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Re: Cut and paste edits mis...

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg14091] Re: [mg14084] Cut and paste edits mis...
  • From: Eric Strobel <EStrobel at schafercorp.com>
  • Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 03:15:19 -0400
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Approach this methodically!

1) As I recall, there were some funny things that went on having to do
with  the Appearance Manager.  There's a patch (the URL escapes me...).

2) Check your extensions.  Since things worked just fine for a while 
(presumably under MacOS 8.1), you've either added an extension or
changed a  setting on an extension which is then interfering with
Mathematica.  If you use  Conflict Catcher, you can sort the extensions
list by date installed to  narrow down the culprits.

3) Have you run Norton or Disk First Aid?

4) Have you tried moving your Mathematica preferences, so Mathematica
has to resort to using

defaults?  Wierd problems sometimes track to a bad preferences file.

5) Check your fonts.  Every once in a while, a font file will develop a 
glitch and you'll either crash when using the font, or get cosmetic 
problems.  If this is the problem, simply replace the font file.

BTW, items 2-4 apply to almost any problem on the Mac and probably
handle 90% 
of all problems.  Notice too that I haven't even mentioned viruses. 
Even  with the recent "explosion" of viruses, the fact remains that the
Mac is  roughly *two orders of magnitude* behind PCs on virus count. 
Most Mac  viruses are MS Office macro viruses that afflict both Windows
& MacOS.  I'd  classify nearly all the remaining known Mac viruses as
extinct.  I've been  using the Mac for more than 13 years and have
never been infected.  In all  this time I've received only two or three
infected files which were promptly

caught by virus checking software.  I'm getting long-winded here because
folks on the Mac often see a glitch and think 'virus' when that should
be  *way* down on the list of suspects.  [My guess is that anti-virus
software is 
competent enough that even on Windows, 'virus' is probably not the first
thing
to worry about...]

- Eric.

gwinn at ma.ultranet.com  wrote:

>I have recently been observing some weird behaviour in Mathematica 3.0.1
>for PowerPC under MacOS 8.1.  Everything else seems to work, although I
>get weird error messages from time to time.
>
>The problem appeared only a few months ago, long after the initial
>installation of Mathematica 3.0.1.  Reinstalling Mathematica didn't
>help, and no other application is afflicted.  It does not appear to be
>a virus.
>
>The behaviour is that when editing text on the screen, the edit happens
>a few characters away (usually to the left) from the blinking edit
>point bar.  One can in fact do editing with this behaviour, but it's
>slow and error prone.  The oddity seems to be confined to the current
>line, and I have never seen Mathematica become confused about which
>line it's on.
>
>Another odd behaviour that started at about the same time is that
>Mathematica variables will get a tail, a hard space to the right.  This
>space cannot be deleted, and interferes with editing because the
>insertion point is usually off by a few characters.
>
>These oddities affect editing, but seem otherwise harmless.  Sliding the
>image offscreen and then back may fix the displayed line, but doesn't
>affect the misalignment, once started.  Not all lines are affected.
>Quitting Mathematica and re-launching seems to reset the problem, so
>most lines are unaffected.
>
>
>Does anyone have any idea what causes this, and how to fix it?
>
>My suspicion is that some obscure option has somehow been set.
>
>
>Joe Gwinn


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