Lucide oddity

[tho...@antispam.ham]

I have two OS/2 systems, one at home, one at work, that both
run Warp 4.52, and although it has been years, I'm pretty sure
they both have the same set of FixPaks applied.

I downloaded Lucide version 1.3.2 on both machines and installed
it on both. The program object was placed in the WarpCenter
tray on both systems.

On my home system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
will launch, and then I can click on the Open Document icon,
which will present me with an open file dialog, and I can
select a file from the list and open it just fine.

On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
Lucide disappears. However, if I go to a windowed command
prompt and type "lucide some_pdf_file.pdf", Lucide will launch
and open the file just fine. It's clicking on the Open Document
icon that causes it to crash.

I'm puzzled why there is a difference in behavior between my
two systems. I actually transferred all the Lucide files from
one machine to the other and did a file comparison on all of
them. They are identical, except for Lucide.fcf (the font
configuration file), which I assume is different because the
two machines have a different set of fonts installed on them.

Yet Lucide works properly when started from the command line
on my office system, so that suggests to me that the different
font configuration file isn't responsible for Lucide crashing
on my office system. I'm suspecting that there is some system
file that is different between the two systems, but where to
look?

Any suggestions?

[Alex Taylor]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:47:49 UTC, tho...@antispam.ham wrote:

> On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
> will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
> Lucide disappears. However, if I go to a windowed command
> prompt and type "lucide some_pdf_file.pdf", Lucide will launch
> and open the file just fine. It's clicking on the Open Document
> icon that causes it to crash.

At a guess, the program object (of which the WarpCentre icon is a
shadow) may have a particular startup (working) directory which is
causing some kind of DLL error or conflict. You might try investigating
that possibility.


--
Alex Taylor
Fukushima, Japan
http://www.altsan.org

Please take off hat when replying.

[Steve Wendt]

On 08/29/12 12:47 pm, tho...@antispam.ham wrote:

> On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
> will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
> Lucide disappears.

Anything in popuplog.os2, or any kind of exception log? Are you using
any replacement File Open/Save dialog?

[tho...@antispam.ham]

"Alex Taylor" <mai...@reply.to.address> writes:

>> On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
>> will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
>> Lucide disappears. However, if I go to a windowed command
>> prompt and type "lucide some_pdf_file.pdf", Lucide will launch
>> and open the file just fine. It's clicking on the Open Document
>> icon that causes it to crash.

> At a guess, the program object (of which the WarpCentre icon is a
> shadow) may have a particular startup (working) directory which is
> causing some kind of DLL error or conflict. You might try investigating
> that possibility.

Both program objects use the same working directory, namely the
directory were Lucide is installed.

A DLL conflict is the first thing that occurred to me. I tried
exiting Firefox and Thunderbird, the two applications that make
use of LIBCxxx, but the behavior of Lucide was the same. My
previous experience with DLL conflicts suggests that such a
conflict prevents the app from running at all, whereas Lucide
launches just fine, but crashes when the Open Document button
is clicked. Could the Open Document dialog be causing the
loading of a DLL, or a routine from a DLL, that is causing the
problem? Recall that if the desired document is entered on a
command line, Lucide will launch and load that document. Avoiding
the use of the Open Document button makes it work.

Both systems run an ancient version of Thunderbird that uses
LIBC05. One difference is that my office computer also runs
(usually) an ancient version of Firefox that also uses LIBC05;
Firefox and Thunderbird happily coexist without resorting to
LIBPATHSTRICT, whereas my home computer runs Firefox 10, which
needs LIBPATHSTRICT to coexist with Thunderbird. But Lucide
runs fine on that system.

Very puzzling.

[tho...@antispam.ham]

Steve Wendt <spa...@forgetit.org> writes:

>> On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
>> will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
>> Lucide disappears.

> Anything in popuplog.os2, or any kind of exception log?

Nope. My popuplog.os2 has entries all the way back to 2004, and
none of them reference Lucide, even though I've crashed Lucide
many, many times trying to understand the problem.

> Are you using any replacement File Open/Save dialog?

Not to my knowledge. I suppose some rogue application may have
tried to install such a thing, but wouldn't I have noticed in
some other application?

[Doug Bissett]

A couple of months ago, I tried to get Lucide to work with bootAble:

> http://hrbaan.home.xs4all.nl/bootAble/bootAble6_8.wpi

I saw the same thing, Lucide just folded up when i tried to open a
document. No apparent errors. My guess is that it is looking for some
sort of printer definition (bootAble does not, yet, support printers),
and decided to close when none was found.

I haven't had the time to get back to that project. If you find the
answer, please let us know what causes it.

--
From the eComStation of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)

[tho...@antispam.ham]

"Doug Bissett" <dougb007!SP...@telus.net> writes:

> I saw the same thing, Lucide just folded up when i tried to open a
> document. No apparent errors. My guess is that it is looking for some
> sort of printer definition (bootAble does not, yet, support printers),
> and decided to close when none was found.

