Crashing on text edits
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Crashing on text edits
- From: mek at guinan.psu.edu (Mark E. Kotanchek)
- Date: Thu, 15 Jul 93 10:37:10 -0400
Hi folks, One of the nice things about Mathematica is the ability to insert text for a running commentary in a notebook during a derivation. Alas, while running Mma 2.1 on my NeXTstation, I have just encountered a "feature" which caused Mathematica to crash in a most ungraceful and abrupt fashion and take along about an hour of work with it! Upon a little investigation, I have determined that selecting text **inside** a text block and typing (intending to replace the selected text) causes the crash. The notebook in question is actually a package which I have converted back-and-forth from a *.ma file to a *.m file. (The *.m is so I can call it as a package). The symptoms are: If the text is includes the begining or the end of the block we don't get the crash. If I double-click a single word, I don't get the crash. If I save the file as soon as I open it, I don't get the crash. However, if I open the file in Edit and close it (without saving), and then open it in Mathematica, select some **internal** text and start typing, Mathematica exits stage left. As I've played around with this behavior, I see that sometimes it doesn't crash--but I haven't figured out the rules. It does seem that if I drag the mouse-- which prompts the initialization window then I'm guaranteed a crash. Has anybody else seen this sort of behavior? Is it fixed in Mma 2.2? Anyhow, I thought I'd give y'all a heads up that writing package notebooks (which seem to require a *.m suffix to be accessed via "Needs[...") may be a dangerous path. Mark. BTW, I had though Mma would just read in a notebook and execute the initialization fields so that on a NeXT or a Mac a notebook was functionally equivalent to a package. The requirement that the notebook have a *.m suffix rather than (the NeXT standard) *.ma means that I have to toggle back and forth and, thereby, wander into these sorts of problems. Is there an easier work around or am I just doing things the hard way? Thanks. --- Mark Kotanchek Guidance & Control Dept - 363 ASB Applied Research Lab/Penn State P.O. Box 30 State College, PA 16804 e-mail: mek at guinan.psu.edu (NeXTmail) TEL: (814)863-0682 FAX: (814)863-7843