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Tips &TidBits

By Scott T Boyd, Editor

Tip Of The Month

EveryTime Macro in MacsBug

When your application gets closer to its final version and reaches other people than yourself, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a logging function, which could add a stack dump to a log file, if the application should crash?

There is an easy way to do this, and it requires no change to your code. MacsBug has the this facility among several others, and these features can be set up for easy use.

• Open up your Debugger Prefs file with your favorite resource editor

• Add a new 'mxbm' resource to define a macro.

• Name the macro “EveryTime” (that’s one word, no spaces)

• Define the macro as "log crash.log;how;td;sc;ip;hc;log;es;"

• Save the file.

The macro opens a log file named crash.log, gets MacsBug to tell what happened to cause the debugger to catch an exception, dump all the registers, do a stack crawl, disassemble around the PC, check the heap’s validity, turn off the log file, and ExitToShell.

You now have a Debugger Prefs file which will create a crash log whenever the machine winds up in MacsBug. MacsBug will execute a macro named “EveryTime” every time you enter MacsBug. You probably don’t want to use this particular definition on your development machine(s).

Now you can install MacsBug and its Debugger Prefs file on your beta tester’s machines. Every time they drop into MacsBug (because of some as-yet-undetermined bug in your software), Macsbug creates a logfile with the name bomb.log. The log file will contain information which could be useful, especially if it is one of the crashes which is not so easy to reproduce when you try yourself.

- Henrik Dalgaard

Team Development Tools

Excel Software has enhanced its MacAnalyst and MacDesigner suite of CASE tools to facilitate team development. Teams can now have multi-user, read-write access to data dictionary and requirement documents for software development projects. The tools provide a history of what’s been done by other team members, and which documents they’ve been working on.

Team Dictionary and Team Requirement documents allow each user to concurrently add, modify, or delete information in the shared document. Special attention was paid to speed, and the use of a cooperative client model avoided the need for a separate server.

MacAnalyst and MacDesigner site licenses start at $2985, and go up to $14975 based on product options. Single license products start at $995. Onsite training and update services are available. For more info, contact Harold Halbleib at Excel Software, POBox 1414, Marshalltown, IA 50158. (515) 752-5359 voice, (515) 752-2435 fax, AppleLink CASE.

Cross-Platform Document Libraries

PAIGE, from DataPak software, offers a cross-platform library for developers who want to incorporate text editing, page layout, or multimedia into their applications. Anything can be embedded into a traditional “text” stream, even if it isn’t text at all - pictures, arbitrary objects, buttons, hypertext links. It can also handle straight stylized text of virtually any length, all of which can be enclosed inside or outside non-rectangular shapes.

The libraries support scaling, so you can see and edit, even at print resolution. Formatting includes kerning, hidden text, and variable tab stops. They offer WorldScript II compatibility, mail-merge support, variable line spacing, style-sheet support, and virtual memory and file I/O support. They support discontinuous selections, multiple-level undo, and claim that their code is tight and fast.

The code is broken into multiple libraries, so you can link only with the features you need. For even more features, contact DataPak.

PAIGE is sold royalty free, and there are no distribution fees. Licensing covers use of the product for one application and one developer. Additional seats are available. Per platform $3,500. Each additional “Seat” $250. Source code is available $25,000, each additional seat $250. Site licenses are also available. Contact DataPak at 9317 NEHighway 99, Suite G, Vancouver, WA 98665-8900. (206) 573-9155 voice, (206) 573-9269 fax, (800) 327-6703 sales. AppleLink D0142, Internet datapak1@aol.com, CompuServe 76424,3027, and AOLDatapak1.