Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!hbo.UUCP!bice
From: bice@hbo.UUCP (Brent A. Bice)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: NeWS Tips for Silicon Graphics 4D
Message-ID: <9005041643.AA08069@>
Date: 4 May 90 18:54:53 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 44


   The biggest things I've run across are:
      1) In the latest version of news on the SGIs, Canvases don't appear to
         be retained.  When I asked the SGI techies 'bout this, they said
         "Hmmm.. Seems ta be a bug.  Why doncha use our 4d libraries instead"
         So, it seems retained canvases can't be counted on.
      2) Next, some NeWS programs assume some size for the framebuffer.  Don't
         do this.  You can figure out the width/height of a canvas easily
         enough.
      3) Some primitives (like copyarea) behave differently with real values
         than they do on the SUNs.  I made a scrolling text window that worked
         great on a SUN, but would gradually get off by 3 or 4 pixels on the
         SGI unless the window just happened to be the right dimensions for a
         given text font.
      4) Text itself appears to be REALLY slow on the SGI (yep, even worse than
         under OPENLOOK on a SUN)!  Don't assume that it'll be fast like it is
         on the SUNs.
      5) There appears to be a bug in SGI's event handling.  If you give an
         item a downtransition (like a scrollbar for instance) and then drag
         the mouse around everything appears to be fine, but if you drag the
         mouse out of the item's canvas, and BACK IN to the canvas, all drag
         events stop...  Hmmmmm....  So the you let go of the mouse button
         sending the uptransition, and all of the mouse drag events start
         being trapped again.  So (without holding down a button) you can drag
         the mouse around and move the scrollbar/dial/slider/whatever until you
         send another downtransition and uptransition (click the mouse button).

That's mosta the nasties that I've seen on our SGI here.  This is with the
latest version of their 4sight.  If you're running an older version, you may
still have retained canvases (they introduced this bug with the last version
upgrade), but you might also have a bug with typedprint.  It seemed that some
real values would not get typedprinted ok because they were not fixed point
(another type that I don't know how to check for). Essentially any real value
we were gonna typedprint we had to first do:
   10000 mul cvi 10000 div
or some such nonsense.  This got FIXED with the last update of 4sight.


   Brent Bice
   Applied Computing Systems
   2075 Trinity Drive  Suite Lower Level
   Los Alamos, NM  87544
   (505) 662-3309
   bice@atlantis.ees.anl.gov