Oct 96 URLs

Volume Number:		12
Issue Number:		10
Column Tag:		Uniform Resource Locators

Uniform Resource Locators

By Jim Straus, URLs@mactech.com

Don’t hesitate to notify me at URLs@MacTech.com of any sites that you think would be of interest! As always, the full list is maintained on-line at http://www.mactech.com/.

Web Watch

October is the month of goblins, gremlins and ghosts. To commemorate Halloween we will look at ways of getting those little monsters out of your code.

To start out, you need a low-level debugger. The easiest to acquire is Macsbug, since it is free from Apple. Macsbug can be somewhat obscure sometimes, so several people have taken it upon themselves to provide hints, tips and techniques. Included are tips for debugging code that can’t be interrupted or for forcing beta testers to have Macsbug installed. Some hints here suggest ways to get information out of code that can’t be debugged with Macsbug such as an ADB driver. You can also find information on the commercial low level debuggers from their home pages. I should point out that the “Secrets of the Debug Meisters” web site has been extensively updated since the last time I looked at it. You should check it out, too.

Macsbug http://dev.info.apple.com/FTPIndices/MMac-2.html

Secrets of the Debug Meisters http://www.scruz.net/~crawford/Computers/macsbug.html

Macsbug.html http://www.biddeford.com/~benyc/Macsbug.html

The Debugger/MacNosy http://www.jasik.com/

TMON
http://www.mindvision.com/mvweb/Products/TMON/TMON_4.0b1_Index.html

You can also use your own daemons watching out for problems to help get rid of code gremlins. Memory gremlins are particularly onerous since their effects can linger and show up at a later time. To catch these gremlins requires some helpful tools, such as those available from Greg Marriott. He is the author of EvenBetterBusError, DoubleTrouble and DisposeResource. QC is a commercial tool (and well worth the price) that incorporates these functions and others. Apple also is making available their own traps in the form of debugging toolboxes. They have released Debugging QuickDraw and Debugging Modern Memory Manager.

Greg Marriott’s Mac tools http://www.spies.com/greg/tools.html

QC (Onyx Technology) http://www.onyx-tech.com/

Debugging Modern Memory Manager and Debugging QuickDraw http://dev.info.apple.com/FTPIndices/DDe.html

Yale has created a guide to assist their Macintosh users. The topics range from turning on a Macintosh to details about PRAM. It includes all those tricks that you occasionally need, but can’t always remember. This site is a real treat.

MacGuide http://www.cis.yale.edu/macguide/

Thanks this month to Darian Brookes, Mike Cohen, Brian Hall, Al McElrath, Ron Nicholson, and many others for their contributions for their suggestions and pointers to new and old sites.