command line instead of settings dialog boxes

Yaacov Lazar

Sometimes during a drawing session the settings dialog boxes for layers or blocks, etc. stop coming up.

Instead I get the command line version.

I think it must be a system variable my lisps are resetting, but I can't find it.

If I close the session and reopen, the dialog boxes are restored.

Greg Skelhorn

My first guess was CMDDIA but my quick test did not seem to affect those commands.

Yaacov Lazar

That was my first guess, too.

No, I suspect some kind of bug when some particular lisp of mine bombs, or I cancel in the middle.

Difficult to narrow it down, though.

I doubt it's a system variable, because then why would it self-correct when I reopen the file?

I hoped somebody had an idea.

 

Larry Brock

Many of my Lisp routines change various sysvars during the execution of the program according to the need. I have a routine at the beginning of every file that stores the values of all commonly changed sysvars and a routine at the end of the file that restores all of these sysvars to their original setting. If a program crashes or, forbid, if I cancel a program before it finishes, all of the changed variables are in their changed setting and must be manually restored... or restored with a routine that restores these variables to their settings at the time the drawing was opened. Sounds like this may be the case here.

Yaacov Lazar

You should reset sysvariables in an error handler in each lisp.

inside your lisp define an error handler:

(defun c:yourlisp ()
  (defun %error ( *s / *s )
    (if (and (/= *s "Function cancelled")
              (/= *s "quit/exit abort")
        )
      (princ (strcat "\nError: " *s))
    )
    (setq *error* %olderror)
  (command "ucs" "p")                         ;reset sysvariables and whatever cleanup you need if the lisp is cancelled or bombs
   (if (and @icad @ucs)(setvar "TILEMODE" 1))
    (setvar "CMDECHO" 1)    
        (command "undo" "end")   
        (setq *error* %olderror %error nil)  ;including restoring the originsl error handler
  )
)  ;enable the error handler:
  (setq %olderror *error* 
       *error*    %error
  )

  ;;;;;your lisp;;;;

  (setq *error* %olderror %error nil) ;; restore the original error handler
)

I sometimes (okay, often) don't do this.

Maybe it's time to clean up my code