OPenchat

[Dave Yeo]

IIRC, dspres.dll is where the system bitmap fonts reside, so perhaps actually a font problem?

[christech]

I tried looking at DLLs too with PMDLL, but since I'm an OS/2 newbie I have no idea what to look for. Thanks David! I will try this tonight.

[David Graser]

I tried looking at DLLs too with PMDLL, but since I'm an OS/2 newbie I have no idea what to look for. Thanks David! I will try this tonight.

What I do not understand is PMDll never showed the dspres.dll as a dll used by OpenChat.  If it had, the problem could have been found much sooner and easier.

[christech]

http://www.edm2.com/index.php/DSPRES.DLL

[David Graser]

I tried looking at DLLs too with PMDLL, but since I'm an OS/2 newbie I have no idea what to look for. Thanks David! I will try this tonight.

What made it easier for me is that I use FM3 file manager, probably the most powerful file manager on the planet.  I have been using it for over 20 years, and am always finding something new that I did not know it could do.  You might want to check it out.  Be sure to Configure it in its settings notebook.
Once the associations are set to your preferences, it  brings up the programs you need for that type of file that file you select.

It can be downloaded from

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/browser/FM2_3-24-0.wpi

Here is a pic of my setup.

[Mentore]

I tried looking at DLLs too with PMDLL, but since I'm an OS/2 newbie I have no idea what to look for. Thanks David! I will try this tonight.

What made it easier for me is that I use FM3 file manager, probably the most powerful file manager on the planet.  I have been using it for over 20 years, and am always finding something new that I did not know it could do.  You might want to check it out.  Be sure to Configure it in its settings notebook.
Once the associations are set to your preferences, it  brings up the programs you need for that type of file that file you select.

It can be downloaded from

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/browser/FM2_3-24-0.wpi

Here is a pic of my setup.

On this subject, I'm finding that FM/2 crashes a little too often both in my VM and in my old eCS machine.
Did you experience the same quirk, David?

Mentore

[David Graser]

I tried looking at DLLs too with PMDLL, but since I'm an OS/2 newbie I have no idea what to look for. Thanks David! I will try this tonight.

What made it easier for me is that I use FM3 file manager, probably the most powerful file manager on the planet.  I have been using it for over 20 years, and am always finding something new that I did not know it could do.  You might want to check it out.  Be sure to Configure it in its settings notebook.
Once the associations are set to your preferences, it  brings up the programs you need for that type of file that file you select.

It can be downloaded from

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/browser/FM2_3-24-0.wpi

Here is a pic of my setup.

On this subject, I'm finding that FM/2 crashes a little too often both in my VM and in my old eCS machine.
Did you experience the same quirk, David?

Mentore

It seldom crashed for me.  However, when copying sometimes, it may refuse to copy the files giving an error message.  But there are several ways to copy files with FM3, so I do it another way.  I had created another set of folder and file icons for it years ago, but John Small and Steven Levine were too busy with other programs at that time to implement them to see what what the new icons looked like.

I do believe with each version of ArcaOS, the system and FM3 are running more stable. 

With the Xpager, I sometimes have two and three instances of FM3 running.  If I had not had FM3 to use, I may never have found the problem dll due the number of files I was dealing with. The first thing I do when installing ArcaOS is to install FM3 and set it up the way I like it.   I first bought it as shareware from Mark Kimes years ago because of its power and ease.  I can't stand using the Windows equivalent.  Because it does so much, it is amazing it is as stable as it is.  I have always felt OS/2 needed a file manager, whether FM3 or other equivalent.  The work place shell is amazing, however, it is not the ideal way to handle a large number of files.  FM3 was designed to be used instead of the WPS if one chose.  I have never used Larson  Commander.  I used File Star 3 which was good at its time, but its developer, Jim Reed, grew old and stopped work on it.  He was 82 the last time I talked to him years ago.

Have you used the light version of FM3 included in the package to see if it is more stable for you?

One tip for your notebook configuration.

Config > Settings notebook > Scanning >

Uncheck the Load File Icons and Load Dir Icons..  This speeds up the loading of any FAT32 drive.  If the two are checked, you might as well go out for coffee while the files are processed and loaded.

[Alex Taylor]

OK, after a day of investigating and installing version 5.1 several times and copying 5.07 dlls to 5.1, I have found the problem.

The problem was in the OS2\dll directory.  It was one file.  The file is
dspres.dll
The one found in version 5.1 is 455,064 bytes
The one found inversion 5.07 is 395,096 bytes

There were some updates made to DSPRES.DLL in 5.1, yes.

I wonder if I might ask you to try both of the attached versions of DSPRES.DLL and see if they exhibit the same problem or not.  (They both have a different subset of the additions made for 5.1.)

[David Graser]

OK, after a day of investigating and installing version 5.1 several times and copying 5.07 dlls to 5.1, I have found the problem.

