[jawsscripts] Re: Problem with StringToFile, Jamal's HSL

  • From: Brian Hartgen <jaws@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:25:47 +0000

Thanks Jamal for your quick response. So in terms of getting it resolved, what 
information please do you think I should pass to freedom scientific in order to 
get the problem resolved? As I say it is quite important to us so am quite 
happy to communicate with them.

Thank you again.



On 22/11/2012, at 4:08 PM, Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> That explanation makes sense to me.  Since it is a method of a Windows 
> COM server that is actually writing the string to disk, I think the 
> fault lies in the string that is passed to it as a parameter by JAWS.
> 
> Jamal
> 
> On 11/22/2012 10:53 AM, Andrew Hart wrote:
>> Yep.  that's a curly one and I am not sure what's going on.  glancing at
>> the source of StringToFile in homer.jss, everything looks hunky dory.
>> 
>> I initially thought that perhaps the + operator was plonking a space
>> char on the end of the string, but a little testing invalidated this
>> hypothesis.  Plus, I would have thought a bunch of other stuff would
>> have already been broken in JAWS if this were the case.
>> 
>> I did a test in V14 (not in 13 yet) along the lines of what you
>> suggested and found an extra character at the end of the file, just like
>> you reported.  Brian, the extra character is not a space (ASCII code 32
>> or 0x20 hex); it is a 0 byte (ASCII 0 or 0x0 hex), which is normally
>> used to terminate raw strings in C/C++ code.  When I load the test file
>> into Notepad, the extra character appears as a space because Notepad
>> converts non-printable characters to spaces when it opens files.
>> 
>> Now, in order to pass the string to a COM object, it mus tbe converted
>> to a Variant variable type and then to a BSTR object which complies with
>> the COM standard for module interoperability.  My initial reaction,
>> though I could be totally off the mark here, is that JAWS 14 is
>> miscalculating the string length and inadvertently including the
>> terminator character at some point in the process of passing the string
>> to the COM object.
>> Some further testing would be required to really confirm this.
>> 
>> Hth,
>> Andrew.
>> 
>> On 22/11/2012 11:40 AM, Brian Hartgen wrote:
>>> Hi
>>> I have a problem which is baffling me at the moment. For various projects 
>>> available to the community, I use Jamal's Homer Script Library. It is full 
>>> of useful functions and I've used it for years.
>>> 
>>> However there is one function which is causing a problem. It works fine 
>>> with many jaws versions up to and including 13, but it does not work 
>>> correctly in 14 and I do need it to if anyone can please suggest a solution.
>>> 
>>> The function, StringToFile, writes a string to a text file. In jaws 14, 
>>> this is working fine except that it leaves an extra space character at the 
>>> end. This can be simulated simply as follows:
>>> 
>>> Assume that homer.jsb is attached via a use statement to your script.
>>> 
>>> Script test700 ()
>>> 
>>> saystring ("ok")
>>> 
>>> var
>>> 
>>> string temp
>>> 
>>> let temp = "hello "
>>> 
>>> let temp = temp +"goodbye"
>>> 
>>> StringToFile (temp, "c:\\temp\\test.txt")
>>> 
>>> ã
>>> 
>>> ã
>>> 
>>> EndScript
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This outputs to a text file "hello goodbye", then a space character, rather 
>>> than just having a clean file.
>>> 
>>> Does anyone have a suggestion as to how I may erase the space character?
>>> 
>>> Thank you.
>>> 
>>> Brian Hartgen
>>> 
>>> __________ï
>>> 
>>> View the list's information and change your settings at
>>> http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts
>> 
>> __________ï
>> 
>> View the list's information and change your settings at
>> http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts
> 
> __________ï
> 
> View the list's information and change your settings at 
> http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts
> 
__________ï

View the list's information and change your settings at 
http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. jawsscripts
  3. Archive
  4. 11-2012