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[StrongED] Re: StrongHelp crashes on launch



In article <98ff6c3355.fjgraute@xxxxxxxxx>,
   Fred Graute <fjgraute@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In message <ccf85d3355.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>           Martin Bazley <martin.bazley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[Snip]

> The problem, as I remember, was how to handle all the old 26-bit !Pre's
> that are out there. Possibly scan the code before execution and raise a
> warning when we're on a 32-bit machine and !Pre isn't 32-bit?

That would be neat ... if it is practical to do.
If warned I would have fixed the Reporter !Pre a decade ago!

> Require the presence of ROL's utility header and refuse any !Pre that
> doesn't have one? Possibly also check for the RO5 guard word (32OK) at
> the end of the utility?

None of the manuals here have that in the !pre atm!

> > Not that this particular copy of !Pre seems to care - its date stamp
> > is 05 Oct 1997.
> >
> > This !Pre file seems likely to have been copied from the ones
> > distributed with the SWI manuals, which were similarly ancient when I
> > last looked at them.  Apparently it simply never occurred to anyone
> > that it would ever be necessary to update them.

Oh dear! Mea culpa then.

I suspect I just copied it from another manual to the Reporter manual
sometime between Aug 2001 and Feb 2003. And not touched or thought about
since!

> As David has already pointed out the latest OS, Toolbox and Wimp manuals
> come with a 32-bit okay !Pre, but several other manuals don't.

Yes, it seems the same apart from the restore registers flag.
If Harriet and/or Martin B can verify that it resolves the problem, then
I will make sure the Reporter manual is fixed for future releases.

Does anyone know what the significance of '!x26' is? 
This newer version (and the one in Reporter) seem to check for it. 
And the one in Reporter has it at the end as well.

Judging from a quick trawl of the SH manuals I have, those that have !pre
files all seem to suffer from the same ^ problem except OS, Wimp &
MiscSWIs.

> > Two puzzling things about this particular case remain.  The first is
> > why Reporter's manual would ever need to contain a program which, in
> > its entirety, strips a leading "X" off the input string and then
> > pushes it through OS_SWINumberToString if it is numeric.

> To allow the lookup of Reporter's SWIs, even when started with 'X' or
> specified in numeric form.

Correct.

> > The second is why, when launching a manual on startup, StrongHelp has
> > seemingly taken to running its !Pre file.  Surely there cannot, by
> > definition, be any "search string" to analyse here?  The earlier
> > search problem affected all manuals, as they all needed to be
> > searched (and hence !Pre-ed) to find the string, but here StrongHelp
> > is demonstrably running exactly one !Pre file (if present). 
> > Furthermore, it does not appear to do it if the manual is launched
> > after, rather than before, the application.

> Good questions but no answers yet, I need to do some digging to find out
> when exactly !Pre is being called.

Seems we have an error each!

Martin

-- 
Martin Avison      using a British Iyonix running RISC OS 5 
                   and the Pluto mail and newsreader

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