🚀 go-pugleaf

Rich Dankert (lakesys!rich@csd1.milw.wisc.edu) writes:

>    Just have a question here. Why the mousetrap program? [Word Perfect]
>does allow the lockout of the menu bar, which may be the reason for the
>not so clean break upon exit. Nite I can understand, to blank the screen
>but another screen saver utl may solve the other problem your experiencing.

     I keep moustrap resident because I like the menu bar locked all the
time, and not just when I'm in Word Perfect.  (Once you get used to moustrap,
it's impossible to do anything without it.  Menus start dropping all over
the place; and *imagine* having to manually move the mouse up to the menu
bar!  Uugh.)  Anyway, your first thought was mine too.  Even when I boot
WP cold with *no* accessories or utilities resident, it doesn't clean up
after itself properly, and subsequent applications (e.g., Uniterm 2.0a 003;
try it and see) lock up or misbehave if I don't reboot.
     Of course, nite and/or moustrap might be responsible in part for some
of the other bugs I've run into.  E.g., the WP manual states that you can
record macros using either the menu bar commands or keyboard equivalents.
I've found that the mouse commands work only sporadically or not at all
when recording macros, and it's just possible that this behaviour is due to
having moustrap resident (though I doubt it, since the macro presumably
records just the commands, and not the actual mouse movements).  No big
deal: just make sure to use keyboard commands while recording macros.  Given
the ease with which one can work around this and similar bugs, a wholesale
application of Mill's methods in a last-ditch attempt to confirm that WP
gets along well enough with my resident utilities just doesn't seem worth
the trouble.

>    Key click problem, well I can't say that I have encountered that
>either, but then I don't have the volume up, as it slows my typing down ;~}.
>Unless your talking about something different than I am interpreting.

     If I'm not mistaken, the key-click problem is really due to a TOS
bug, which the authors of WP for the ST apparently weren't familiar with.
If you've been running for a while, under certain conditions (not sure
exactly what they are, though I seem to encounter the problem when I'm
using the mouse a lot) your machine will start clicking away as if you
were holding down a key.  (Assuming that you have the volume turned up, of
course.  Just how fast do you type, anyway, Rich? :-))  As a side effect
the Repeat dialogue often pops up in the middle of your screen, since the
bug in question makes TOS think that you're trying to choke it with escape
characters, and WP uses the escape key to call the Repeat sequence.  Again,
it's a trivial problem -- just hit <UNDO> and carry on with what you were
doing.  (I think Moshe Braner ran into a similar difficulty with early
versions of more.ttp; perhaps he could comment?)
     For anyone considering buying WP, I'd like to emphasize once again
that even *with* the bugs in the current version, it's eminently usable.
I had the luxury of being able to borrow a copy of WP from the English
Dept. here last fall.  I gave it a fairly solid workout for a couple of
months, so I had a pretty good idea of what bugs and limitations I could
expect to encounter, before I purchased my own copy.  (The educational price
in Canada, BTW, is $160).  If you need the power (I especially like the
recursive macros, and the superb merge facility), WP is indeed worth every
penny.

BBB

Bob Bright <BRIGHT@DALAC.BITNET>
Philosophy Dept.
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS  B3H 3J5