aboutDolphin not available in 640x480

I accidentally ran Dolphin (4.01.3 Pro) under W2K Pro in
16 color (4-bit) 640x480 mode (because of the goddamned W2K
and because of philosophical differences between me and
Microsoft, but that's not important now).

The menu item Help | About is grayed-out in most Dolphin
windows but not in a Workspace window.  In none of them
does #aboutDolphin run due to the test in

   SmalltalkSystem current aboutBoxClass canDisplay

I just mention this in case no has noticed this.  This is
not a problem for me as I won't ordinarily be running in
4-bit 640x480 mode.  It just seems that Help | About should
work no matter what, perhaps with a simpler fallback
display when the graphics won't support the flashier
version.


-- Frank
[hidden email]

<[hidden email]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:siNY6.1473$[hidden email]...
> I accidentally ran Dolphin (4.01.3 Pro) under W2K Pro in
> 16 color (4-bit) 640x480 mode (because of the goddamned W2K
> and because of philosophical differences between me and
> Microsoft, but that's not important now).
>

Frank,

what's your problem with W2K?
I'm very interested in that philosophical differences.

Ingo

Frank,

Ok you're right, Help/about should also be greyed out in the Workspace too
(defect #281).

We can't show the standard splash on a 16 color display because the bitmap
isn't suitable for this display mode. Since the minimum requirements for
Dolphin specify a 256 colour display or better
(http://www.object-arts.com/DolphinFeatures.htm) it didn't seem to be
worthwhile addressing this.

Best Regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
http://www.object-arts.com
---
Are you trying too hard?
http://www.object-arts.com/Relax.htm
---

Ingo Blank <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Frank,
>
> what's your problem with W2K?
> I'm very interested in that philosophical differences.

I'm feeling a little better today.  The other week I made the mistake
of putting a new graphics card (ATI Xpert 2000) into my W2K box.  This
somehow induced W2K to commit suicide.  It would no longer boot, it
wouldn't even boot to safe mode.  It wouldn't even boot after I put
back the former video card (S3 Trio3d/2x).  (The harddrive was at
least basically ok, as I could read all the files from Linux.  The
Lilo boot loader on that same drive's master boot record was still
working.)

The philosophical difference is that
I don't think W2K should do that and apparently Microsoft *does*.  
I don't like the idea of having to check MS's "hardware compatibility
list", which I found difficult to navigate.  I think W2K should
politely default to whatever lower resolution, etc. is necessary to
run, or, at worst, give me a warning message.  But it shouldn't kill
itself and refuse to run ever again.

My point is that Microsoft/W2K does not bother to take care of me,
to try to do the right thing, etc.  ("Windows has detected that you
have moved your mouse pointer.  Windows will need to reboot for this
change to take effect.  Would you like to reboot now? (Y/N)" is a
slight exaggeration, but I think the necessity to reboot after making
nearly any little change compared to Linux almost never needing to
reboot is an example of MS's arrogance and/or incompetence.)

So, I reinstalled W2K (using the S3 video card).  I couldn't get
it out of 4-bit 640x480 mode.  I finally got it into 4-bit 800x600
mode.  For the past year or so I had been running the S3 card on
W2K in 8-bit or 16-bit (I don't remember) 1024x768 mode, but, of
course, I no longer remember how I achieved that miracle.

Finally, today, I put an older Trident 3DImage975 card in and
W2K recognized it right away and I'm now back to 16-bit 1024x768.

Linux was happy with the ATI card, the S3 card, and the Trident
card.

So, it's all my fault for not doing things the Microsoft way, but
it sure doesn't make me any fonder of Microsoft.

This new installation of W2K uses a 2.2 GB (FAT32) drive C: which
I do a binary backup of from Linux (copying the entire 2.2 GB and
compressing with bzip2 -- in the area of a 300 MB file).  My
first attempt was to set up a 2 GB (2000 MB) partition, but W2K
does not *ask* but insists on formatting such as small partition
as FAT16, so I bumped it to 2.2 GB to get past the magical limit
where W2K will (again, without asking) use FAT32.  (I did not
wish to use NTFS.)  I'll also set up a file-by-file (rather
than a binary image of the partition) for the data drive.  