Hmm. You've just identified a difference between my home and
office computers. At home, I have a laser printer on the
parallel port, and that's where Lucide works. At work, I print
to a print server, which routes the job to a printer on the
network; nothing is attached to the parallel port, and no local
printer is defined.

If that's the cause, then it's not a difference between my two
systems that is to blame, but rather how Lucide is coded, but
without knowing for sure, should one file a bug report?

Speaking of Lucide and printers, as I said, Lucide will load
a document if I launch it from the command line, but printing
doesn't work properly, in the sense that portrait documents
get printed in landscape mode, and it doesn't matter how I
configure the printer properties. I suppose that is a bug
that can be reported, but to whom? When one piece of software
interacts with another piece of software, how does one know
where the bug lies? Because other applications print properly,
I would assume that the bug lies in Lucide, but I don't understand
how that's possible. I thought that was the whole idea behind
using device drivers, to avoid having applications neeeding to
support all the various printers themselves.

[Dave Saville]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 22:44:29 UTC, tho...@antispam.ham wrote:

> "Doug Bissett" <dougb007!SP...@telus.net> writes:
>
> > I saw the same thing, Lucide just folded up when i tried to open a
> > document. No apparent errors. My guess is that it is looking for some
> > sort of printer definition (bootAble does not, yet, support printers),
> > and decided to close when none was found.
>
> Hmm. You've just identified a difference between my home and
> office computers. At home, I have a laser printer on the
> parallel port, and that's where Lucide works. At work, I print
> to a print server, which routes the job to a printer on the
> network; nothing is attached to the parallel port, and no local
> printer is defined.

<snip>

My laptop has my network print server defined through SLPR - I don't
have a problem with Lucide.
--
Regards
Dave Saville

[Doug Bissett]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 22:44:29 UTC, tho...@antispam.ham wrote:

> "Doug Bissett" <dougb007!SP...@telus.net> writes:
>
> > I saw the same thing, Lucide just folded up when i tried to open a
> > document. No apparent errors. My guess is that it is looking for some
> > sort of printer definition (bootAble does not, yet, support printers),
> > and decided to close when none was found.
>
> Hmm. You've just identified a difference between my home and
> office computers. At home, I have a laser printer on the
> parallel port, and that's where Lucide works. At work, I print
> to a print server, which routes the job to a printer on the
> network; nothing is attached to the parallel port, and no local
> printer is defined.

Try installing a printer driver. I don't think it would matter which
one (IBMNULL might even work). I never tried it with bootAble, because
the basic printer support isn't there, yet.

> If that's the cause, then it's not a difference between my two
> systems that is to blame, but rather how Lucide is coded, but
> without knowing for sure, should one file a bug report?

Yes, if you can demonstrate that it does work when a printer is
installed (a physical printer only counts when you want to actually
print). If you can, try to install a driver that would be reasonably
close to the real printer that you might want to use.

> Speaking of Lucide and printers, as I said, Lucide will load
> a document if I launch it from the command line, but printing
> doesn't work properly, in the sense that portrait documents
> get printed in landscape mode, and it doesn't matter how I
> configure the printer properties. I suppose that is a bug
> that can be reported, but to whom? When one piece of software
> interacts with another piece of software, how does one know
> where the bug lies? Because other applications print properly,
> I would assume that the bug lies in Lucide, but I don't understand
> how that's possible. I thought that was the whole idea behind
> using device drivers, to avoid having applications neeeding to
> support all the various printers themselves.

I haven't seen that trick, but I rarely try to print with Lucide. So
far, it has always worked properly, except in bootAble.

It is possible, because printing, even with a proper driver, is not as
simple as it would seem. You could have a driver problem, and/or, you
could have a problem in Lucide (it wouldn't be the first one, and it
could be both). What really should happen, when there is no printer
defined, is that the program should format the document for the
screen. It appears that that is not happening (or it is failing) with
Lucide (but that is only my guess).

Rather than reporting it as a bug, it might be better to start off by
reviewing the Lucide news group, and ask about it there. It is at:

> news.gmane.org

Look up:
> gmane.org.netlabs.org.lucide.general

[T.]

Hi,

> On my office system, I can click on the WarpCenter icon, Lucide
> will launch, but as soom as I click on the Open Document icon,
> Lucide disappears.

I have the same problem on a Warp 4 FP16 with Lucide 1.3.5 GA. What ever
I try, Lucide starts, if I open a PDF-document it closes without any
message/log.

> However, if I go to a windowed command prompt and
> type "lucide some_pdf_file.pdf", Lucide will launch
> and open the file just fine.

Even this is not working, no way to get Lucide showing me a PDF-document.

