Editing Text Without Crashing.

Now you’ve got me started!

Back in the Windows XP days, we got a system called Objective for managing documents/records (it’s Australian software and might be completely unheard of in the UK). Each department was introduced to it one-by-one, with a training session, printed ‘getting started’ booklets, preconfigured ‘team areas’ to start pottering around in, follow-up Q&A sessions, etc. There were a few teething issues but it went fairly well.

Over the past decade or so, they’ve been scanning all the old paper documents and putting them in Objective. I have no idea where the originals went, as we’ve recently had a building refurbishment and no longer have a file room. I can only assume that they still exist!

Last year someone set up Microsoft Teams and told people to start using it. This did not have training sessions or printed documentation, and there was no guidance on where each team should store things, etc. Combined with being an awful piece of software (the Teams client, when idle, gobbles up more RAM than the Visual Studio software development environment with a decent ‘solution’ open) this resulted in a mess of files all over the place. Some things are in Objective and others are in Teams.

Meanwhile, the department in charge of Objective has tried to get some sort of Teams-Objective integration working, but it’s proven extremely difficult, not in the least because Microsoft’s Teams documentation is next to nonexistent. How do you integrate with something if there’s no information on how to integrate with it? The ‘Teams camp’ is now pushing for getting rid of Objective and dumping everything in Teams. I have no idea how that’s even supposed to work… even if you bulk transferred all the documents across, you’d lose the all-important metadata. In Objective you can say “get me every letter that was sent to John Smith” which obviously depends on the metadata.

Anyway, I’m ranting. I’m still on my Christmas break and I’m not supposed to be thinking about work so I’ll stop here!

Sounds horribly familiar, Chris!

MS Teams is alpha quality software and has had frequent user interface changes in the few months I’ve had to suffer it.

Storage is probably, but I’ve not looked, Sharepoint as the bloated mess is closely associated with O365.
Failure to connect calls or similar can usually be solved by the age-old MS solution of a reboot.
Don’t even mention the amount of stuff that has to be let through the firewall without impediment and how many different ports / destinations.

As a matter of interest – how does Teams compare with Zoom?

[Edit]

As a matter of interest – how does Teams compare with Zoom?

Apart from checks to make sure other people can connect (proxy/firewall issues) I’ve not really used Zoom, but it does what it’s supposed to do without silly levels of bloat.

ON TOPIC:
Bug gone, running RO5.28 with my boot from 5.24. Must be something from the boot, though thought identicle.

+19=20

@Chris

StrongEd cannot handle this. Zap can. It is not a question of setting options.

Thanks for the clarification, Chris. That is indeed something that StrongED can’t do (easily). Like Edit it treats BASIC files as text converting to text on load and to BASIC on save.

Whenever I print a program I do exactly the same as Vince so that only modified routines need to be reprinted, making line numbers largely irrelevant.

@DavidS

With Respect to Fred, I just am not into being naged for everything I want to do.

If you click ‘Allow always’ then there should be a maximum of 2 nags per mode, one for the ‘Process’ function and one for the ‘Run’ function. If there are more then that would be a bug.

@Steve (D)

I am not using the latest version 1, so does it also work for F5 ‘Goto logical line’?

No, F5 goto always refers to the internal line numbers. Besides it would go wrong when the loaded copy is edited and gets out of sync with the copy on disc.

@Alan

Quite often the throwback gets the line number right, but the program or library wrong.

What program is generating the throwback message? That program is responsible for putting the filename in the message. StrongED simply uses that filename.

Like Edit it treats BASIC files as text converting to text on load and to BASIC on save.

What I’m not understanding is that this problem was solved with Edit (that behaves like StrongEd in treating BASIC as text that is untokenised/retokenise on load/save).

All you need tu do is set it up to strip line numbers (if you’re using number references, why?) and have it save the program starting at line 1 with a number stepping of 1. There’s no need to keep any line numbers the same as these days they are an anachronism (if you’re printing, might be an idea to simply omit them entirely?).

That way, there’s a direct correlation between the number given in ERL and where you can go with F5.

there was a known tendency for Zap to have the occasional wobble

Sometimes it gets its panties in a twist when loading a new file. Don’t know why, some days it can churn through the entire kernel source in one go and some days it chokes on a three line text file (and chokes forevermore). I just quit it and reload it. Quickest “fix”…

I’m guessing something is mucking up memory and/or workspace, but since Zap is fantastically complicated being piles of assembler and plug in bits also in assembler, all implemented as modules ¹, I just quit and restart…

difference is that Zap assumes that the user has enough since to understand the risks involved and to veryfy any code that is added in a new or uptdated mdoe, at least as far as the source being trusted by the user.

An alternative opinion is that StrongEd warns the user if it is running third party code, whereas Zap…just doesn’t bother to check.

If you click ‘Allow always’ then there should be a maximum of 2 nags per mode, one for the ‘Process’ function and one for the ‘Run’ function.

Is this two nags per mode per runtime, or two nags per mode period? The latter seems to be the logical, though perhaps it should be extended to have a “don’t warn me about this again” option that can be chosen to disable that warning (in all modes)?

¹ Hmm, I wonder how much of that ends up running in SVC mode?

Hmm, I wonder how much of that ends up running in SVC mode?

I don’t think it’s much, generally only when loading a mode.

Is this two nags per mode per runtime, or two nags per mode period?

It’s two nags per mode period. In fact there are two more nags that could occur. At mode initialisation and when a file is loaded.

Mode initialisation can execute a file called ModeInit, if present. This dates back to when modes could be either a single text file or an application and allows mode specific initialisation.

