XBUGTOOL horror stories

Remember the joke about Sun's 32 bit bug id's? Well here are some horror stories about xbugtool, the "monkey on the back of all Sun engineers"! The original BUGTOOL, used to keep track of bugs in Sun's home brew bug database, was written in SunView. It was one of the most complicated SunView user interfaces in the world! Then XView came along, and somebody wrote an AWK script to convert SunView programs to XView programs, and then ran it on BUGTOOL to make XBUGTOOL, sort of as a proof of concept...

Three Cheers for XBUGTOOL

Xbugtool is in some ways similar to the unix othello game: it's incredibly entertaining and fun to play, but it cheats -- but not in any way you could could pin down...

Like the way when you go to file a bug report against "xbugtool", you have to select "bugtraq" from the "Catagory" scrolling list, then pop up the "Subcatagory" scrolling list, and look for "xbugtool", but you don't see it there. So you check some other catagories, and don't find anything that fits, so you go back and look at "bugtraq" one last time, and notice a centimeter of shaded scroll bar cable suggesting there might be a little bit more information to display, so you scroll forward to reveal the one single solitary element that the scrolling list was just too short to display, and lo and behold, that would be "xbugtool"!

Now isn't that a funny thing!!? Of course this just seems hillarous on top of sublime, since you're already good mood from the side splitting chuckle you got, trying to select "bugtraq" from the "Catagory" scrolling list, at the same time the "Subcatagory" scrolling list was pinned up. Every time you select an item from the "Catagory" list, xbugtool queries the server for a fresh list of subcatagories, and then the "Subcatagory" list repaints one time for every subcatagory in the list, while the scroll bar cable shading animates like a thermometer in a microwave, entertaining you with a real-time display of bugtool's amazing progress!

With machine-gun precision, this amazing functionality can be exercized in rapid-fire succession by the unique scrollbar/scrolling list rollover feature provided by xview, that lets you press down to drag the scroll bar, and then effortlessly move the mouse out of the scrollbar and into the scrolling list, without so much as lifting your finger, and roll over into the patented xview scrolling list hyper-drag-auto-selection-preview-mode [TM], trigging all that high-tech functionality mentioned earlier (or virtually *any* user supplied callback proc!) every time the mouse moves into another scrolling list element!!! But unfortunatly it is totally impossible to implement the standard Open Look auto-scroll feature on that scrolling list because Apple would sue, so don't even ask.

I could go on and on, but I just *lost* my wonderful xbugtool, because I was having too much fun way too fast with those zany scrolling lists, so elmer the bug server freaked out and went off to la-la land, causing xbugtool to lock the windows and start "channeling", at the same time not responding to any events, so when I clicked on the scrolling list, the entire window system froze up and I had to wait for the input queue lock to break, but by the time the lock finally broke (it must have been a kryptonite), xbugtool had made up its mind, decided to meet its maker, finished core dumping, and exited with an astoundingly graceful thrash, which was a totally "dwim" thing for it to do at the time, if you think about it with the right attitude, since I had forgotten what I wanted to file a bug against in the first place anyway, and totally given up the idea of ever using bugtool to file a bug against itself, because bugtool must be perfect to have performed so splendidly!

Xbugtool is an artificially intelligent virtual life form far beyond the abilities of human beings or even PostScript programmers to comprehend. It has a right to a life of its own, and a right to defend itself to the best of its abilities. Not only that, but it also demands great respect. But not even tastefully flattering Mexican style velvet paintings are good enough for xbugtool. After careful thought and consideration, I have come to the conclusion that xbugtool and emacs must mate, and spread their fertile eggs throughout the network, disguised as shared libraries and loadable device drivers! And finally: the Macintosh port! We will take over the world. We will not be stopped. Today, the servers. Tomorrow, the boot proms!

I have no mouse motion and my input focus is stuck in xbugtool!!!

This is an authentic bug report generated by XBUGTOOL. I had to file it against the X11/NeWS server in order to trick XBUGTOOL into letting the bug report through. Never try to make XBUGTOOL file a bug against itself!!!
Date: Mon, 20 May 91 22:45:46 PDT
From: hopkins (Don Hopkins)
Message-Id: <9105210545.AA24385@poit.Eng.Sun.COM>
Subject: 1059974: Bug report created.
To: hopkins@poit, bugforward@elmer
Precedence: junk
Content-Length: 2487
X-Lines: 69
Status: O

 Bug Id: 1059974
 Category: x11news
 Subcategory: server
 Bug/Rfe: bug
 Synopsis: I have no mouse motion and my input focus is stuck in xbugtool!!!
 Keywords: I have no mouth and I must scream [Harlan Ellison]
 Severity: 1
 Priority: 1
 Description: 
This is my worst nightmare! None of my TNT or XView applications are
getting any mouse motion events, just clicks. And my input focus is
stuck in xbugtool, of all places!!!  When I click in cmdtool, it gets
sucked back into xbugtool when I release the button! And I'm *not* using
click-to-type! I can make selections from menus (tnt, olwm, and xview) if
I click them up instead of dragging, but nobody's receiving any mouse
motion! 

I just started up a fresh server, ran two jets and a cmdtool, fired up
a bugtool from one of the jets (so input focus must have been working
then), and after xbugtool had throbbed and grunted around for a while
and finally put up its big dumb busy window, I first noticed something
was wrong when I could not drag windows around! 

Lucky thing my input focus ended up stuck in xbugtool!

The scrollbar does not warp my cursor either... I can switch the input focus
to any of xbugtool's windows, but I can't   ... -- oomph errrgh aaaaahhh! 
There, yes! 

Aaaaah! What a relief! It stopped! I can move my mouse again!!
Hurray!!!  It started working when I opened a "jet" window, found I
could type into *it*, so I moved the mouse around, the cursor
disappeared, I typed, there were a couple of beeps, I still couldn't
find the cursor, so I hit the "Open" key, the jet closed to an icon,
and I could type to xbugtool again! And lo and behold now I can type
into the cmdtool, *too*! Just by moving my cursor into it! What a
technological wonder! Now I can start filing bug reports against
cmdtool, which was the only reason I had the damn thing on my screen in
the first place!!! I am amazed at the way the window system seems to
read my mind and predict my every move, seeming to carry out elaborate
practical jokes to prevent me from filing bugs against it. I had no
idea the Open Windows desktop had such sophisticated and well
integrated interclient communication!

 Work around: 

 Suggested fix: 

 Comments: 
Nightly server, weekly XVIEWHOME.

 Interest list: 
 See also: 

 Called in by: 
    Customer:
	Company: Sun Microsystems
	Employee: 
	Release: 3.0postbeta
	Hardware version: sun4c_65
	O/S version: 4.1.1
	SO Number: 
	Sun Contact: 
 Public Summary: 

 Generic SVR4 problem?: no
 Bug End: