Start AppleWin, F7, prompted with "...press SPACE continue, ESC skip..."

[TommyGH]

AppleWin 1.26.3.0 Debugger 2.9.0.8 AppleII+ configuration.

I've started populating A2_USER1.SYM with my own symbols. I start AppleWin and press F7. The debugger window is displayed, but on the very bottom line is the prompt:

...press SPACE continue, ESC skip...

This was confusing to me for several reasons.

1. Grammatically it should probably be something like "Press SPACEBAR to continue, ESC to skip."
2. It's not clear what the actions are for "continue" or "skip". "Skip" debugger mode? "Skip" loading symbols? "Skip" loading additional symbol files?
3. After pressing ESC, the bottom 4 lines change. I then press ENTER (WIN CONSOLE mode). It looks like it properly loaded all the symbols with the SYM line showing "User1: 248" (all my symbols).
4. If I start over, and this time press SPACE, the bottom 4 lines change. I then press SPACE several more times, each time with the bottom 4 lines changing. Eventually it gets to the end and the SYM line shows "User1: 248" as expected. After pressing ENTER, the screen looks the same as step 3 after pressing ESC.

So it seems that pressing ESC only "skips" the intervening "skip" messages, yet does indeed do all the processing and displaying for symbols being loaded.

And this behavior is slightly different from AppleWin 1.25.0.3. On 1.25.0.3, after entering the debugger, the first 4 lines displayed at the bottom of the screen are the first 4 lines that are trying to be displayed to the user.

In AppleWin 1.26.3.0, the first 4 lines displayed are after more than 1 full screen of text has already scrolled "hidden" behind the "tri-pane" screen showing OP codes, etc.

I'm not sure if any changes are necessary, but it currently is a bit confusing to enter the debugger and be presented with a "skip" or "continue" message. And it's a bit confusing that it has already "displayed" or scrolled more than 1 full screen of text behind the DATA windows.

[Michaelangel007]

We need to see if the text "Press SPACEBAR to continue, ESC to skip." fits all one one line.

The current text was chosen to be "compact" instead of verbose.

[TommyGH]

"Compact" is an interesting description, considering there is an ellipsis at the beginning of the text, and an ellipsis at the end of the text :)

I'd like to add one more similar and interesting problem I am now seeing. I have a lot of stuff in A2_USER1.SYM and a lot of stuff in my "debug.txt" script that I "RUN".

With the disassembly window displayed, I enter "RUN debug.txt". On the last 4 lines of the screen I see 4 blank lines (because of ECHO " "), but on the very last line displayed on the screen I see: .// R PC RESET

It is displayed in a blue color similar to the "...press SPACE" message.

That line happens to be a comment line (without the ".") at the very end of my script file. After pressing a key the 4 lines change and the 5th line now displays the familiar "...press SPACE continue, ESC skip...", and when I continue to press the SPACE key, it continues to display more of the output from the script file until it finally reaches the end.

Heh!? At the end of "debug.txt" I inserted a line with 1 blank character. When I type "RUN debug.txt" I see 5 blank lines displayed at the bottom of the screen, with a single blinking cursor at about the midpoint of the last line.

I tried to capture a PrtSscn of this, but any single keypress (Shift, Ctrl, or Alt) immediately changed the display. And pressing PrtScn alone created a BMP of the simulated AppleII+ low resolution screen (as it should).

[Michaelangel007]

Is it possible to upload / attach / copy your debugger script here please?

[TommyGH]

I've been constantly changing it in the past few days, but I just tried the attached "debug.txt" file now, and on the last line of the screen saw the ".// R PC RESET" comment line. You might also need my A2_USER1.SYM file, so I will try attaching it as well.

debug.txt

A2_USER1.SYM.txt

I had to change the extension to ".txt" for A2_USER1.SYM to attach properly.

Both files are still works in progress so don't laugh too hard at what you might find :)

[Michaelangel007]

The ellipsis at the beginning and end was chosen so that it visually stands out -- since it would be very easy to miss.

[Michaelangel007]

Looks like there are 2 bugs here:

• [ ] "... skip ..." could be worded less ambiguous
• [ ] 1.26 regression from 1.25 where lines are being displayed but pause is being triggered too late