Turn Off Double-Entry?

Dave Cragg dcragg at lacscentre.co.uk
Wed Apr 26 18:55:44 EDT 2006


It  has been brought to my attention that certain flattering comments  
with respect to the frequency of bugs in libUrl have been made on  
this list. In line with traditional Scottish good grace, all I can  
say is if it's money you're after, the answer's no.

We seem to be getting into a discussion about bugs again. At the risk  
of us all getting banished, let me offer a few comments.

Unlike Richard, I do spend quite a lot of time in the debugger. But  
at the risk of harming Jacque's jaw again, I never use it for  
debugging libUrl. When I started out with libUrl, the debugger was of  
little use. The problem is that libUrl does most of its stuff  
asynchronously (read from socket x with message y, etc.), and the  
debugger couldn't cope with the out-of-context stuff. (try/catch  
handlers have the same problem) So most of the debugging is done by  
using libUrl's built-in log function to trace various values at  
various stages. A little tedious, but it works. One day I'll check  
out whether recent improvements in the debugger make a difference in  
thi area, but it's hard to break habits.

As for the number of bugs in libUrl, I can assure Richard it's had  
it's fair share. I originally agreed to take on the libUrl task  
because I needed it to work for a project I was working on at the  
time. This was an application that used ftp and http, and was used by  
a number of companies in Europe and Asia. As a result, the libUrl  
script has received some severe testing on various networks, and it  
still does.  And because of this, a lot of bugs have come to my  
attention and been fixed before you lot could complain about them. :-)

Going off at a slight tangent ... I know people complain about bugs  
in Rev from time to time (OK. All the time.). I've had hangs and  
crashes in the IDE myself. But the application I mentioned above  
(Windows only) has gone through many changes and engine updates, and  
has been used by a few thousand people in various locations, and  
since the 2.4.1 version of the engine, I've not had one report of a  
crash from a user. I think that's pretty good going, and it's why I'm  
with Richard when he says it's the engine that matters. I see bugs in  
the IDE as an inconvenience, but bugs in the engine are a threat to  
my income.

Sorry, Scott. This is drifting away from your original complaint. I'm  
probably on your side on this one, but sometimes there is an  
advantage to the double-entry feature. I've got one of those sleek  
Apple edgeless keyboards, and I keep hitting the Enter key with my  
elbow when I reach for the phone. At those times, the double-entry  
feature usually leaves the script window open. (Yes, I know. I should  
move the phone.)

Cheers
Dave





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