Subj : Need help with LordMenu utility
To   : Björn Felten
From : Donald Tidmore
Date : Thu Jan 11 2007 11:42 pm


> At first I didn't notice that you kept on saying "spaces", so I assumed it
> was just a case of not assigning enough space for a read-line procedure.
> But now that I've noticed that this seems to be a "space" (aka character
> #32) issue, I'm starting to get really puzzled.
> 1. Why in Heavens Name would anyone want to write 128, and even 1000, spaces
> *on* *one* *line* ?

I honestly can't remember details on why its a problem.  I just know that when 
I run LordMenu and create a 3rdalt.txt file with it, then LORD won't display 
it.  You get a few words on a line, and that's all.  And it may be that ansi 
files have to be limited to lines that are 255 spaces long.  I probably got 
mixed up when I said 128-space lines.

> 2. Why would the L.O.R.D. program care about what it sends, as long as it
> can read all the data that it shall send? Spaces or no spaces?
> The default(?) 3rdalt.txt file that your program generates has two long
> lines (400 and 466 characters long), do you mean that those lines are not a
> problem for the L.O.R.D. program?

I just don't know the answer to your second question.  But when I load the 
Lordmenu-created 3rdalt.txt file into Qedit, I see individual lines that are 
each 1,000 spaces in length.  That may just be a Qedit thing.  All I know for 
sure is that I can't figure out how to fix the situation on my own.

I tried loading the file made by LordMenu into Pablo Draw.  It just shows one 
single line of ansi gibberish when I did that.  I can't find anything in its 
small docs file about how to resave files to use a defined-length for each line 
of data.  As for TheDraw, when I tried to use it, I never could figure out how 
to make it NOT save ANSI files in animated mode, which always resulted in ANS 
files that were way too big.

I just hoped that someone with more experience working with ANSI data would 
know how to fix the program so it worked reliably.  But so far that does not 
seem to be happening.  Is it time to "stick a fork in it, say its done, and 
toss Lordmenu in the trash?"  I wonder that now and then.  Donald.

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