WordStar 7 in DOS-VDM's
From
Mike Luther@1:117/100 to
Anyone on Wed Mar 25 20:32:24 2009
Does anyone here have any memory about solving a WordStar 7 problem running in DOS-VDM's for OS/2 which I have seen for over a decade and never been able to solve?
As with I think all people who fell in love with WordStar, it is because if you
really do touch typing at a keyboard, the throughput for text work in WordStar is simply HUGELY more efficient than any other way of doing things.
Fine .. but in OS/2 DOS-VDM use there is a glitch. If you are typing in a file
name you wish to open and really wham the name into the keyboard very early on after you open the DOS_VDM session with WS7 in it, things go wrong!
You will VERY often get either a completely locked WS screen just before the file opens, or .. you will get a SYS3170 error. Either force you to close the DOS-VDM and start all over. And at that point, you'll see that WordStar has gone ahead and started to 'normally' open the desired file, including the 'normal' additional work files, for, say NAMES.WST. These are named as the files NAMES.$A$ and NAMES.$B$, for example. They are the work files for your session that are used by WordStar to handle editing such that only when you save the final file, to you get your original NAMES.WST renamed to NAMES.BAK and the combination of the $A$ files become your newly finished NAMES.WST work.
OK, what that means, as far as I can see, is that is a memory issue in WordStar
which I think results when a portion of the program is attempting to handle the
file action just before the work session opens.
You never see this error if you always count ONE, TWO, THREE in you mind and never press the enter key for that file name to edit until the WordStar menu display pops up on your view screen. But I'd still like to get rid of this error. I've chased this infernal glitch for years unsolved now.
Well ....... when recently doing some other research on things, out of curiosity, I decided to disable the MOUSE access in WordStar 7 in WSCHANGE. And
I *THOUGHT* I had this solved! The initial menu screen pops up MUCH faster when the DOS-VDM session is opened, if MOUSE is turned off in WS7. But .. sigh .. I saw this same SYS3170 error pop up again tonight. So I tried something else. I went into WSCHANGE and set the DISK delay from the default of "0" to "5", whatever that means. Thinking that the issue might also be resolved if, for example, we delayed any file open command until AFTER the operator is through typing the file name at the keyboard.
You never see this if you open the file with the MOUSE. Of course not. You can't click on the name until it is displayed in the menu there. As well I've never seen this when the file name is pre-instructed in the WS7 open as part of
the call for the session opening or the WS7 from an open DOS-VDM. Whatever ..
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
Mike Luther N117C at 1:117/100
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* Origin: BV HUB CLL(979)696-3600 (1:117/100)