I debated switching to W98 for its more lenient video card
demands, but was afraid it would be likely to crash more
often running Dolphin, especially as I like to open *lots*
of windows from time to time.  I also debated chucking
Windows *altogether*, but decided I shouldn't make important
decisions when I'm upset.

Oh well.


-- Frank
[hidden email]

<[hidden email]> writes:

Reminds me of the horrors of Video card installs in NT:


self installNewVideoCard.
[
        machine reboot.
        self installSpecifiedDrivers.
        machine rebootForNewDriversTobeDetected.
        machine reports: 'Unknown video card'.
        self scream.
] repeatForever.

At least in Linux you can, if necessary, hack about about with X-Windows
and gradually get things working somehow, most of the time.

Steve Zara

<[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:iN8Z6.1569$[hidden email]...
> <snip!>
> My point is that Microsoft/W2K does not bother to take care of me,
> to try to do the right thing, etc.  ("Windows has detected that you
> have moved your mouse pointer.  Windows will need to reboot for this
> change to take effect.  Would you like to reboot now? (Y/N)" is a
> slight exaggeration...

One of the best tag lines I saw a few years ago when Star Trek: The Next
Generation was in vogue was

    We are Microsoft of Borg.  Prepare to be rebooted...

(Never watched the show much, but loved the tag lines it inspired :-)

> I also debated chucking
> Windows *altogether*, but decided I shouldn't make important
> decisions when I'm upset.

If there was a Dolphin Smalltalk for Linux (or more specifically an
affordable Smalltak for Linux which provided native widget support)
Microsoft could color me gone, gone, gone...

(Yes, Blair/Andy, that's a hint but no, I don't really expect you to do
anything about it but yes, it would be nice if you did so if you're thinking
about it, think harder! :-)
--
Bob Jarvis

Frank,

I've just moved over to a P4 Dell 8100 with ME and it is terrible in terms
of resource use. I've had many unexpected crashes - at least I did until I
removed all the junk that ME starts by default. I carefully watch a resource
meter now and I now hit the Dolphin (latest 4.0 pro version) "panic button"
regularly when a presenter is left in a partially created state.

When out of resources in Dolphin, ME crashes so badly that the FAT's were
mismatched and there were lots of file system errors. McAffe utilities
seemed to fix the mess with no problem. The Dolphin files also are trashed
on occasion.

The old computer is a really modest 64 Meg, with both SCSI and IDE drives
installed partitioned into 12 partitions, 133 MHz  586 running Windows 98SE
and has performed flawlessly. It basically never crashes and seems to be
much more stable than ME and it also seems to manage resources well.  The
machine has a VL bus (that's how old it is) with a Diamond stealth S3
graphics board (the fourth of many different types of boards that has been
in the machine, including an older S3 an ATI and the original) in it.
Amazingly enough, SE without the active desktop seems to be more stable than
Linux on the old box. I was even beginning to respect M$ until my ME
experiences.

I have Nuts&Bolts on the 98 machine and McAffee Utilities, N&B successor, on
the new one. The crash protector works really well on 98 but I can't tell
yet how well it's working on the new machine.

I also dual boot Linux on the old machine with no problems. I use Partition
Magic tools and their boot manager rather than lilo.

I'm actually considering springing for a full version of SE (my version
consists of upgrades from all the way back to Windows 3.1) and installing it
on the new machine.

At the last consulting gig, we used Windows 2k (although not with Dolphin)
and it seemed to be reasonably stable although I liked SE a little better.
Win 2k graphics card support seems to be a bit problematical.

Note that on all systems I disabled the "active desktop". Since I can read,
I find all of those pictures and other eye candy distracting and wasteful.
On Windows SE, the active desk top stuff seemed to be really unstable as
well.


