Raspberry Pi Forums

When I use StrongED to edit BASIC source (i.e. in "BASIC" mode with the blue background), every time I hit Enter at the end of a line, StrongED puts up a dialog:

StrongED
Unauthorised action: 'Process'. Click OK to allow it, click Cancel to ignore it. See security section in manual for details.
[Allow action] [[Deny action]]

Hitting the Enter again (i.e. selecting the default "Deny action") seems to have no ill effects, though perhaps some operation (syntax checking or something) is omitted?

I'm not exactly sure which manual the error text is referring to. I've looked for a StrongED manual but the author's site says that the HTML manual is 'coming soon' (and there's a broken link to a supposed work in progress). Perhaps it could be referring to a system (RISCOS) manual containing some info on permissions/security?

Anyway, there are probably a few other places I could be asking this, but I'll start here on the RasPi forum as it seems to have a fair bit of traffic. Any clues greatly appreciated!

I encountered the same problem the only way I found to get rid of the error message was to change edit modes , Basic to Asm/basic mode.

StrongED allows you to pass a (selection of) text to an external tool for processing and reading the output back in. To prevent this from happening without the user knowing about it, all such actions are blocked by default. When a mode tries to call an external tool a dialogue box is put up asking the user for permission.

The BASIC mode, for example, calls a tool when Return is pressed that ensures that all keywords on that line are in uppercase. If you click 'Allow action' then the tool is called and any keywords not entirely in uppercase will be corrected. Clicking 'Deny action' means the tool won't be run.

To permanently allow a mode to call external tools you'll need to change its permission in the ModeLock file. To do this click Ctrl-Select (left mouse button) on StrongED's iconbar icon, this will load the ModeLock file. Then find the line for the mode you want to alter, then change 'N' to 'Y' for the actions you want to allow.

When finished, save the file and the new permissions will be applied. There may be a query when you save the file about where it should be saved, normally you'd have it saved to 'UserPrefs'.

More information on ModeLock can be found in the StrongHelp manual, Iconbar menu -> Help... and then Introduction -> Security.

Or give up on !StrongEd and use !Edit instead

No annoying nannying, just a text editor that understands BASIC

SEDev wrote: To permanently allow a mode to call external tools you'll need to change its permission in the ModeLock file. To do this click Ctrl-Select (left mouse button) on StrongED's iconbar icon, this will load the ModeLock file. Then find the line for the mode you want to alter, then change 'N' to 'Y' for the actions you want to allow.

Thanks for the tip. All working now, and I'll read the help some more to learn about the other mode preferences.

IMHO, I would be nice to have the dialog that pops up offering to allow temporary permission for "Perform" (or other operation) also have a button or checkbox to "Permanently grant this permission", presumably with appropriate caveats. While I probably should have found the instructions more quickly, rather than hitting google first, I would have chosen such an option immediately had I seen it. To me at least, this seems more user friendly. Though I may yet still be ignorant of the real risks implied in the need to have such permissions given that RISCOS is a single-user system it seems to me that, whatever the security risk, such an option is equivalent to editing the permissions file - unless you consider the obfuscation necessary to save n00bs from allowing things too easily!

Anyway, this is probably nitpicking. Aside from this issue in trying to use StrongED as a BASIC editor out-of-the-box, I'm finding it very nice to use (though I confess to not having tried much else so far!).

Assuming SEDev means you're the developer, thanks for a great editor.

skywalker wrote:Thanks for the tip. All working now, and I'll read the help some more to learn about the other mode preferences.

Apart from reading the manual, another good way to get familiar with StrongED (and other RISC OS apps) is to use interactive help. Run Help from the Apps folder on the iconbar, then hover the pointer over things you want to know about. For example, most icons on StrongED's toolbar support IA help.

Also, most modes have their own StrongHelp manual, click Select (left mouse button) over the 'Info' icon (leftmost) on the toolbar.

skywalker wrote:IMHO, I would be nice to have the dialog that pops up offering to allow temporary permission for "Perform" (or other operation) also have a button or checkbox to "Permanently grant this permission", presumably with appropriate caveats.

Thanks for the suggestion. Problem is that it's a standard RO error window and earlier versions of RO don't allow you to alter the number of buttons, or even the text on the buttons. As StrongED still supports those versions what can be done is limited, the only viable option is probably to use a custom window.

skywalker wrote:Assuming SEDev means you're the developer, thanks for a great editor.

Thanks, but I'm not THE developer. StrongED was started by Guttorm Vik in 1989(!) as StrongED I. In 1991 Guttorm decided that there were too many limitations in StrongED I and began work on StrongED II. Guttorm left the RISC OS scene in 1999, and I took up StrongED development in late 2000 and I'm still on the job.

SEDev wrote:Thanks, but I'm not THE developer. StrongED was started by Guttorm Vik in 1989(!) as StrongED I. In 1991 Guttorm decided that there were too many limitations in StrongED I and began work on StrongED II. Guttorm left the RISC OS scene in 1999, and I took up StrongED development in late 2000 and I'm still on the job.

Nice work! I've used StrongED pretty much every day since taking to RISC OS, and so far, haven't managed to crash it once. Given my record with crashing things, this is quite an achievement

One question - when searching for a string in a file, after a few correct matches, the editor starts to match on just the first couple of chars in the search string. As an example, I was wandering through some Firefox config files earlier, looking for all occurences of the string "cache". After a few hits (using the interactive search), every time I hit the 'next' button it started matching on "ca" rather than "cache". Is this a known bug? I could probably recreate it easily enough if it would help at all.

Ta,

Can't help you with StrongED as I'm more of a !Zap user but if you're more familiar with grep, there's a RISC OS port available: http://www.riscos.info/packages/UtilitiesDetails.html

nr. wrote:As an example, I was wandering through some Firefox config files earlier, looking for all occurences of the string "cache". After a few hits (using the interactive search), every time I hit the 'next' button it started matching on "ca" rather than "cache". Is this a known bug? I could probably recreate it easily enough if it would help at all.

Yes, this is a known issue (not really a bug I think, the code seems to be designed that way) and it's always worked like that. It's something I've been meaning to look at for a long time but never get round to it.

After you've found the first "cache" you could close the search box and use Ctrl-N to move to the next match (Ctrl-P for previous) it will then stop at the last "cache".

You could also try using the seach box (F2) to produce a LoF (List-of-Found) and use that. Make sure that all matches are shown (Menu over LoF, then click on 'All matches').

If "cache" is a separate word then you can create the LoF by placing the cursor inside it and pressing Ctrl-F.

Thanks, I can now use Stronged for Basic!