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From: grunau_b@husc4.harvard.edu (justin grunau)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: GEM bugs
Message-ID: <837@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7-Dec-86 12:35:02 EST
Article-I.D.: husc6.837
Posted: Sun Dec  7 12:35:02 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 21:06:59 EST
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: grunau_b@husc4.UUCP (justin grunau)
Organization: Harvard Science Center
Lines: 53


I would like to report a few bugs in GEM that I have never seen mentioned on
the net, and see whether anybody else has come across similar behaviour, and
whether anybody can make anything of this ...

Basically, I suspect the bugs have something to do with memory getting used
up and not released when various programs terminate.  The problem is not,
however, visible to any of the programs I currently have to check memory size.
That is, even when these bugs are occuring, everything still tells me I have as
much memory as I had when I started (about 800K -- I am using a 1040).

The most common bug by far occurs when I come out of some program in my utils
or games directory (usually either uniterm v1.6c or megaroids), and then click
on the "close" gadget to move one directory up.  Either nothing happens, or
the close button inverts (turns black) AS THOUGH IT WERE AN ICON I JUST
SELECTED.  Clicking on the gadget again just re-inverts (turns white) the close
gadget, just like an icon.  Eventually, if I click on it enough times, the
window closes, and everything is back to normal.  While this weirdness is
occuring, I can usually click on other icons/names in the window, and even
launch programs, etc.  The bug is impossible to reproduce -- it just comes and
goes.

An even WEIRDER bug is when GEM apparently gets totally confused and not only
does the close gadget act like an icon, but in fact neither it nor any icon
will register having been selected until AFTER the mouse has moved.  That is,
you move on top of a file, click on it;  nothing happens.  Move the mouse a
tiny bit;  all of a sudden, the file you clicked on turns black.  Click on it
again, and once again it takes a movement of the mouse to turn it white again.

The WEIRDEST bug is when everything in a GEM directory window starts acting
like one of the pop-down menu items:  that is, everything you move over turns
black while you are on top of it, and white once you are off it:  it does not
take a click to make something look selected.  It takes only a few minutes of
this behaviour to cause the system to freeze up completely.

One last bug that I have started seeing with greater frequency lately.  I
will be happily doing stuff, and then suddenly anything I try to do makes the
system tell me there is no memory to do it.  Checking memory by the RAMCHK
deskacc tells me I have 800K.  Even some GEM operations give me this problem.
For instance, if I try to look at the "Show Info" thing on one of my hard
disk icons, it will work;  but if I try to look at the info of my floppy disk
icon, it says not enough memory for this application.

Has anybody else ever seen these bugs?  I used to have the TI desk accessory
with the .RSC file, and since someone recently posted news that accessories
with .RSC files cause problems, I have gotten rid of it in the hope that
perhaps it was the cause;  but it hasn't been long enough to tell.


									JJMG

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