From:    15A (Steven Flintham)         
  Subject: Software Archaeology          
                                         
  I really enjoyed this; I only hope I   
  can bear the advice in mind when I     
  find myself lumbered with a bit of     
  maintenance work, sorry, excavation.   
                                         
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  ReplyTo: E3Y (3 Spaceman)              
  From:    K8G  (Jonathan Harston)       
  Subject: Missing IDs                   
                                         
  A good idea, but WARNING - it crashes  
  and/or doesn't work on MANY computers! 
                                         
  I've looked though the program and     
  fixed those bits that cause problems,  
                                         
  EDITOR......... The fixed version is on
  8BS 60 and 8BS 62, sorry, no room on   
  this issue.                            
                                         
  A summary of the changes are as        
  follows:                               
                                         
  *LOAD !Boot 2000                       
  This overwrites variables, and on some 
  machines, the program as well.  On my  
  BBC with PAGE at &1900, TOP is at      
  &1E9D, dangerously close.  You're      
  only changing three bytes, much easier 
  to do by OPENing.                      
                                         
  ... read length from screen ...        
  This in effect does a *INFO and then   
  reads from the screen the characters   
  that display the length.  What if the  
  lengths aren't there?  This works with 
  DFS, but as an example, with ADFS, I   
  ended up resaving a file of &FFFF      
  bytes long and it crashed when it got  
  to the I/O area.  Use the provided     
  calls, even if it's just EXT_chn%.     
                                         
  *SAVE !Boot .... FF802B FF0E00         
  ??? Why not FFFF802B etc?  Just        
  because DFS only stores 18 bits of the 
  address doesn't mean that you should   
  only provide 18 bits.  Provide the     
  full address and let the filing system 
  deal with it.                          
                                         
  All in all this program could have     
  been a very good example of something  
  tailored to only work on DFS and crash 
  on anything else. ( Very Microsoft! )  
                                         
  If you want to do something that you   
  know only works on DFS, or anything    
  else, you should check that it is      
  there. You should only restrict        
  features for known facilities, not     
  restrict features for unknown          
  facilities. For example:               
                                         
  IF adfs THEN *DIR subdirectory         
   ***BAD***                             
  IF NOT dfs THEN *DIR subdirectory      
   ***GOOD***                            
                                         
  The first bit of code would only let   
  you use a subdirectory if ADFS is      
  selected.  But what about NFS, HADFS,  
  VFS, HostFS, CDFS, CoProFS....?  In    
  fact, any filing system other than     
  DFS? You should never hard-wire into a 
  program 'because MY machine doesn't    
  let me do XXXXX, I'll stop everyone    
  doing it'.                             
                                         
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