Hello Roger,
I can't understand why you guys are having THIS much trouble. Why not just skip the editor and use the TB SYstem.EXE directly? Especially to compile and bind. Actually it would be interesting to see if the code that gives such problems as you describe, would run, compile, and bind on some of my "older" systems.
I have just recently installed the TB GOLD v6.007 ("about" in the editor says: 03 Mar 2013.) The machine it's on is running Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bit.
Now I must admit I have encountered some extremely annoying bugs in the v.6 editor as nearly everyone has complained about. But nothing remotely similar to what you're describing. Since this editor was composed fairly recently, the bugs haven't been addressed. The sad news is that I'm afraid the author, John Arscott, is no longer available to do anything about it. Therefore it is highly improbable that it's ever going to get fixed. He wrote it in TB, I think, and it's compiled and bound into an .exe, which means that no one is going to be able to see what's inside and how to fix it. Not unless someone finds out how hack into it with something like ghidra and can decipher the machine code, or whatever. Not gonna happen.
The most exasperating bug I've experienced so far is that the editor can't seem to be able to find LIBRARIES even when the complete path is explicity provided in programs that run perfectly on every other version of TB that I have. Sometimes it finds the files, sometimes I get the "no such file" message even when the file is right there in the directory where the whole thing is "installed". None of this sort of nonsense ever occurred with any of the many versions of TB that I have ever had over the years.
I don't like this editor, and I never really liked the ones which TB used to have either. Those were composed so long ago they lack many features that are "standard" on text editors nowadays.
So what I have always done is to use a third party text editor to compose and edit my code. Just put all your tblibs and stuff, along with the two TB System EXE's that they have included with V.6, all together in some safe place (I use external drives; a thumb drive will do).
You can write the code in the third party editor, save it, but leave it open in the text editor. Then, run one of the two TB SYStem.EXE's provided. (One of them is the "old" v.5.31 version called "531tbsystem.exe" dated 02Aug99 1330, 667 KB; the other is "tbsystem.exe", 13May10 2209, 761 KB. The 5.31 is the robust one but it requires the dll's - XNMBA420.DLL and XNMTE420.DLL - to tag along with your bound programs. The "newer" 13May10 one doesn't require the dll's but has a minor bug or two, but otherwise is pretty much OK. I also have an 08May00 0945, 669 KB version, and a 27Feb05 0709, 761 KB one that came with the old v5.5 Gold or v5.33 Silver I got years ago.)
If there is need to edit the code, I just do it right there in the third party text editor, and then resave it. Then run it again. The best part is that a modern text editor can number lines so it's easy to find the offending line. Some of these text editors will actually link to the TBSystem.EXE for you. Compile or bind directly with the TDBsystem.exe. You don't NEED any editor at all. Frankly it seems to me that this would solve most of the problems people seem to be having.
The downside of using the method described above is that TBsystem.EXE shuts itself off as soon as the program runs. So you have to click it again to start it and then scroll around to find the program file name in order to run it. This isn't so much of a problem if the third party editor will link up to the TBsystem.EXE. But what I actually do is run the ancient TB editor which used to be provided, because those editors would remain open and the errors and their line numbers would be announced in a pop-up window which used to appear down at the bottom of the screen. This method of using the "old" TB editor to run (or compile or bind) the program, and the external text editor to do the editing, is actually quite fast once you get used to it.
If I were TB, Inc, I would make the "old" editor available as a free download, so one could have the option of using that if they are having unacceptable hassles with the "new" editor. As it is now, it seems that newcomers are getting turned off reading all these various gripes that appear on this forum. I feel that the language is far too good to let it go down the drain because of this sort of thing.
I know there are many other languages which are more "modern", (and cheaper) but none of them are quicker to be learned by a novice, in my opinion. In 1968 we read through the CEIR manual and in about 10 minutes were able to clunk out a program on the teletype machine in order to invert a 17x17 matrix to solve some equations. Then "basic" was Dartmouth Basic, which is what True Basic actually still is.
The main point here is that ALL of these TBsystem.EXE versions will open and run any of my myriad programs without any problem whatsoever. Rarely, if a LIBRARY file path is not explicit, sometimes it won't find the file. Since I never had much luck getting the "alias" business to work, I always explicitly provide the complete path. If anything gets moved aorund so the paths become invalid, I have a little program that roots all through and changes all the Library paths as necessary. But this new v.6 editor manages to take exception to the path anyway. So I believe the bugs in the new editor are the source of the discontent that seems to be brewing with TB. If "BigJohn" were able to be here to help, I'm sure all this would be cleared up by now.
So the only thing left is for anyone who has a clue or tip or a work-around to post it so maybe some of these problems could get mitigated.
Regards,
Mike C.