MUTT Bug Report

Copyright © 1995 Robert M. Free - publishing rights reserved
MUTT(tm) and MUTTER(tm) are trademarks of Robert M. Free

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Bug Report

Bug reporting is an important part of any product's quality assurance - it's impossible for a development team (much less a single, part-time programmer) to debug all the ways a product might be used by highly motivated and creative user.

While I do appreciate reports on any bug you might find, there are a few things you can do to help me track down the problem:

If you have problems connecting, first check to see if you can telnet to your mud. You may find that your mud is busy/down, your net is down, or that your Winsock is improperly configured. If you can connect with telnet, but not with MUTT(tm), chances are you've found a bug.
Please read the following problem listings before you file a bug; there may be a workaround.
If there are error messages, please record the messages exactly - these are extremely useful in tracking down the problem.
If the problem doesn't involve failure to connect, a crash, or a descrepancy with documentation - it's probably not a bug, but rather a feature that you would like to see added/modified. Please use my feedback form to report enhancement requests.

The following documents some of the known problem reports and workarounds.

Can't Connect

Symptoms - When attempting to connect, MUTT reports: "Read Failure - Winsock error: 55" and fails to connect.

Problem - FTP's PCTCP has a documented bug that causes it to send a non-winsock-compliant notification on connect when doing an async "recv". MUTT reports the error returned by FTP's Winsock: 55 (WSAENOBUFFS). Note: WSAENOBUFFS is not a legal error for "recv"; other async applications are also known to fail with FTP's Winsock due to this same bug.

Resolution - FTP has been notified of the bug. When I get a chance, I'll try to figure out a way to patch FTP's problem.

Workaround - Switch to another Winsock. MUTT works fine on the latest versions of Winsock from all other vendors.

GPF When Quitting

Symptoms - When your mud session is terminated by the host, MUTT reports "Read Failure - Winsock error: 35" and then Winsock reports a GP Fault.

Problem - The early betas of Microsoft's 32bit TCP/IP Winsock Windows95 betas sent a bogus async read notification after a server disconnected, then caused a GP Fault.

Resolution - The latest releases of MS WSOCK32 and Windows95 have corrected this bug.

Workaround - Upgrade your Winsock release.

"exec" Command Doesn't Work

Symptoms - The "exec" command doesn't work.

Problem - 0.1K was inadvertently released with this disabled.

Resolution - This will be fixed in 0.1L.

Workaround - Get the 0.1L beta at ftp://ftp.graphcomp.com/pub/msw/mutt/beta/mutt_01l.zip .

Slow Display Performance #1

Symptoms - Mud output displays slowly.

Problem - Using TrueType fonts on some slower PCs can slow display performance considerably.

Resolution - MUTT(tm) Live will simplify the task of choosing new fonts.

Workaround - Change your font to "courier".

Slow Display Performance #2

Symptoms - Mud output displays slowly.

Problem - Some muds use non-standard newlines - the convention is to use carriage-return and line-feeds at the end of each line. For muds that use non-standard newlines, MUTT has to do additional filtering in order to be compatible with Windows' native edit controls.

Resolution - MUTT(tm) Live will use optimized custom edit controls that will improve display performance.

Workaround - None - except to switch to a mud that uses standard CRLF end-of-line handling.

Wierd Text Wrapping

Symptoms - Mud output has wierd text wrapping.

Problem - Most muds expect your display to be at least 75-80 characters wide. If your font is too wide, or your window too narrow, text wrapping will occur in unexpected places.

Resolution - MUTT(tm) allows you to pick your font and window size; you can control wrapping by changing either of these attributes. Future versions of MUTT(tm) may allow you to disable wrapping.

Workaround - change your font to a smaller size, or make your display window larger.

Garbled Display #1

Symptoms - Tables and maps displayed by the mud don't line up.

Problem - Most muds expect you to display output using fixed-width fonts. If you use variable width fonts (eg: "arial"), tabular information will not line up vertically.

Resolution - MUTT(tm) allows you to pick your font; this is expected behavior for proportional fonts.

Workaround - Change your font to a fixed-width font - eg. "courier", "courier new" or "modern".

Garbled Display #2

Symptoms - Mud output has wierd embedded characters.

Problem - Some muds feature ANSI color escape sequences to support color and text positioning. Lite does not support ANSI character escapes.

Resolution - MUTT(tm) Live will support ANSI color.

Workaround - Disable the mud's ANSI color feature. This is typically done through mud commands like: "ansi off", "color off", "vt100 off", etc. Check the mud's help documentation.

MUTT(tm) Bug Report Form

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If you are unable to use the above form, please report bugs to: muttbugs@graphcomp.com.