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Volume Number: 11
Issue Number: 4
Column Tag: Dialog Box
Dialog Box 
By Scott T Boyd, Editor
Jasik Has A Better Bus Error
Steve Jasik wrote, in light of the attention we’ve been giving to the need to use strong
debugging tools, to remind us that his Debugger has been putting a “garbage” value in
location zero since its inception, and you get the message if you trip on it.
He also wanted to remind us that it has a version of Trap Discipline similar to the
one implemented in TMON, but it also does the Color QD Traps. His version of
Discipline will catch double disposes, etc. He says it’s supported (and documented?).
- Ed stb
Stenger Goes For Two Month’s In A Row
I found a couple of cases where Bob Boonstra’s solution to the Rubik’s Cube challenge
(1) If the cube is already solved, the code correctly detects that no moves are
necessary, but the playback loop in SolveRubiksCube doesn’t handle this empty case
correctly (the loop is coded to “execute at least once”).
(2) The illegally-colored cube with solid faces 0, 3, 4, 2, 1, 5 is not caught by
LegalCube, and then generates no moves (I don’t know why this is). It then fails as in
item (1).
The code works correctly on all the “normal” cases I tried, so it meets the spirit of
the Challenge and should still be the winner.
- Allen Stenger, 70401.1171@compuserve.com
Prograph - Where’s It Been Hiding?
I read Kurt Schmucker’s article on Prograph CPX, and was amazed that I had never
heard of this product. I am a programmer for a consulting company here in
Milwaukee. After reading that article, I went out and bought Prograph CPX
immediately. I want to see more articles about Prograph - I think it’s a product that
has a great future.
- minton brooks, MBAssoc@aol.com
Re: A Quick Trip Into the Depth
In his article in the February issue, “A Quick Trip Into the Depths”, Steve Jasik
writes, “The crux of the problem was that, despite what Inside Macintosh or today’s
equivalent of it says, the Resource Manager doesn’t always return a non-zero value of
ResErr when it doesn’t find the requested resource.”
This assertion is incorrect. Inside Macintosh does specifically warn you about
this problem. Inside Macintosh : More Macintosh Toolbox on page I-51 in describing
ResError function has this to say under the caption IMPORTANT, “In certain cases, the
ResError function returns noErr even though a Resource Manager routine was unable
to perform the requested operation. See the individual routine descriptions for details
about the circumstances under which this happens”.
Then if we turn to page I-73 of the same volume, we can read that, “If you call
GetResource with a resource type that can’t be found in any of the resource maps of the
open resource forks, the function returns NIL, but ResError returns the result code
noErr. You should always check that the value of the returned handle is not NIL.”
- Vladimir Potap'yev, VolodyaP@aol.com
We Forgot To Say Thanks!
Chris De Salvo contributed Control Strip Tester - an application shell to help you test
out control strips - to go along with Mike Blackwell’s “Writing Control Strip
Modules” article in our December issue. We didn’t have time to get a mention of it into
the issue, but we did manage to get it onto our source disk and our online sites. You can
find it at:
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/xp/xplain/Source/10.12/ControlStripExtras.sit.bin
and our other online sites, and you can e-mail him at phixus@netcom.com.
Thanks, Chris!
- Ed stb