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Mail Archives: djgpp/2001/06/21/10:57:48

Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 16:03:58 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Info.
In-Reply-To: <3b31a206.174446194@news.primus.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.1010621155258.10384C-100000@is>
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On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, Graaagh the Mighty wrote:

> >Please post the entire crash message here.  Please also tell what command 
> >line did you use to invoke Info.
> 
> I don't have it here and I'm not about to reboot *twice* to get it.

Sorry, I cannot debug a problem about which I don't know anything and 
which I cannot reproduce on my machines.  Can you?  As I explained 
earlier, I use Info extensively on plain DOS, and it never crashes.

If you are unwilling to help debug this, why did you report the problem 
in the first place?

> Suffice it to say it was a sigsegv. The command line: "info", plain
> and simple. "info libc a fopen" segfaulted, so I tried plain "info",
> which died identically.

Is this the same system on which you run Windows?  If so, did you turn 
off the numeric tails, or do you have libc~1.inf in your info 
subdirectory?

> >Some DOS systems might have problems with the way Info switches the 
> >display to 40-line mode.  Try setting INFO_LINES=50 in the environment, 
> >before running Info, and see if that helps.
> 
> Why would that be?

Because some device drivers such as DISPLAY.SYS relocate the system fonts 
to high memory, and some versions of EMM386 have bugs when those high 
addresses are accessed.  When Info runs in 40-line mode, it generates its 
own font (because the system BIOS doesn't include a font suitable for 
40-line display), and for that it needs to access the system font, 
because the generated font is created by tweaking the system font.

> The VGA screen modes available with one graphics
> card are the same as those available with any other. Info doesn't try
> to use a non-VGA mode does it? If it does, doesn't it test for success
> and handle failure gracefully?

Please believe me when I say that some DOS systems have problems with 
this: it is based on experience (you can find the traces of that 
experience in the DJGPP mail archives, if you are curious).  If you want 
to help find this bug, please try setting INFO_LINES to 50 and see if 
the problem persists.

> >Btw, do you still have an outdated DJGPP installation?  Maybe that is 
> >your problem, if you do.
> 
> This problem appeared with an *upgrade* to the version of info on my
> system.

I asked about the version of DJGPP, not Info.  Do you have DJGPP v2.03
or an older version?

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