Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SFAUSTIN.BITNET!Z4648252 From: Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: ST 'PHANTOM TYPIST' Message-ID: <890512.08320632.080897@SFA.CP6> Date: 12 May 89 14:32:07 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 23 Bill Silvert writes: "Can anyone shed light on the drastic slowdown that I sometimes get with WordPerfect, which WP programmers claim is a TOS problem. The symptoms are an incredible delay, sometimes 5 min. to respond to a single keystroke or mouse press." The problem indeed is a TOS problem and has been documented with Flash and the Mac emulator, Spectre 128. As a fault of TOS, it is a real bear in that it cannot be easily duplicated at will. Fast and fat-fingering seems to bring it on, but even at that, it seems to want to come on its own. I became aware of it a long time ago, during the first days of Flash's release and thought that it was a bug with that program. WordPerfect people call it the Phantom Typist because if one is a touch typist, he may be typing when the thing strikes. His key strokes, being stored in the buffer will show on the screen, one character/second at a time. At this point, issuing a 'save' command usually works, albeit delayed. The system then typically locks up after the 'save'. Don't fault WordPerfect for the bug. It is a real TOS problem and one that, as far as I know, Atari has yet to duplicate in the labs. Only field use under regular conditions seems to engage it. I had it happen on my Mega2 two days in a row three weeks ago and have yet to have it show up since. I use my Mega about five hours a day with lots of key stroking.