AW: want you error expertise

[Tiemo Hollmann TB]

Hi Richard,
it's really interesting to read your experiences, nice intro of Scott Raney
:) About video drivers I havn't though of at all yet. But I will put it on
my check list.

With the messageMessages could be indeed the last try, good to know. Because
of my program crashes right at launching hopefully the log isn't that big
and I can find anything useful. From time to time I also have explicit
crashes with the Valentina db. The advice of Ruslan was to set the
debuglevel so that I get a debuglog from Valentina. My problem was in a
couple of cases, that Valentina crashed while initialization, before I
actually could set any debug level. So those cases also kept unsatisfied
open without solution (beside of the advice to reinstall the system or
service pack, what I don't want to advice any two left handed customer)

Would you say that LC programs today crash more often as programs of other
languages in your experience, or is it just my personal experience?
Thanks
Tiemo


> 
> Scott Raney used to include this in the MetaCard release notes:
> 
>     MetaCard is very good at exposing bugs in the drivers for graphics
>     cards.  These problems seem to be most frequent in Windows 98, but
>     can plague any Windows system.  The most common symptom are images
>     or cursors that draw in the wrong colors or with the mask and data
>     reversed, and bits of windows left on the screen when they are
>     closed or moved.  Be sure you have the latest drivers from the
>     vendor of your graphics card.  If the problem still exists with
>     those, try turning acceleration to its lowest level.  If that
>     doesn't fix the problem (or even if it does), please report this
>     bug to the vendor of your graphics card.
> 
> I love that opening line. :)
> 
> I used to think that was sheer arrogance.  After all, if MC apps are the
> only ones that crash, how it could it a system problem?
> 
> Oh, how I used to argue with Raney over this, but he'd patiently tell me
> to please double-check the drivers and update as needed, and let him
> know if the problem persisted after an update.
> 
> In most cases it never did.
> 
> So I'd start with that:   make sure the video drivers are the very
> latest from the manufacturer, and if the system in question has any
> unusual devices attached to it (scanners, etc.) make sure those drivers
> are current too.
> 
> Also check that any anti-virus software is up to date, and verify
> whether it's truly the case that no other app has had other problems on
> the machine (I sometimes find that frustrated customers may forget in
> their initial report that they've had issues with other apps before).
> 
> 
> If all that checks out it may be a problem with the engine, but
> isolating it will take some work.  In such cases I've sometimes found it
> helpful to make a custom build with logging in it, so that the last item
> logged will tell me where it crashed.  That'll be essential for
> diagnosing the issue with RunRev.
> 
> You could add logging handlers interspersed throughout your code, but
> it's tedious and not always effective.
> 
> Simpler is to use a couple of undocumented things to get a very
> comprehensive log of everything:
> 
> -- in your initialization stuff:
> on StartLogging
>    insert script of btn "LoggerFS" into front
>    set the messageMessages to true
>    open file (specialFolderPath("desktop")&"/MyLog.txt") for append
> end StartLogging
> 
> 
> -- in the LoggerFS button used as a frontScript:
> on messageHandled pType, pMessage
>    write the internet date && the params &cr to file \
>       (specialFolderPath("desktop")&"/MyLog.txt")
>    pass messageHandled
> end messageHandled
> 
> 
> -- somewhere in your quit stuff, if your program lives that long:
> on StopLogging
>    close file ("specialFolderPath("desktop")&"/MyLog.txt")
> end StopLogging
> 
> 
> Here's what that does:
> 
> The messageMessages is a global property that's off by default, but when
> set to true it generates "messageHandled" and "messageNotHandled"
> messages for every system message, command, and function call used in
> any script.
> 
> I've never found the "messageNotHandled" message useful since it's only
> sent for messages that aren't handled in the message path, but
> "messageHandled" can be invaluable for this sort of logging since it'll
> tell you the name of pretty much everything that's called during script
> execution.
> 
> WARNING:  These logs can be big.  Really big, since they record
> literally everything, including every mouseMove.
> 
> It may be wise to filter out some messages less likely to be the
> culprit, e.g.:
> 
> on messageHandled pType, pMessage
>    if pMessage is not among the items of \
>       "mouseMove,idle,mouseEnter,mouseLeave,mouseWithin" then
>       write the internet date && pType && pMessage &cr to file \
>         (specialFolderPath("desktop")&"/MyLog.txt")
>    end if
>    pass messageHandled
> end messageHandled
> 
> 
> If you want to see an example of the messageMessages at work check out
> the 4W Flight Recorder tool.  It's in the Stacks section of RevNet - in
> the IDE see Development->Plugins->GoRevNet
> 
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World
>   LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
>   Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
>   LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv
> 
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