Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helps!uudell!pensoft!usenet
From: pensoft!wesley@cs.utexas.edu (Wesley C Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Are Icon and Scene broken? YES!!!
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.203210.28951@pensoft.uucp>
Date: 21 Jun 91 20:32:10 GMT
References: <91172.091232SLVQC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Sender: usenet@pensoft.uucp (Usenet Psuedo User)
Organization: Pencom Software
Lines: 36

Icon is indeed broken!!

 It seems like the programmer did not initialize any variables. (Is it possible  
that an old version of the OS or compiler used to initialize variables and no  
longer does) Wether or not something works is dependant on the order in which  
you do things because the initial values aren't set right. example: When  
marque/lasso menu is first opened it shows two white boxes for color. However  
if you double click on the right one the color panel will come up and show you  
the white color displayed is really black. If you try to use that color what  
you get is black. If you change the white color to white and uses it you get  
white. The colors will now work for Marque/Lasso but not for lines. If you want  
to change the line color, close the color panel and reopen it before selecting  
a new color.

There are lots of things that must be set to actually getthe values displayed  
right and keep Icon from crashing. Icon works best if you play with lots of the  
options to initialize them before trying to get any reasonable behavior from  
Icon.

It may also useful to set your coredumpsize to 0. Not only does that eliminate  
the core dump files but Icon will now take less time to finish crashing.

As far as lack of documentation, I have found that a mac user will have good  
guesses as to what the Icons mean and is a great help in learing to use Icon.  
Once you initialize the variables and figure out the strange icons Icon isn't  
too bad.

=====================================================
Wes Smith						
Pencom Software					
9050 Capital of Texas Highway North Suite 300
Austin, Texas 78759
E-Mail (NeXT):  pensoft!wesley@cs.utexas.edu
Phone:  1-800-PENCOM-4  or  (512) 343-1111                   
FAX:  (512) 343-9650   
=====================================================