WarpIN 1.0.19, gcc453 and libc065 are installed for sure, a network
printer (OMNI FX) and a local PDF-printer (ePDF) are installed, I even
tried to install an additional PS-printer, what didn't helped.


Any idea for this?

Thanks,
--
To Answer please replace "invalid" with "de" !
Zum Antworten bitte "invalid" durch "de" ersetzen !


Chau y hasta luego,

Thorolf

[Ruediger Ihle]

On Sun, 26 May 2013 11:12:48 UTC, "T." <nos...@godawa.invalid> wrote:
Hi Thorolf,

> WarpIN 1.0.19, gcc453 and libc065 are installed for sure, a network
> printer (OMNI FX) and a local PDF-printer (ePDF) are installed, I even
> tried to install an additional PS-printer, what didn't helped.
>
>
> Any idea for this?

Check for stray SOM DLLs. ISTR, that some IBM products (for example
Visual Age C++ 3.65) put an outdated SOM.DLL in libpath so that the
system will load this one instead of \OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL



--
Ruediger "Rudi" Ihle [S&T Systemtechnik GmbH, Germany]
http://www.s-t.de
Please remove all characters left of the "R" in my email address

[Doug Bissett]

On Sun, 26 May 2013 11:12:48 UTC, "T." <nos...@godawa.invalid> wrote:

> WarpIN 1.0.19, gcc453 and libc065 are installed for sure,

Check the README file. The Lucide that I have (v 1.3.5) requires
GCC446, not GCC453.

You need all of the required GCC files, not just the latest. Most of
the ones that are actually used are in:

> ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/gcc/gcc4core-1_2_1.wpi

[T.]

Hi Rudi,

> Check for stray SOM DLLs. ISTR, that some IBM products (for example
> Visual Age C++ 3.65) put an outdated SOM.DLL in libpath so that the
> system will load this one instead of \OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL

Bingo!

It was IBM COBOL that put a directory with outdated SOM-DLLs in the
LIBPATH. I just replaced all SOM-DLLs in this directory with the newer
ones (from 99/96). Hopefully everything still works, because some of the
SOM-DLLs in the IBMCOBOL-directory do not exist in the OS2-DLL-directory
(like SOMC.DLL, SOMCT.DLL, SOMDBG.DLL, SOME.DLL or SOMP.DLL).

Thanks a lot :-)

[T.]

Hi Doug,

> You need all of the required GCC files, not just the latest. Most of
> the ones that are actually used are in:

sure, I had them all (simly intalled the WPIs).

But problem solved, see other post.

[tho...@antispam.ham]

"T." <nos...@godawa.invalid> writes:

>> Check for stray SOM DLLs. ISTR, that some IBM products (for example
>> Visual Age C++ 3.65) put an outdated SOM.DLL in libpath so that the
>> system will load this one instead of \OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL

> Bingo!

Does that mean Lucide will now open a file from the file open dialog
without immediately crashing? If so, then it sounds like I should
try looking for conflicting DLLs on my office system, where the
Lucide oddity occurs. I don't have IBM COBOL.

[T.]

Hi,

> Does that mean Lucide will now open a file from the file open dialog
> without immediately crashing? If so, then it sounds like I should

yes, it now works as it should.

> try looking for conflicting DLLs on my office system, where the
> Lucide oddity occurs. I don't have IBM COBOL.

As Rudi wrote it also could be VA and problably others. I would check
all directories in the LIBPATH.

[Andreas Buchinger]

Ruediger Ihle schrieb:

> On Sun, 26 May 2013 11:12:48 UTC, "T."<nos...@godawa.invalid> wrote:
> Hi Thorolf,
>
>> WarpIN 1.0.19, gcc453 and libc065 are installed for sure, a network
>> printer (OMNI FX) and a local PDF-printer (ePDF) are installed, I even
>> tried to install an additional PS-printer, what didn't helped.
>>
>>
>> Any idea for this?
>
> Check for stray SOM DLLs. ISTR, that some IBM products (for example
> Visual Age C++ 3.65) put an outdated SOM.DLL in libpath so that the
> system will load this one instead of \OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL
>
>
>

Which som.dll is the best? I've 4 different on my system -
2008.05.23 15.40.22 134.217 D:\IBMLAN\RPL\NET30GUI\SOM.DLL
1999.06.30 16.33.00 92.009 M:\OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL
1998.11.16 17.39.42 127.838 P:\IBMCPP3.65\DLL\SOM.DLL
1999.02.23 01.34.54 133.593 P:\os2tk45\som\common\dll\som.dll

Unfortunately there's no bldlevel info. Ok, that one from VAC probably not. But is that on from
D:\IBMLAN\RPL\NET30GUI\ the best? Usually the smallest on in M:\OS2\DLL\SOM.DLL get's loaded on my
system and Lucide works well.

Andi