misc. annoyances

[Dick King <king@kestrel.arpa>]

1> Does anyone have an "autosave" package?  Autosave is a feature
   whereby dirty file buffers are periodically written to a file whose
   name is unusual but can be determined from the name of the buffer's
   file.  A refinement of such a package would be to delete the
   autosave file when the buffer is written, thereby avoiding file
   system clutter.

2> Well, the editor isn't reentrant.  Again.  Could ZWEI compilation
   and evaluation take place in a separate process?  Forms rather than
   strings could be sent, reducing problems with packages, etc.
   *STANDARD-OUTPUT* in this process could be bound to a stream that
   arranges for the ZWEI process to print out routine output, but
   *DEBUG-IO* to the process' Background Interactor.  If the
   evaluation process took a break then ZWEI, which would be running
   (say) COM-SEND-FORMS-TO-ZWEI-BACKGROUND-AND-AWAIT-COMPLETION, could
   be aborted.

   The minor annoyance of shifting to the background interaction
   window for breaks or aborts is far outweighed by the avoided loss
   of C-E and other use of the editor.

3> I don't know if this is the right place to report this bug, but
   I'll do it anyway.  The patch system has no interlocking at all.  A
   while ago a co-worker and I were assigned the same patch number in
   the obvious
      I-read-patch-directory  --- he-reads-patch-directory   ---
      I-write-patch-directory --- he-writes-patch-directory 
   sequence.  The fix is to check that you got the proper version
   number when you open the patch directory for output to write a
   modified version, and to start over completely if you don't.
   Writing a UNIX-style lock file seems wrong here.

Thanks for reading...

-dk