CompuServe Messages

Mark – AutoCAD reads ASCII files in any of the four extant end-of-line formats: CR/LF – DOS LF/CR – VMS (?) LF – Unix CR – Macintosh That's been part of the "portable database" code since R9. Further, DOS doesn't convert all command input to uppercase; just try "echo Hello, world" sometime. FILENAMES and ENVIRONEMT VARIABLES are converted to uppercase on DOS. On Unix, case is significant for these items, so they never get converted. Now, as I recall your problem, it had nothing to do with environment variables or filenames, but with the descriptive text associated with the CONTINUOUS linetype. No system (DOS or Unix) is going to force the case of such a string; it's simple ASCII text. AutoCAD may indeed expect a particular case for that string (which it certainly doesn't expect anyone to change). So the cause of the problem would seem to be a *buggy DXF translator* on the AIX side — the bug having NOTHING particular to do with the operating system or the hardware platform. The fact that AUDIT barfs on such data is unfortunate, but I'd wager that out of the half-million AutoCAD users out there, you're the first and only to have ever encountered this problem, and it sounds curable at the source. <Doctor, it hurts when I do this…> I certainly wouldn't suggest putting out an update just for that one bug, but I agree that there are others. Personally, I think the PEDIT/Join bug is the most serious. I think we've got people looking into whether a *patch* can be provided to cure that one without the need for a formal update; this is not always feasible, however. A bug-fix update is a major effort, often taking a couple dozen people away from other projects (like Mac/Windows/SCO/HP/SGI R11, or R12, or R13 development and testing). There's a seemingly endless situation where you've got it all buttoned up and ready to gp, when lo and behold, *another* little buglet arrives… [More]