First impressions

Dear Amaya programmers,

I use Windows NT4.0 with SP 5.0.

I have deinstalled Amaya (V. 4.2.1) because it repeatedly crashed.
Unfortunately, there were no error messages, but the crashes seemed to be
associated with opening and closing multiple windows, so I suspect a memory
leak.

Errors :
     In the documentation : the Editor icon is greyed out, not crossed out,
when the editor mode is inactive.

     Even though text has been marked, choosing "print marked text" prints
the whole text.

     Cancelling a print job results in an error window and the error message
          "Error - Source:
          GifCreate(2):pixmap =="

     It may be that a long print job hangs.

Suggested "improvements"
     It would be nice to be able to print specific pages of a long web page
(e.g., the documentation after "make book")

     I would like for Amaya to make a backup copy (.bak, .wbk, ...)
automatically. A user-defined number of
     backup copies (.b01, .b02, ...) would be really nice.

     One can not blame the project members for following Microsoft's example
and requiring "normal" users to
     have write and delete access to program and administrator directories,
but I would prefer to be able to
     separate program, data, and auxiliary files and to be able to assign
rights to specific groups of users or groups of users.
     Therefore, I suggest that Amaya use a central .ini file for those
parameters which the must be centrally set and
     for those parameters which the administrator wishes to centrally
determine (i.e., override of locally set
     parameters).

     In addition, I suggest either a list paths to the user directories in
the central .ini file
          (e.g.,

          [JDoe]
          C:\JDoe\Auxiliary\Amara

          )

     or

          having the administrator set up a variable in the users
"autoexec.bat" (e.g., amarya_user_root) and
          installing the local option file(s), etc. in this directory. Based
on a very recent experience, I would not like
          to see Amaya crash or go into an endless loop if the file is not
there, but instead fail gracefully and issue a
          meaningful error message.

Items which do not conform to the Windows standard (at least, until
Microsoft adopts the method) are

     The use of CTRL-w instead of ALT-F4 to exit the programm.

     CTRL-p calls printer setup (I think it was printer setup) instead of
printing.

I like the appearance, and the functions seem to be OK, at least until a
crash, so I'll keep checking amaya.com and try the next version when it
comes out.

Yours,
R. G. McKenzie

Received on Friday, 30 March 2001 08:54:49 UTC