KAT demo errors using Windows XP on a Dell Latitude Laptop

> I am running into an error message upon starting the KAT demo code  
> using
> Windows XP (KAT demo code LOVES the Mac  BTW).. The machine is a  
> Dell Latitude
> Laptop if that helps?  I grabbed a screen shot of the error... Any  
> help would
> he greatly appreciated !
>
> Error message screen shot:
> http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?image=croqueterrormessageqh5.png
>
> Best Regards !
>
> Rich
>
>
> ============

> OpenAL is not working quite right on your Dell. Was it installed?
>
> Here's a breakdown of what we see in the image of the debugger that
> you supplied:
>
> * The title says MessageNotUnderstood: UndefinedObject>>isCurrent.
> We can guess from the KrazyCaps that MessageNotUnderstood is the name
> of a class, and if we look it up, we see that it is the subclass of
> Error. If we look at the places where it's used (cmd-N), particularly
> Object>>doesNotUnderstand, we see that it is an error message that
> reports the class of the object (UndefinedObject) that received a
> message that it doesn't have a method for (#isCurrent).
>
> * The first line of the debugger confirms that. (UndefinedObject
> (Object)>>doesNotUnderstand).  Specifically, it is saying that an
> object of class UndefinedObject executed #doesNotUnderstand, which it
> inherited from the class Object.   If we look up UndefinedObject, we
> see that it is the class of the single object "nil".  So, someone
> sent nil isCurrent.
>
> * The second line of the debugger tells us how that happend.
> KCroquetParticipant(CroquetParticipantWithMenu)>>mouseEnter: says
> that the above happened in the code for #mouseEnter:, as defined in
> CroquetParticipantWithMenu, where 'self' was an instance of
> KCroquetParticipant.  If we look up that code, it says:
> ...
>         harness ifNotNil: [
>                 harness openAL isCurrent ifFalse: [
>                         harness makeOpenALCurrent.
>                 ].
>         ].
>
> OK, there's a nice guard against harness being nil, but nothing about
> harness openAL being nil. The author figured that if there's a
> harness, it must have openAL initialized, but possibly not current.
>
> If we look at 'inst var defs...'  of a suitable harness class, like
> CroquetHarnessWithmenu, we see that #initialize or
> #initializeOpenALHarness prints an error message on the transcript
> and sets the openAL inst var to nil if #makeCurrent gets an error.
> So if you try running again with a transcript open, you should see an
> error about Cannot start spatial sound.
>
> Now, there's a couple of possibilities:
>
> 1) You have OpenAL installed, but it's not working right. That might
> be the case that was intended by the author, who chose to print a
> message but not give an error immediately when #makeCurrent failed.
> If we want to honor that and allow things to just keep on trucking
> but without sound, we should put a guard against harness openAL being
> nil.  Now, there's nothing wrong with making a change to any class in
> your own image. But if you want to share your code with others, you
> might want to contact the author (in this case pbm) and see if he
> wants to fix/change his code. Otherwise, you can make a subclass and
> fix it there. That's what I did with KCroquetParticipant>>mouseMove:,
> where I inserted a guard against harness being nil.
>
> 2) It may be that everything is working right, eventually, but
> there's something odd about the timing. I don't think that's the case
> here, but it could be. In this case, a guard like above is a quick
> and dirty fix, but it would really just be hiding a potential problem.
>
> OpenAL has a bit of both. Originally, the concept was that it was
> just supposed to work, and nothing was guarded. But I lost so much
> time with bugy OpenAL code that I eventually ran though all my code
> with a knife putting guards around openAL being nil.  Looks like I
> missed one.
>
>
> On Oct 26, 2007, at 6:04 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
>
> > I am running into an error message upon starting the KAT demo code
> > using
> > Windows XP (KAT demo code LOVES the Mac  BTW).. The machine is a
> > Dell Latitude
> > Laptop if that helps?  I grabbed a screen shot of the error... Any
> > help would
> > he greatly appreciated !
> >
> > Error message screen shot:
> > http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?image=croqueterrormessageqh5.png
> >
> > Best Regards !
> >
> > Rich
> >
> >
> > ============
>
>