And I walk
Through confusion
With a smile on my face
(Ride, "Natural Grace")
How to reach the author
The main reason because this topic is one of the first if you are
browsing this documentation sequencially is not that I want
to recieve as much EMail as possible. This page is designed to keep
my EMail-traffic as low as possible.
Before you contact me
I know I can't expect you to read the whole manual, but make sure
you have read the sections about
Questions and Answers,
Related stuff (and tools),
future improvements
and known bugs and problems before
you contact me.
If you have
problems compiling hsc, make sure you've read source/README
and also checked Makefile.dodl, which should be usable
even for complete idiots.
Maybe there is already bugfix availabel at the hsc-support-w3page,
so check this, too. (Note: Traditionally, the most distressing bugs
are reported and fixed a few days after a new release showed up in
Aminet, so it's probably a good habbit to take a look at this page
about a week after downloading hsc from Aminet.)
On what to contact me
If you..
- ..find any bugs (which seems to become more and more unlikely)
- ..think that hsc accepts severe errors in your sources without
warning about it; note the word severe in the last sentence.
- ..have any questions about hsc and it's usage which are not covered
sufficiently in this documentation or located at a completly
unexpeted place (which should be quite unlikely because I meanwhile
consider these docs to be quite useful).
- ..want to port hsc to another system that supports some sort of
command line interface.
See also Existing ports.
- ..find some errors or warnings compiling hsc for one of the
supported systems, exept the warnings mentioned in
``source/README´´.
- ..have any (reasonable) suggestions how to improve hsc; but note that I'm
currently not thinking about any conceptional changes.
you should contact me.
On what NOT to contact me
You should not contact me on the following topics:
- You just want to say ``hi!´´ and tell me that hsc is a
great tool.
<ARROGANCE>
I already know that.</ARROGANCE>
.
- You want to compile hsc for your system but don't have
enough experience on such things. Bad luck for you, try to
increase your circle of acquaintances.
- You think hsc is a great program, and you want to use it
with some MS-DOS-based system like Windows NT, Windows 95
or OS/2.
- Your compiler has problems compiling a simple ANSI-C program.
(You won't believe it, but there are still such compilers around)
- General discussion about html-tags and how to use them. I don't
know the correct usage of several tags defined in hsc.prefs
myself because I usually use pure html-2.0 and only some features
of html-0.32 like image maps and tables.
If you fail to exclude the above topics from your EMail, you might
get a reply consisting of a single term:
``Read the fucking manual!´´.
About bug-reports
If you think you've found a bug that is not already mentioned or
discussed in the chapter about Known bugs and
limitations, you should include some information in your
bug-report:
- Under which operating system did you use hsc?
- Which version did you use? You can find this out if you
invoke hsc without any arguments or simply type
``
hsc HELP
´´ in your shell. Always include version number
and exact date, do not use terms like ``the latest version´´.
- Include a single command call or batch-script and hsc source
(or at least part of) that reproduces the bug.
- Do not send me all your sources for your whole site, try to trace
the bug back to a singel input-file and macro, if possible.
You don't have to provide information about the exact version of the
operating system or compiler used, but I might asked you for that in
a reply, so keep this at hand.
The more specific and smaller your bug-report is, the more likely
I might fix it. Altough, I can't promise that I will fix all bugs
reported to me in reasonable time.
If your bug-report fails to include the above informations, I might
completely ignore it.
...and finally
You can reach me via EMail at agi@giga.or.at or
agi@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at. Note that I might reply from
another address, but add only one of these two to your address book,
they should be valid for a longer time.
If someone insists on wasting paper, use
Thomas Aglassinger
Lissagasse 12/II/9
8020 Graz
AUSTRIA
but don't expect me to buy stamps for a reply.
Thomas Aglassinger
(agi@giga.or.at),
04-Dec-1996