A mode can contain the OnLoad keyword which is executed when a file is loaded into that mode. This makes it possible to perform actions on a file when it’s loaded, eg convert tabs to spaces.

ModeInit and OnLoad however aren’t used much so most users won’t encounter them.

have a “don’t warn me about this again” option that can be chosen to disable that warning (in all modes)?

This can be achieved by editing the ModeLock file manually, just set all four permissions to ‘Y’ (easy with block edit). The ModeLock file can be opened by a Ctrl-Select click on the iconbar icon.

Individual permissions can also be altered, on a per mode basis, using the Mode choices dialogue box.

File format problems today: https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/04/file_format_conversion_crisis_delayed_trump_lawsuit/

File format problems today: https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/04/file_format_conversion_crisis_delayed_trump_lawsuit/

Wrong forum? (h-mode)

LOL :)

+0.5=50.5

The terms logical and physical for line numbers in StrongED seem the wrong way round to me. I don’t like either term in this context, but “logical line (number)” suggests to me a complete instruction whether wrapped on unwrapped and “physical line (number)” suggests a line as it appears in the physical window on the screen. How about using “instruction” instead of “physical” and “wrap” instead of “logical”? So we have “instruction line number” and “wrap line number”. An alternative to “instruction line number” could be “BASIC line number” since it could be said that a single line of BASIC isn’t always a complete instruction.

On the button bar, I think the tick is not a good symbol for Choices (Global and Mode): A beginner would be puzzled by it. I have never seen this used on an icon for Choices or settings in any application. I know one can turn on the OS Help and run the pointer over it, but would someone new to RISC OS think of that? Also, in my experience the OS Help doesn’t work very well – sometimes it won’t tell you anything. A 6-toothed cog is often used for settings on various paltforms and so would be better than the tick.

If we are trying to get school pupils interested in RISC OS via Raspberry pis, then making terms and icons as clear as possible is important.

If we are trying to get school pupils interested in RISC OS via Raspberry pis, then making terms and icons as clear as possible is important.

Indeed so, and the terms you suggest are more confusing.

Indeed so, and the terms you suggest are more confusing.

So you agree that the existing terms are confusing; but you don’t say why my suggestions are worse. Do you have any better suggestions?

What’s so hard about this? Physical lines are what you see on the screen, and are more or less determined by your display capabilities. Each line in the window is a different physical line.

Logical lines, on the other hand, depend upon the file and whether wrapping is on (either explicit wrapping or some other method of line continuation). A long logical line may encompass two or more physical lines.

It’s a fairly common set of terminology – http://www.rehab.go.jp/english/html/manual_e1.html or
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/36839 for example.

Edit: note particularly the second example describing a non wrapped logical line split over multiple physical lines. This is why saying it’s wrapped is a bad idea. Logical and physical already exist and define exactly what they define. There’s no need to change what isn’t broken.

To give you an example of leaving things alone… All the trendy people are freaking out over the phrases master and slave (instead of actually doing something that would make a worthwhile difference to minorities).

Now, we can’t use generic concepts like primary and secondary because the relationship between master and slave is actually very specific – that is to say that the master controls the interface and initiates all transactions. The slave does not. Ever. There may be multiple masters, but they control the slave(s).

As such, here are several suggestions of alternatives:

• agency and operatives
• captain and conscripts
• master and masons
• hive and drones
• schemer and patsies
• primary and replicas
• scripture and prophets
• guide and doer (note – doer wasn’t a word until this crap was thought up)

I wish I was making this up. Sadly, I’m not.

But as far as I’m concerned:

• It’s master and slave until there’s a replacement that implies exactly the same relationship (not sort of similar)
• A few quick and easy name changes will not fix discrimination, racism, or inequality. I’m mostly against this renaming because it’s a bunch of rich white guys pointlessly virtue signalling how inclusive they are, while doing the barest minimum and not actually making any measurable and useful bit of difference. I would hazard a guess that a black person is probably going to be much less bothered about the use of the word “slave” than, say, the invisible barriers they will bump into practically every day of their lives. Fix the actual problem, don’t invent a problem in order to feel good about fixing that.

The tl;dr version: don’t muck about with established terminology

So you agree with me. Your description in your first paragraph is what StrongED calls a logical line and your description in your second paragraph is what StrongED calls a physical line. According to StrongED two consecutive numbered physical lines may encompass two or more logical lines, the opposite of what you have said. I don’t know what you are on, but my version of StrongED is 4.69f11. To be clear, I have a BASIC program in which several lines as “what you see on the screen”, to quote you, all have the same physical line number as it is one long BASIC instruction wrapped onto several lines because it exceeds the wrapwidth whereas these same lines get different (consecutive) logical numbers.

My last post refers to your post replying to my post, not your last post.

What’s so hard about this?

For me, nothing. For some, they can count the physical lines and know that the 10th one down is line 10, and then you tell them that it is actually logical line 17 or 100, so they are confused.

Other than that small issue I don’t think there’s anything wrong.
New labels for that? What a wonderful way to confuse all the existing users as well as beginners.

As to the PC stuff – yeah, I can’t begin to count the ways that stuff is wrong.
I dare say my friend Terry could give a good start. Let’s just say that the PC crowd should spend more time talking with people before talking to and at and about them.

I was going to post a quick example of what happens to logical and physical line numbers when you add or remove lines from a BASIC program, but as David is famously contrary, I don’t think it would make any difference :-)

All the trendy people are freaking out over the phrases master and slave

Perhaps we could adopt king and serf? Or perhaps squire and butler? Clearly husband and wife would not work as the ‘obey’ vow is less used now. You could even have three levels – squire, butler and maid.

Sun and Planet?