Subj : Need help with LordMenu utility
To   : Björn Felten
From : Donald Tidmore
Date : Tue Jan 16 2007 11:16 pm

> I'm not asking you why it's a problem (after all that's for me to find 
out, > no? :) ) I'm asking you what good 128, or even 1000, *SPACES* (the ones
you >create with the long key at mid bottom of your keyboard) will do. Are you
sure > you don't mean *CHARACTERS* ?

I wasn't used to thinking in terms of characters or bytes in terms of line 
lengths.  Yes, I meant characters of data per line.  LordMenu itself is not 
exactly broken, as I have been told by Dennis Collins and others.  It is simply 
that LORD can not handle the file because its individual lines are too long.  I 
think, but am not positive, that the problem started when Michael Preslar 
switched to Free Pascal 2.00 for his Lord development work.

When LordMenu creates 3rdalt.txt, it writes the ANSI sequences made from 
translating the data (igm names and menu position numbers only) from the LORD 
3rdparty.dat file into ANSI.  Trouble is that in Borland Pascal, there is no 
standard method that I know of for writing a specific number of characters to a 
line before a CR/LF is added, and a new line of data is written.  And if there 
is a way to compile the program in Virtual Pascal or Free Pascal I don't know 
if that would change anything.

> Can you send me a copy of one of your problem 3rdalt-files, maybe I 
might > have better luck solving your problem. If you don't know how to  send 
it via > FidoNet you can try sending it to "b (at) felten (dot) se".

I'll send you an archive containing those files tonight via email.  I've done 
that today already for Dennis Collins who also is trying to fix the problem for 
me.  And I appreciate a great deal your help Bjorn, and that of everyone else 
who has looked into this matter for me.

I've been told that all versions of LORD have the problem with the 3rdalt.txt 
file having those extremely long lines of data, but have not personally been 
able to verify that is true.  Donald

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