paul marwick wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 pm>> I've been a long term user of InspectA (I was one of the 
 pm>> original beta testers). While it still does some things better 
 pm>> than any other file manager I've used, I finally got sick of 
 pm>> its bugs (after it destroyed the file descriptions in a large 
 pm>> file area...).

 RJT> How did this happen?  I use that,  very much more than any other file
 RJT> manager here,  both the dos and os2 versions...

 pm> If I knew completely, I might be able to avoid future 
 pm> incidents... InspectA always did get upset at some things found 
 pm> in FILES.BBS. 

What things?  I don't recall any odd behavior of that sort here,  though I
tend to use the dos version *way* more than the OS/2 version.

 pm> I think that this was similar. One minute, I was moving through 
 pm> a file area, cleaning up old or duplicated files. The next, 
 pm> InspectA had gone. When I started it up again and went back to 
 pm> the file area (naturally, a good, big area), half the files no 
 pm> longer had FILES.BBS entries. It took me quite a while to 
 pm> recreate the FILES.BBS from a file listing... There is no 
 pm> indication in POPUPLOG.OS2 as to the nature of the abend, 
 pm> either.

And this was under OS/2?  Did a chkdsk find any bits of the old file around?

 pm> Given the other bugs in InspectA, that one was the final straw. 

What other bugs?  I have been using this program for ages,  and have never
heard of any of this sort of problems with it...

 RJT> The only problems I've noticed with it (so far?) are that the program
 RJT> seems to get real slow when it comes to displaying the files in
 RJT> really large directories.  One of these days I'm going to make
 RJT> "unsorted" the default and see if that's where the slowdown is.  In
 RJT> only one case did it ever actually have a problem,  and I had a
 RJT> *LOT* of files in one directory there,  something over 1400 (that
 RJT> area has since been split up into two directories).

 pm> :-) Yes, that is a well known problem. You want to try using it 
 pm> on a large CD directory (some of the early Night Owl CDs had 
 pm> _very_ large directories). Unfortunately, its not the sort that 
 pm> creates the problem, but the way David was handling memory when 
 pm> reading the directory structure, so changing to unsorted won't 
 pm> make much (if any) difference.

Oh.  I _do_ use it to browse cdroms,  but apparently the ones I'm using it
with don't have the huge directories that are causing the problem.

 pm> David did fix the problem - the final beta that I have is much 
 pm> better when it comes to large directories. Unfortunately, its 
 pm> dangerous in other areas...

Hm.  I did't know that there were other versions out there.

 pm> Other bugs that affect my usage of InspectA - attempting to 
 pm> examine a number of self-extracting archives causes InspectA to 
 pm> abend, 

I've never had a problem like that.

 pm> using Insert to edit an existing FILES.BBS entry causes a 
 pm> second entry to be generated rather than just editing the 
 pm> existing entry, 

Nor that one.

Duplicate entriees in a files.bbs are fairly common with at least some of the
files I have flowing in here,  but not at all a problem with the others, 
depending I guess on how the TIC file is put together or something like that.  
What bugs me (and this is SEAL,  not anything else) is when a new file comes
in with the same name,  instead of just replacing the existing entry it
removes it and puts the new one at the end of the file,  meaning I need to go
in there and edit it if I want to keep them in order.

 pm> partitions over 2gb list available space in negative numbers,

I hit that one early on with the OS/2 version,  the first time I'd dealt with
a partition that was all that big.  Under the dos/dv setup in this box I keep
'em small to avoid the cluster size issue to the extent possible.  It's a real 
irritation when it won't move or copy files because it insissts that there
isn't enough room...

 pm> a number of characters in FILES.BBS will upset the InspectA 
 pm> display, leaving spurious characters on unused parts of the 
 pm> screen,

I never had a problem with that,  but then mine are pretty plain-vanilla for
the most part anyhow.  It may be a good thing that I don't just automatically
use a FILE_ID.DIZ imported into FILES.BBS automatically like some folks do.
What characters does it have a problem with?

 pm> it doesn't understand newer archive types (such as RAR 
 pm> archives), 

The inability to extend the archive list has also been a source of irritation
to me.  And there are a few in there that I have never heard of or run into.
But I haven't spent much time in the config utility trying to rearrange that
stuff...

 pm> truncating long descriptions when copying files, etc.

How long?  I have *something* in my setup (probably DLC,  my download counter
utility) that truncates descriptions at 256 characters,  which is a real
irritation at times.  I suspect that program because it's only files that have 
been downloaded that get that treatment...

Maximus has,  if I'm remembering right,  a 1024-character limit in this,  so
I'm not used to using *real* long descriptions.  Qedit can't seem to do more
than 512 characters,  at least not the older version I'm using here,  anyhow.

 pm> Apart from the bugs, the lack of the things that were to be 
 pm> incorporated into the next version is also annoying - it was to 
 pm> get its own internal editor and viewer, include much more 
 pm> flexible handling of FILES.BBS. Unfortunately, the final beta 
 pm> that I have is dangerously unstable, and marks the point where 
 pm> David decided that the attempt to put InspectA out as shareware 
 pm> had been a failure (which I can't comment on, though I sold in 
 pm> excess of 30 licences for him myself..) and stopped develoment. 
 pm> While it is now possible to get a "free" registration key for 
 pm> the product, the lack of further development doesn't encourage 
 pm> anyone to register. The lack of available source code also 
 pm> leaves those who did register with a dead, unspported product...

I was aware of the availability of that key,  but already had one .  Do you 
think that there is no possibility of source becoming available?

I found a few things somewhat annoying when I first started using it (and
still do,  on occasion),  but a lot of that was the program I'd been used to
using before,  a real old and clunky utility that I won't even mention the
name of,  which absolutely refused to deal with more than about 700 files in a 
directory and choked when the directory tree got too complicated.  It doesn't
even work on newer versions of dos,  and heaven help you if you want some
other platform supported.

 pm>> EFCommander - PM, NC clone, broken in a number of respects and 
 pm>> goes _way_  beyond being simply annoyware - its a _real_ turkey.

 RJT> That's the way I felt about FM/2.  That stupid thing went into 
 RJT> a screen that displayed a "shower of currency" and then 
 RJT> proceeded to exit,  after giving you an annoy-screen.  The 
 RJT> first time this happened was maybe 20 minutes after I'd 
 RJT> installed it,  the second time within the hour and in response 
 RJT> to me trying for "help" to figure out some aspect of it -- 
 RJT> that's all it took,  and the program is not only no longer 
 RJT> installed but no longer available in the files section on this 
 RJT> bbs...

 pm> Hmm. Obviously, I didn't try FM/2 for long enough. That is 
 pm> pretty much what EF Commander does. After some usage, it will 
 pm> fill the screen full of dollar and cent graphics, then exit. 
 pm> When you chose to exit, it does exactly the same thing, not to 
 pm> mention locking the message queue, so you have to wait until 
 pm> its finished its display of petulance.

Sounds like another candidate for the bit bucket to me...

 pm> While I certainly respect an author's right to release 
 pm> shareware with some form of built in reminder that it should be 
 pm> registered (and I do register any shareware which I use 
 pm> extensively), this sort of thing is so irritating that even if 
 pm> the program is absolutely wonderful, I have great reluctance to 
 pm> register. I usually just delete the thing and make a note not 
 pm> to bother in the future...

Yep!

I'm giving some serious thought to looking over the source code to midnight
commander,  and seeing what I can do to it to make it more to my liking. 
These people who write this annoyware stuff can all try and sell to each other 
or something (the term circle jerk comes to mind for some reason) and I'll go
play elsewhere...

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