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From: Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@heeg.de>
Subject: Re: VW 2.5 on W95: hardcopy?
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Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 16:06:52 GMT
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Jeff Lanam wrote:
> 
> I am running VisualWorks Smalltalk 2.5 on Windows 95 and I have
> found that the hardcopy action does not work.  I don't have the
> detailed info handy (I know, I hate when people do that!) but
> it appears that it detects that it is running on W95 and causes
> an exception.  It looks like Digitalk just didn't get it working
> on 95.

You should keep in mind that VW2.5 came out before Win95.
So they could not possibly get it working on Win95...
The real reason for it not working is that MS, in their infinite
wisdom, decided that the GDI function GetTextFace() should not
behave as advertised anymore. When you pass it a NULL buffer, it
should return the size of the buffer needed. Under Win95, however,
it returns 0, which is taken to be an error by VW2.5.
This should teach you not to trust MS software...

> Has anyone got a fix for this?
We have worked on a workaround (a binary patch to VW.EXE) that should
make printing possible. However, at the moment there is too little
time to do thorough testing, therefore it is not available yet.

> I have a copy obtained
> thru a class I am taking, so I don't think I have support or
> the possibility of upgrading.
Normally, I would advise you to get your company to buy you
a copy and a maintenance agreement. In this special case it
would not make a difference, since Win95 is not an officially
supported platform for VW2.5. The next release of VW will support
Win95, and I suppose that it will contain some kind of workaround
for this bug (unless MS gets their act together and releases a fix
for the bug before PPD releases the next VW...)

Hans-Martin

-- 
+--- Hans-Martin Mosner -------- Senior Smalltalk Guru ---+
| These opinions are entirely ficticious.  Any similarity |
| to real opinions is purely coincidental and unintended. |
+--- <hmm@heeg.de> ------ URL:http://www.heeg.de/~hmm/ ---+