The problem was in the OS2\dll directory.  It was one file.  The file is
dspres.dll
The one found in version 5.1 is 455,064 bytes
The one found inversion 5.07 is 395,096 bytes

There were some updates made to DSPRES.DLL in 5.1, yes.

I wonder if I might ask you to try both of the attached versions of DSPRES.DLL and see if they exhibit the same problem or not.  (They both have a different subset of the additions made for 5.1.)

Hi Alex

I tried them both. They both create the same OpenChat trap as the original one included with 5.1. I switched back to the 5.08 version and OpenChat works just fine. So far, OpenChat is the only program that traps when using the new dlls.

11-14-2023  07:25:34  SYS3184  PID 0044  TID 0001  Slot 0070
E:\PROGRAMS\OPENCHAT\OPENCHAT-SMP.EXE
c000009b
000479c6
EAX=fffffff3  EBX=00000003  ECX=00000000  EDX=ffffffff
ESI=fffffff3  EDI=1b34e3f4 
DS=0053  DSACC=d0f3  DSLIM=5fffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=d0f3  ESLIM=5fffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:000479c6  CSACC=d0df  CSLIM=5fffffff
SS:ESP=0053:000f86a8  SSACC=d0f3  SSLIM=5fffffff
EBP=000f8ffe  FLG=00010287

OPENCHAT-SMP.EXE 0003:000179c6

Attached is a picture of OpenChat when it works to give you an idea of the fonts used.

[TeLLie]

Hi David,

Thankz for looking this up, changing the dll indeed works now
I rarely remember in openchat you could have all chat windows just have in one window, i have now all windows seperated .
I wish i remember what option set them in 1 window

Greetz TeLLie

[Rich Walsh]

There were some updates made to DSPRES.DLL in 5.1, yes.

I did a lot of testing on this and have come to believe that the problem arises from a "design flaw" in OpenChat.

Once I switched to the DSPRES from 5.0.x, I was able to open it and discovered that it only uses System VIO fonts for its display. In 5.0.x, there are 17 sizes available; in 5.1.x, there are now 20. It _appears_ that any DSPRES version with more than the original 17 cause the crash.

This is likely due to bad programming. My guess is that when the app asks for a list of VIO fonts, it only allocates enough buffer space for the 17 sizes known to be available when it was written. When it gets 20 entries, the buffer overflows and causes who-knows-what kind of damage.

I tried to confirm this by removing the new fonts, but because I don't know how to edit the "font directory" resource that identifies each font, the system locked up when I tried to start the app. Interestingly, when I looked at the available VIO fonts in EPM, it handled my defective DLL gracefully and displayed a font sample at a smaller size (and didn't lock up the system). Alex, if you could reconstruct the dll correctly, we can confirm/refute my conclusion.

FWIW... rolling DSPRES.DLL back to the 5.0.x version has no effect on XWP's new 'TextSize' feature (which is why I pursued this in the first place). All the fonts it needs are contained in 'syspro.fon' and 'warpsans.fon', both in \PSFONTS. However, you will lose 3 large VIO fonts that are targeted at very high resolution displays.

[Alex Taylor]

I tried to confirm this by removing the new fonts, but because I don't know how to edit the "font directory" resource that identifies each font, the system locked up when I tried to start the app. Interestingly, when I looked at the available VIO fonts in EPM, it handled my defective DLL gracefully and displayed a font sample at a smaller size (and didn't lock up the system). Alex, if you could reconstruct the dll correctly, we can confirm/refute my conclusion.

The attached is DSPRES recompiled with all the new fonts removed. This should make it functionally the same as what was included in 5.0.

[Rich Walsh]

The attached is DSPRES recompiled with all the new fonts removed. This should make it functionally the same as what was included in 5.0.

That works - thank you.

If it were possible to offload the new sizes to a '\psfonts\sysvio.fon', that would be best. But, if that's not possible, more users would be better served by having those larger sizes available than not - particularly when there's now a viable workaround.

[David Graser]

I tried to confirm this by removing the new fonts, but because I don't know how to edit the "font directory" resource that identifies each font, the system locked up when I tried to start the app. Interestingly, when I looked at the available VIO fonts in EPM, it handled my defective DLL gracefully and displayed a font sample at a smaller size (and didn't lock up the system). Alex, if you could reconstruct the dll correctly, we can confirm/refute my conclusion.

The attached is DSPRES recompiled with all the new fonts removed. This should make it functionally the same as what was included in 5.0.

Replaced the 5.0 version with this one.  OpenChat works just fine with this one also. I believe Rich's analysis is correct.

[Alex Taylor]

The attached is DSPRES recompiled with all the new fonts removed. This should make it functionally the same as what was included in 5.0.

That works - thank you.

If it were possible to offload the new sizes to a '\psfonts\sysvio.fon', that would be best. But, if that's not possible, more users would be better served by having those larger sizes available than not - particularly when there's now a viable workaround.

Unfortunately, it isn't. Based on my experimenting, it appears that the fonts must reside in DSPRES.DLL in order for the VIO subsystem to "see" them.