<[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:iN8Z6.1569$[hidden email]... Dave

--
Dave Wachtel
President, CSI Technologies, Inc.
Activities Director/Membership Chairman
Mohawk Hudson Region, Sports Car Club of America
[hidden email]
http://www.acmenet.net/~dwachtel
http://www.mohud-scca.org

Since now that this is a public newsgroup I just wanted to clarify my last
post!  Everything crashes windows ME because of the resource management
problem - it is not something specific to Dolphin - except I tend to open
more windows in Dolphin than in other development environments as it is so
resilient and the Dolphin environment is so rich.

Dave
--------
Dave Wachtel
President, CSI Technologies, Inc.
Activities Director/Membership Chairman
Mohawk Hudson Region, Sports Car Club of America
[hidden email]
http://www.acmenet.net/~dwachtel
http://www.mohud-scca.org



<[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:iN8Z6.1569$[hidden email]...
> Ingo Blank <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Frank,
[Snipped]

Dave,

> I've just moved over to a P4 Dell 8100 with ME and it is terrible in terms
> of resource use. I've had many unexpected crashes - at least I did until I
> removed all the junk that ME starts by default. I carefully watch a
resource
> meter now and I now hit the Dolphin (latest 4.0 pro version) "panic
button"
> regularly when a presenter is left in a partially created state.

Interestingly, I've had very good luck running deployed apps on ME (largely
due to device driver issues, I suspect), but, the little bit of development
that I've done on ME has revealed some cracks.  Most of it appears to be
versioning of common controls; but, I've had some blue screens that probably
shouldn't have happened.

Re presenters; I treat opening a recently edited presenter as being just as
dangerous as untested external interfacing code - it's not really true, but,
doing so keeps me from being disappointed.  Basically, I get everything
ready for the trial run, save the image, and if anything goes wrong, I look
around with the debugger and then exit w/o saving to pick up before the
problem occured, "fix it", save, and repeat until the bugs are squashed.
Some of that is left over from the early days when the event mechanism was a
little twitchy and the view composer was not nearly so tame as it is now.
The situation has improved greatly, but, Dolphin does seem to be vulnerable
when opening a presenter.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

Hi Bill,

Comments interspersed.

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:9h3re9$t2a$[hidden email]...
> Dave,
>
> > I've just moved over to a P4 Dell 8100 with ME and it is terrible in
terms
> > of resource use. I've had many unexpected crashes - at least I did until
I
> > removed all the junk that ME starts by default. I carefully watch a
> resource
> > meter now and I now hit the Dolphin (latest 4.0 pro version) "panic
> button"
> > regularly when a presenter is left in a partially created state.
>
> Interestingly, I've had very good luck running deployed apps on ME
(largely
> due to device driver issues, I suspect), but, the little bit of
development
> that I've done on ME has revealed some cracks.  Most of it appears to be
> versioning of common controls; but, I've had some blue screens that
probably
> shouldn't have happened.

I haven't tried deploying to ME yet as I haven't quite got my code running
in V3.0 yet for obscure reasons that are yet to be determined.  I haven't
tested the old V3.x deploy on ME, I assume it would work.

What sort of problems did you have with versioning common controls, was
there an error message or did the thing just not work?

My ME crashes began before I installed Dolphin on the new machine. I had to
watch memory on the old machine as it would go from slow to a crawl if I
started hitting the swap file hard. Only rarely did I have a resource
problem.  On the new machine I started opening apps just as I did on the old
machine and it crashed with relatively few apps running. Checked the
newsgroups and resources seem to be a problem and sure enough, the only time
it crashed was when resources were low, and that happened very quickly.
There also seens to be an issue with stacks, but I haven't encountered that
one yet. Since the config and autoexec files are ignored by ME, changes to
system parameters need to be set in one of the .ini files.  Oddly enough my
Delphi 1 IDE and rather huge Delphi/Paradox application compiles and runs
just fine, although even with it I have to be careful not to have too many
files open.  (I wonder if it's running out of file handles once in awhile -
without giving the usual warning I used to get in 95-98? Maybe it needs a
files=xx somewhere)

> Re presenters; I treat opening a recently edited presenter as being just
as
> dangerous as untested external interfacing code - it's not really true,
but,
> doing so keeps me from being disappointed.

