited by '\n'.  I guess
    these issues would be resolved by updating Alpha's Tcl core to 7.6/8.0.

()    Adjusting tab-size/font should not dirty the window.
    (There is a work-around for this in "coreFixes.tcl")

()    There are numerous problems (small and large) with Alpha's moveFile
    removeFile etc.  These will go away if Alpha upgrades to Tcl8.0.
    Here's an example: let's say we have files '$a' and '$b' and
    we wish to replace $a with $b.  Then we can't do it.

    removeFile $a ; moveFile $b $a   ;# gives 'unknown error'
    moveFile $a ${a}~ ; moveFile $b $a ; removeFile ${a}~  ;# gives error

()     Make the 'listpick' box width & height user configurable?

()    The following line exhibits a bug in the auto-wrap feature of
    Alpha.  It occurs with any long line which contains no internal
    space but does contain punctuation/braces.  (This actually occurs
    quite frequently in latex 'equation' environments).  Move the
    cursor to somewhere near the end of the line and start typing (make
    sure the window isn't read only).  Blank lines are inserted
    before the given line!

    ,asbafsafaskasd.jsasassdkasdas,d{adasdadhja}skasddaasdasasasasasasasaasas

()    'puts stderr blah' brings up a SIOUX window and crashes Alpha.  Alpha
    should be linked with the sioux-stubs, so no sioux-code is linked in,
    and these puts commands should be diverted to some Tcl proc equivalent.
    (the procedure tclLog in "library.tcl" is a good standard alternative)
    Vince can supply you with some C code which will divert stdio to
    given tcl procedures.

()    bringToFront doesn't work on window names which contain colons
    (unusual case I know)

()    There is no way to get or set the font or font-size of a window from Tcl

()    If a file is opened with a selection (say everything: cmd-A),
    then closed, and then the data-fork of the file is changed, so
    that it is shorter, on re-opening the file, the highlighting is
    v.  odd, and I had to redraw the window to fix it (ctrl-l).
    Alpha should probably check if highlighting runs past the end of
    the file.

()    The interaction of the search dialog box with the 'grepfset' procedure
    is incorrect:
 #
 # "grepfset" --
 #
 #  args: wordmatch ?-nocase? expression fileset
 #  Obviously we ignore wordmatch
 #
 #  If the 'Grep' box was set, then the search item is _not_ quoted.
 #
 #  Non grep searching problems:
 #
 #  If it wasn't set, then some backslash quoting takes place.
 #  (The chars: \.+*[]$^ are all quoted)
 #  Unfortunately, this latter case is done incorrectly, so most
 #  non-grep searches which contain a grep-sensitive character fail.
 #  The quoting should use the equivalent of the procedure 'quote::Regfind'
 #  but it doesn't quote () and perhaps other important characters.
 #
 #  Even worse, if the string contained any '{' it never reaches this
 #  procedure (there must be an internal error due to bad quoting).
 #

()   Some of them seem to be caused by Alpha not using
     'lappend' internally when it should be (it often seems to use 'append'
    together with some inadequate quoting instead).  This causes big
    problems when characters like '[]{}' are involved.

()    Cmd-double-clicking seems first to check if there is a ':' anywhere in the
    non-whitespace surrounding the click position, and if so sends that text
    off to Internet Config.  Unfortunately if IC doesn't think it is a URL
    (often the case since, for instance, TeX labels and Tcl procedure names
    may contain colons) the standard 'CmdDblClick' procedure is never called.
    In such a case the cmd-dbl-click is just lost. One way around this is to
    double-click to get the selection you want, and then invoke the
    CmdDblClick routine via its keybinding (default = F6).

()    searching backwards for this regexp in a window can lock Alpha up
    or crash with error 28 (stack hits heap):

        (/\*([^*]|[^*]\/|\*[^\/]|\r)*\*/|^\[ \t\]\t*\$)

    Vince can supply a 100% reproducible example of this if needed.
    Minor variants on this regexp have the same problem.  This occurs
    when using text::genericIndent when editing javascript code in
    HTML pages.  I'm not sure what the search is seeing that causes
    the problem.  (text::genericIndent has since been rewritten to
    avoid this trouble). (Will be fixed with new regexp code)

()  'regexp {\w} a' == 1, but 'regexp {[\w]} a' == 0, i.e. the \w only
    matches if it isn't inside a range!  There are many other regexp problems.
    This isn't quite right: regexp {[\w]} a == 0 , but regexp {[\w]+} a == 1.
    Very weird.  (Will be fixed with new regexp code)

()  Regexp's still have some problems:

    «Alpha ƒ» regsub -all {\W} {aaaaaa  aa} {Z} t
    14
    «Alpha ƒ» set t
    aaaaaaZZaaZZZtZZZZgæZZézZDZÇZC0Z
    «Alpha ƒ»

    This used to give:

    «Alpha ƒ» regsub -all {\W} {aaaaaa  aa} {Z} t
    7
    «Alpha ƒ» set t
    aaaaaaZZaaZZZtZZZ

    which is also wrong.
    (Will be fixed with new regexp code)

          Half-fixed:

()    when dealing with a menu with more than perhaps 20 items, Alpha won't
    unconvert the menu-item when it is sent to the menu-proc.  So if I
    build a menu with 'Menu -n Name -p my_proc {lots of items... thisOne}'
    then 'thisOne' appears in the menu as 'This One' (as desired), but
    when it is selected, the call is 'my_proc Name "This One"' which
    is incorrect.  The menu items near the top of the menu work fine!

()    There are many other problems with long menus: 'enableMenuItem'
    doesn't work properly. i.e. enableMenuItem $m thisOne 0 will
    say there's no item with that name, and enableMenuItem $m "This One"
    0 will not complain, but won't actually disable the item either!
    (Fix only applies with MacOS 8.5 or newer, and ought to work,
    except it seems there's a mercutio problem which means things
    still don't work!)