Turn Off Double-Entry?

[J. Landman Gay]

simplsol at aol.com wrote:
> Good point, Dave,
> But I'm not sure why we are having this discussion at all.
> Whether it takes one click or two clicks to close the script editor is 
> the least of the problems with the editor and, worse yet, the debugger.
> It opens to random window sizes. Sometimes it opens almost off the 
> screen. Sometimes it opens but simply will not run.

I haven't ever seen any of these, but I do know about this one:

> Often it will step 
> though a couple lines of code then drop to the bottom of the handler. 
> You can set debug checkpoints which do not trigger the debugger at all.

This one is a known, and intentional, escape procedure. It happens when 
there is a bug in a script that is called from your debugging script, 
such as one in a library or backscript. If there is a bug in there, the 
engine will go into an infinite loop (which is what happens in the MC 
IDE, and you have to force-quit.) In Revolution, the script editor has 
been programmed to stop execution entirely, thus preventing the need to 
force-quit. This behavior is actually saving you some trouble, though it 
can be frustrating because it is not clear where the bug is.

In my case, one of the bugs was in libURL. Every time I tried to debug 
my downloading scripts, I got the skipped handler business. I was 
finally able to track it down by setting breakpoints in libURL itself -- 
at which point Dave Cragg immediately fixed the problem. It was a 
painful and frustrating debugging session but I was able to nail it.

The second time this happened, the bug was in one of Rev's backscripts. 
Again, it took a long time to find, particularly because the error was 
pretty unique to the file paths on my drive and RR couldn't reproduce 
it. I reported it and it has been fixed.

So while I agree it can be frustrating, I think that Rev's behavior of 
skipping the handler entirely is much better than MC's behavior of going 
into a loop that you cannot exit from and which requires a force-quit 
(and loss of your work.)


> You can set debug checkpoints that get removed when the debugger runs. 

Not sure, but this may be related to the above.

> The variable watcher misses variables (especially the clickLine). It is 
> possible to use the spacebar to step through code (although there is no 
> obvious way to know this) - except that it often will not work for the 
> first step. Attempting to use the "Find" command in the debugger will 
> scramble the script editor window and scripts being edited.

I use the Find thingie at the bottom of the editor all the time, day in 
and day out, and haven't ever seen this happen. How odd. Do you use 
script colorization? I never do, so I wonder if that has anything to do 
with it?

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com