RE: Orbis-like program

["Hackett, David" <dhackett>]

I am a bit late in jumping into this thread, but I wasn't keeping up with
the list mail over the holidays. I too have had the same problems with the
spell checker that John Haynes has had and I feel that it is a bug that the
NotaBene people need to correct before the next release. The problem has to
do, I think, with the way it opens and closes the footnote windows. If I
check the text file only (without other elements)it does not seem to crash,
but checking footnotes on a long file (ca. 100K) will crash it. I have also
had the same problem with McCarthy, where the spell checker seems to think
it should be Mccarthy.

I have developed a work around for spell checking the footnotes, however. I
open the file in Code View and check the file that way. The footnote text is
visible during the operation and it seems to check everything just fine (no
crashes). I also had to edit out many codes that were embedded in the file
after it was converted from another program. (The files appeared fine on the
screen, but some of the embedded codes caused numerous crashes.) I now have
"clean" NBW files that seem to operate just fine.

As for Orbis-like programs, I have used InfoSelect for a long time. It too
is a textbase program with good file searching capabilities. I can paste
directly from it into most other programs, including NBW. However, I think
Orbis is a more powerful program, and I am gradually switching to it. (I
converted my InfoSelect files into plain text, then moved them to a Notes
directory under NBW and search them with Orbis.)

I hope the NotaBene people can get some of the remaining bugs out of the
program. So far I love it, and I would like to be able to assure my friends
in the profession that they should use it too.

David Hackett  

-----Original Message-----
From: John E Haynes [mailto:jhay]
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 1999 6:45 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list NOTABENE
Subject: Re: Orbis-like program



My thanks for the suggestions of ask-sam and info-tree.  I'll look at
both.  

I've used NB since the original version, and found NB DOS
near-perfect for my need for dense scholarly writing and archival
research in which I need to consult thousands of pages of notes made
over many years.  The ability to integrate Orbis and its predecessors
closely with the wp function was ideal for my purposes.   I never had
serious problems with NB DOS and don't remember ever calling technical
support for NB DOS.   I would have been content to stay in NB DOS but
with most other people moving to Windows-based systems and so much new
material in a non-DOS format, staying in DOS was getting increasingly
awkward.  Thus I welcomed NBW.  

But the instability has been very difficult.  5.004 is more stable
that the original but it is still too unstable.  Not a week goes by
without multiple freezes, and some days, such as yesterday, are agony.
 Yesterday, spell checking a 35 page draft essay produced more than a
dozen crashes.  When a doubled word showed up, and I hit "keep both"
one of two things happened.  Either the program went into a continuous
loop, dropping back and requestioning the last word questioned before
the double, moving to the double, and when "keep both" was hit once
more, repeating forever.  Or the program simply announced an error and
forced a close.  (Why the difference?  I don't know.)  I had to close
the spell checker, move the cursor beyond the doubled words, and
restart the spell checker with every doubled word.   Also, not always,
but often correcting a spelling error in a footnote produced a error
message and then a forced close of the program and a crash of the
system.  The spell check, that should have taken less than 5 minutes,
consumed an hour.

This, alas, was not a singular occurrence.   Freezes and crashes
occur with such frequency for no identifiable reason I've got the
autosave set for one minute and rarely compose more than a paragraph
without saving.  Find and replace also produces a high number of
freezes and crashes, so I've developed the habit of saving after every
replace action, but that is time-consuming and while data is not lost
when a freeze happens, time is lost.  

The sound prompt for spelling errors works irregularly.  Currently it
doesn't work.  I have no notion why it comes and goes.  

With any document that gets long, I can only open a footnote with f3
because clicking with the mouse pointer on the note produces a note
window with most of the window opaque with gray and only a few words
of the note readable.   At irregular intervals the pointer also
disappears when it passes over notes, making clicking on a note a
matter of guesswork anyway.

The spell checker refuses to accept "McCarthy" as an acceptable
spelling and insists that only "Mccarthy" will do despite following
directions for making "McCarthy" acceptable.

Orbis still does the very vital job of keeping control of and quick
access to thousands of pages of historical research notes, but the
instability and flawed working of the wp program takes up too much
time.  I'll stick with NBW for a period, but unless it becomes more
stable, at some point I'll have to move to an alternative wp and
textbase program. I'll look at the two suggestions, and I'm also going
to consider using NBW only for the Orbis function and using Word or
WordPerfect for the wp platform.       


John Earl Haynes, 20th Century Political Historian
Manuscript Division, LM-102
Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-4689
Ph: 202-707-1089; fax: 202-707-6336; e-mail: jhay