Other than the occasional hiccup in the view composer, I've not had much
trouble with presenters going south. The current app I'm working on has
reference views going at least four deep and it's been OK. On Windows 98, I
can't remember the last time I trashed the image. With the crashes in ME,
the image had not been saved, the machine had locked up completely and I had
to power up and down with files open and that did them in. The Dell doesn't
have a reset button like my old box.

I generally "checkpoint" the Dolphin files to zip archives occasionally just
in case. I do the same for the packages. The most I've lost is about an
hour's worth of work and generally I can reconstruct my changes from the
change log.

> Basically, I get everything
> ready for the trial run, save the image, and if anything goes wrong, I
look
> around with the debugger and then exit w/o saving to pick up before the
> problem occured, "fix it", save, and repeat until the bugs are squashed.
> Some of that is left over from the early days when the event mechanism was
a
> little twitchy and the view composer was not nearly so tame as it is now.
> The situation has improved greatly, but, Dolphin does seem to be
vulnerable
> when opening a presenter.

If there is an error in user code somewhere that executes during
initialization, the sub presenter initialization will fail. Dolphin makes
the assumption that the entire presenter cannot be initialized and fails at
that point without carrying on initialization, sometimes leaving much of the
presenter created but not rendered or active, or else in some intermediate
state. It would be nice if failure to initialize a sub presenter could be
handled more gracefully. Being on a Windows platform may not lend itself to
such, however. (BTW - that's why I liked the old V286 Smalltalk from
Digitalk, you could do nearly anything to it and it would still fail
gracefully. The Windows versions were somewhat unstable, although the last
V32 version worked rather well.

I've been running into some quirks in getting the V3 presenters running in
the latest V4 - Something to do with initializing a selection in a combo box
whose string value is the empty string. It insists that '' is not = to '' in
the list. The comparison policy is equity - and it worked in V3.0 but
doesn't seem to in 4.0. In this case the failure is benign and the presenter
completes initializing.

I'm also encountering problems reading in stb files that were saved with
version 3.x. It fails in the sorted collection proxy code for some reason,
even though the methods appear to be the same.
Dave
------------

--
Dave Wachtel
President, CSI Technologies, Inc.
Activities Director/Membership Chairman
Mohawk Hudson Region, Sports Car Club of America
[hidden email]
http://www.acmenet.net/~dwachtel
http://www.mohud-scca.org

(numerous replies rolled into one)

A SERFer <[hidden email]> wrote:
 
> Reminds me of the horrors of Video card installs in NT:
 ...
>        self scream.
> ] repeatForever.

Thanks for the humor.

> At least in Linux you can, if necessary, hack about about with X-Windows
> and gradually get things working somehow, most of the time.

Yes, and now with frame buffer support, it is even easier to get
something working.  It looks like in the about-to-be-released
Slackware version (to be version 8.0, I think), the installation
of X is pretty smooth.


Bob Jarvis <[hidden email]> wrote:

>    We are Microsoft of Borg.  Prepare to be rebooted...

I love it.  The humor and commiseration from this thread has helped
restore my normal good humor!

> > I also debated chucking Windows *altogether*, but ...

> If there was a Dolphin Smalltalk for Linux (or more specifically an
> affordable Smalltak for Linux which provided native widget support)
> Microsoft could color me gone, gone, gone...

I give this a lot of thought (maybe too much).  I have a general
goal to continue to reduce my association with and dependence
upon Microsoft and Windows.  They really do seem to take things
that work perfectly well and screw them up (their "embrace and
extend" strategy).  It is so *simple* to run a remote Unix/Linux
box and such hell to do nearly anything with a remote Windows
installation (maybe even with a local Windows installation).  The
bane of my Linux existence has been setting up X, but that seems
to be solved with frame buffer and the latest Slackware
configuration file (and the fancy distributions have had their
own X installation solutions as well).

