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From: mallsop@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Mark Allsop)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: Re: Bugs galore!
Message-ID: <1416@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz>
Date: 27 Mar 91 10:32:14 GMT
References: <1991Mar26.115305.3242@waikato.ac.nz>
Sender: news@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz
Organization: Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Lines: 39

In article <1991Mar26.115305.3242@waikato.ac.nz> hamish@waikato.ac.nz writes:
-
-I would just like to express my disappointment in the person who coded the
-libraries for the Netware C interface that I have got. After carefully reading
-of the manula and much cursing and swearing in my office I discover that the
-problem with my program wasn't a bug of mine, gremlins on the ethernet or even
-a ghost. No. Some busybody had inserted code into the QueryServices routine
-that went through the reply packets and swapped all the values to lo-hi bytes
-ordering, including the 48-bit ethernet address which looked liked it was
-scrambled at random. 
-
-All I can say is its a good thing they include the source to it, otherwise I
-might still be blaming little creatures running through the wires selectively
-destroying bits of information.
- This brings about a question. If it was done on purpose (and its pretty hard
-to write about 10 lines of code by accident) why isn't it documented, and why
-this call and not a few others as well, just for good measure :(

Actually there are several problems with the C interface, and the Netware
interface directly.  I have written a few utilities and am used to finding
things that are wrongly documented.  For example, the example program for the
GetConnectionsUsingFile leaves out a parameter given only a page before.  The
Queue services describe a structure wrongly, and there are a few other subtle
little differences sure to agrivate programmers.

It seems to me the doco was rushed and not properly checked for problems.
In any case, the doco is in many cases not the most informative of documents!

Now in the interests of not just plain being negative, is there someone out
there from Novell who wants to know about these?  And of importance to us as
users, is there a central place that problems can be collected and distributed
so we don't spend ages looking for our problem when it dosn't really exist?

+Mark.
-- 
 Mark Allsop                                              Computer Scientist 
 email: mallsop@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au                The Statistical Laboratory 
 Phone: At MacUni: (61 2) 805-8792  / \      Macquarie University, Australia 
 Fax  :          : (61 2) 805-7433   |   This one goes up to 11.....