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

 pm> Hi Roy

 pm> Replying to a message of Roy J. Tellason to paul marwick:

 RJT> But that's the whole point -- you _can't_ anticipate things like
 RJT> that,  so a program should be designed to just deal with it somehow, 
 RJT> and in a sensible manner,  and not get weird over it.

 pm> :) Well, I know of all too many programs that fail in the area 
 pm> of anticipation or handling things that weren't anticipated. 
 pm> InspectA is (unfortunately) a long way from being alone in this 
 pm> area.

There _is_ an awful lot of badly written software out there,  but really,  no
program should behave badly,  or erratically,  because of input data if it's
properly designed.  That sort of thing speaks of a flaw in there somewhere...



 pm>> I use RAR a lot (registered a copy of the OS/2 version two or 
 pm>> three years ago). And, since I find it more effective than many 
 pm>> of the other archivers, I'm not going to be converting away 
 pm>> from it...

 RJT> Effective how,  in terms of space?  Or speed?  I used to worry about
 RJT> space,  but saw a post earlier in another echo about 8.4G drives for
 RJT> $99 (don't know if this is a rebate thingy or what),  so I sure
 RJT> ain't worried about it the way I used to be.

 pm> I often end up having to carry files (sometimes very big files) 
 pm> around on floppy disk. RAR supports mulit-volume archives very 
 pm> well and is (genrally) the most space efficient archive. So I 
 pm> use it a lot - saves me lugging extra floppies... I also use it 
 pm> for small scale backup, since its text-graphic screen provides 
 pm> more information as to what it is doing than is the case with 
 pm> any of the other archives.

I haven't really used it all that much,  and should probably look into it a
bit further...

 pm> My only complaint about it is that the self extrating archives 
 pm> that it generates are platform specific, so I can't generate a 
 pm> single self extractor that I can use on multiple platforms. 
 pm> Still, since I have multiple mplatform versions of RAR, that 
 pm> isn't a major concern.

Since a self-extractor would involve execcutable code,  I don't see how you
can have it _not_ be platform-specific,  with the exception of some bits of
stuff I've heard of that will run on either dos or OS/2 platforms.

 pm>> :-) Time you got an updated editor... I use FED )FED025S.ZIP) 
 pm>> which is free, small enough to go on a floppy and works well... 
 pm>> Can be made to work pretty much like Qedit as well.

 RJT> I'll have to look around for it.  How big is the package it comes in?

 pm> fed025s.zip  (190771 15-06-99) 

 pm> For a small, freeware editor, this one is pretty good. Includes 
 pm> multiple file editing, syntax highlighting, programable 
 pm> keyboard. And its text mode and small enough to install on a 
 pm> boot floppy (:-) I never did get along with Tedit terribly 
 pm> well...)

Hm,  I don't know that it'll work with my email,  but if you wanna give it a
shot...?

 pm>> :-) Can I place an order forr an updated InspectA clone now?

 RJT> You'd definitely be in mind for it,  bringing these discussions 
 RJT> into here,  which I've enjoyed.  To run under Linux?  I sure 
 RJT> don't have OS/2 tools on hand here...  

 pm> Well, I am gradually learning Linux. Though I still keep coming 
 pm> back to OS/2, for any number of reasons.

Yeah,  I can see a need for both,  here.

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