No, I don't really expect my customers to move from Windows,
although, I'd like to offer the alternative so that as (if?)
they they get fed up with "improvements" like ME ...

I think "improvements" like ME and non-backward compatible
MS Word formats, etc., would be called "churning" in the
world of stock and commodity brokers.

I wonder if there isn't a limit -- to how Intel's older TV
commercials with dancing clean room workers in colored
space suits and to how Microsoft's current TV commercials
about the extreme reliability of Microsoft software -- can
substitute for reality.  Perhaps not.

> (Yes, Blair/Andy, that's a hint but no, I don't really expect ...

I may sound critical of Microsoft and Windows <wink>, but that
does not mean I want Object Arts to turn (completely) against
Windows.  It's their job, as I see it, to serve as a buffer between
me and Windows, show how to happy in spite of Windows, etc.  It's
my job to do the complaining.  There, that's a satisfactory
division of labor, right?  Each one doing what he does best?

For example, I found it jarring that ST/X charges a penalty
if you use their Windows version.


David G. Wachtel <[hidden email]> wrote:

< relative praise for W98SE plus tips to make it and ME more stable >

> I'm actually considering springing for a full version of SE (my version
> consists of upgrades from all the way back to Windows 3.1) and installing it
> on the new machine.

I noticed that MultiWave (http://mwave.com) offers an OEM price on W98SE
(and W2K, etc.) if you buy it in connection with any (?) hardware, for
example a disk drive.  Other places may do so also.  (I mention this
in case it save you any money when you spring.)

(I just bought some RAM from MultiWave.  A year or so ago I got a
128MB DIMM that still checks out ok.  In this new order, the 256MB
DIMM checked out ok but both of the 2 64MB DIMMs were defective.  
So, I sent them back for a refund.  I probably won't buy RAM from
them again.  The ad copy on the Crucial web site makes a good case
for using name-brand memory.  (I check out the RAM using the
"Linux stress test" I discussed on the Dolphin Wiki.)

> Since now that this is a public newsgroup I just wanted to clarify my last
> post!  Everything crashes windows ME because of the resource management
> problem - it is not something specific to Dolphin - except I tend to open
> more windows in Dolphin than in other development environments as it is so
> resilient and the Dolphin environment is so rich.

Sure.  I, too, am complaining about MS mostly rather than Dolphin.  I
do think that the tight coupling of Dolphin to Windows is the cause of
some of my trouble at times, but I respect Object Arts's decision <wink>.


Bill Schwab <[hidden email]> wrote:

< advice on protecting against loss of work when Windows crashes >

Before I moved to W2K, I very often had crashes running Dolpin (version 3)
on W95, especially as I opened more windows.  This was bad because it
made me spend too much of my attention on things like noting how many
windows I had open ("utoh, I'd better close some of those browsers
before I dare open another inspector"), rather than just doing my work.
W2K basically freed me from that concern.  I still try to save before
testing new ViewComposer work.  Also, I am nervous about saving a bad
image, so almost all of my saves are with a #saveDoubleImage method
I wrote to save the image with a unique name (based upon the current
date and time) in a "snapshots" directory and also under the name
"Dolphin.img" in my main working directory.  That way I have fallback
after fallback to, urh, fall back to if necessary.



-- Frank
[hidden email]

Frank and all others,

last year, Bill Gates joined a TV show here in Germany - I believe the first
in his lifetime.

There he gave a remarkable statement:

"I (Bill Gates) bind my personal fate, and that of Microsoft, to Windows
2000..."

Although he blabbered a lot of nonsense in his life, this here gives me hope
!

Ingo


<[hidden email]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:LloZ6.1682$[hidden email]... installing it last
> > post!  Everything crashes windows ME because of the resource management
> > problem - it is not something specific to Dolphin - except I tend to
open
> > more windows in Dolphin than in other development environments as it is
so