Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!rogerj
From: rogerj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: WriteNow and Rom Monitor Bugs, Global Settings
Message-ID: <9482@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 89 00:56:10 GMT
Reply-To: rogerj@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 80

Fellow NeXTers,
 
I have some bugs to report and share that I
have encountered while using the Cube. Have
any of you seen similar behaviour and/or
know of work-arounds/fixes? Thanks in advance.
 
1) From within WriteNow, the Alt+<key> combos
produce the desired symbol, but NOT over the
letter you wish. For example, Alt-e produces
the French "egu" accent, and although it is
superscripted, it appears to the right of the
letter both on screen and in print which looks
very bad. The same is seen with Alt-i which is 
supposed to be the French "grave" accent. This
is repeatable in every font. I just can't understand
why such a great DPS machine fails to do accents
correctly. Others have reported the same result
with other foreign characters.
 
2) If I use the "P" hardware password option while
in the ROM Monitor, a hardware password IS set. I
know this because I cannot issue bsd -s and boot
stand-alone with the wrong password. Fine. However,
When I DO give the password, it comes back with:
 
"incorrect password"
 
Fine. So I issue "P" and try to change the password
which it LETS me do (some protection!). But still I
cannot issue other boot options. Other coomands that
failed:
 
bsd -s
ben -s
bod -s
 
Does using the "P" option NOT allow stand-alone boot-ups
whatsoever. Sometimes it's necessary! Heck I'm the SysAdmin
and when I need to boot stand-alone what am I supposed to do?
How does one, defeat the P protection (short of changing ROM
chips and doing it again, although if it's this bad, why do it
again!)
 
3) When adding a new application to the dock, the icon appears
just as a normal "generic" icon, even though there's an associated
.tiff file with the App. After I place the icon on the dock and issue
"Find Applications", a lot of disk activity is heard and then...
nothing changes. Fine. I logout and login again and still, nothing
happens. I log in as root, issue Find Applications, nothing. I reboot
then log in as root, issue Find Apps and finally, I see the correct
icon. What exactly is happening when I issue "Find Applications". I've
tried putting the App program in my ~/App directory and in the 
/LocalApps directory. The results are the same. This is MOST frustrating
with some of the great software on the Purdue archives. After you Make, then
maybe Make clean to get rid of the /obj dir, you'd kinda like to see the icon of the App you're using. 
 
 
4) How do you set "global" settings. For users, we have important
settings we need EVERY user to have in their environment. For
making .logins and .cshrc's we put a "stock" file in /usr/template/user/...
But now, for the NeXTStep stuff. For example, we want all the client 
machines to be in the same TZ. So, if I log in as root on each one and
set the proper TZ I would think that would do it, but where does this
information get stored? I also would like to TURN OFF THE PRINTER'S VOICE!
Can you imagine when the printer's out of paper, every machine (we have 35
in this site) chirpping away that "Your printer is out of paper!". Lovely!
We'd also like to give the users a larger screen (NXFixedPitchFontSize 
variables and all that stuff), beats me why NeXT decided everyone should
go blind, and a default Shell screen that's readable, things of this type.
Where are these things stored and is there a way of, as root of course,
making "global" settings for all the machines and users in the "/" domain?
Be even better if there were a way of doing it for each domain: "/". "..",
and ".".
 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Roger Jagoda
Cornell University