Re: Strange IIgs Behavior

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <4t0qak$48@crl8.crl.com>, Joe Kohn <joko@crl.com> wrote:
>Erick Dietrich (madsci@tribeca.ios.com) wrote:
>: Occasionally, when in the Finder, I'll open a window and it will appear
>: blank for a moment, and then fill up with multi-color dots.  The dots
>: change a few times, in waves, and then the  machine becomes unstable. 
>: Usually crashes to the monitor.

>System 6.x style rIcons get copied to an invisible file located in your 
>Icons folder. The name of that file is Desktop. If you go to your Finder 
>Preference menu, set it up so that there's no x in the option to "Hide 
>Invisible Files." Once you do that, the Desktop file will appear. Drag it 
>to the trash. Or, if you have ICE, you can examine the Desktop file and 
>perhaps spot the conflict. I usually drag my Desktop folder to the trash 
>a few times a year.

   I did fix one memory trashing bug in the Finder's icon code (used
by _both_ old icons and the System 6.x rBundle code) in GUPP 1.02.
Unfortunately, Murphy "There is always one more bug" may be
prevailing.  Via email, I'm trying to get a copy of all of Erik's icon
folders so that I _can_ find out where these bugs are causing problems.
[In other words, I want a buggy setup, as they're pretty hard to
duplicate on my machine at home-- Erik: don't delete that desktop file
yet if possible!].


>If it's an old style pre-System 6 Icon, it's a little more time consuming 
>to track down the conflict. Basically, by conflict, I mean that you have 
>your icons set up so that the file attributes point to a file that 
>doesn't exist, or you have 2 different icons that give the Finder 
>conflicting information.

   That's not always a problem. When hunting the Finder bug for 1.02,
I had a lot (1.2MB, including a fair load of duplicates) of icons
pointing to nonexistant apps, and I never got snow, gunk, or anything
else. If you _DO_ get a problem that's reproducable, I _want_ to
get my hands on the setup that causes it. (I currently have only a
GSHK 1.1 anomaly on my list of things to check out on my bughunting
runs.)

> If you have an Icon Editor, you can search 
>through all your icons to see which attributes are messed up, or you can 
>use Bill Tudor's Icon App Checker (a shareware program, probably 
>available on all the major ftp sites) and that program will check all 
>your Icons, and point out exactly which icon is the cause of your 
>problems. 

   I have a program that I wrote that verifies the internal structure
of an icon file, but doesn't check paths and the like. It's
vfyicon1.0.shk, and sorta requires the Orca or GNO shell to run. I
wrote it to make sure things were by the book before running things.

   Lemme repeat this offer to c.s.a2 and the Apple II community at
large: I'm killing bugs. I need your help in finding and exposing them.
Send me bug reports!

Nathan "The time for half measures is over. Time to die, bugs." Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein