Messages

401

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« on: August 18, 2011, 07:20 PM »

Well, Create Synchronicity is okay, but it is far more of a synch tool than a backup tool -- despite what it says at its home. I'm still using it but it throws errors when trying to backup certain things (automatic logfiles belonging to SYSTEM, I think) and trying to exclude those things is far more hassle than it should be. I'm not going to uninstall it just yet but I'm going to give AJC a try...

402

Post New Requests Here / Re: Auto-renumbering email attachments

« on: August 12, 2011, 12:12 PM »

As far as I know, TheBat automatically stores attachments as normal files..

-mouser (August 12, 2011, 11:31 AM)

Not Voyager -- everything's encrypted. That's usually considered a good thing...

403

Post New Requests Here / Auto-renumbering email attachments

« on: August 12, 2011, 09:38 AM »

...or something.

I have a problem. An automated process sends me occasional emails with textfile attachments.

Mostly, I just file them, against a time when I might need to find some bit of information in one of the attachments.

Last time I needed to do this, I used Copernic -- but I don't have that available anymore.

Thing is, the attachments always have the same name.

I use The Bat! (or rather, the Voyager variant thereof.) I thought I could ask The Bat to search inside attachments, but I couldn't work out how.

So all I can do is save the attachments to disk and search them with something else.

But in order to save them to disk, I have to give each file a different name, so I don't overwrite information.

There are currently 200-odd relevant emails. I REALLY don't want to have to go through that process manually, one at a time.

Can anyone suggest an approach to this?

404

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 08, 2011, 12:47 PM »

And those who try to defend Spinrite.  

-40hz (August 08, 2011, 10:32 AM)

What Spinrite now is and what Spinrite first WAS are not the same thing. As I said above, Spinrite could non-destructively reinterleave a hard disk -- as well as being able to work out what the best interleave actually was.

Before sector translation made the process impossible, hard disk was both very expensive and performance was directly tied to the interleave of the thing.

Ideally, if you're reading data off a disk, you want to process the contents of the current sector and have the next one just coming under the read head when you're ready for it. A badly interleaved drive (and this is rarely something you did yourself, so they were often interleaved before they ever met the host PC) would have to turn almost a full rotation to get the next sector, so this made a lot of difference to performance.

You might be able to tell how unpleasant this was by the fact that I still remember it so well, despite never having had to worry about it for many, many years...

To reinterleave a hard disk, you backed it up, ran a low-level format -- generally by running the code positioned at D800:5 on the drive controller -- then fdisked, formatted, and hoped for the best. Even though we're probably only talking about 10- or 20 MB drives, this was VERY timeconsuming.

When a company called (cheesily) The Control-Alt Deli called me up and told me about what Spinrite could do -- that's a reinterleave without disturbing the data, so no backup (although I always did one), fdisk, format and test routine required, and given that I had a lot of PCs that all needed looking after and always needed another ounce of performance I was first disbelieving -- like, "how is this even possible?" and second, extremely cheerful about the time I was going to save.

What Spinrite's become since then is unimportant. I stand by my original statement that it was a genuinely revolutionary product that did an amazing job. And   to you too.

405

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« on: August 06, 2011, 08:06 AM »

Okay, Puresync is gone. I didn't like the way it managed the file lists (very nonstandard) and even after the initial backup was done, the comparison process to work out if anything needed doing subsequently took a very long time.

I'm now trying Create Synchronicity and I'll let you know...

406

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 05, 2011, 05:26 PM »

That's because PageMaker was "it" back in the day! 

-40hz (August 05, 2011, 01:21 PM)

My first DTP was called (oddly) Timeworks, and it ran under GEM. Slow, weird, but it ran on an 8086 box and wasn't bad for its time.

My first Windows DTP was Serif's PagePlus, and I've stayed with it ever since. MUCH cheaper than PageMaker. Just as capable, too. (Well, almost.)

Sidekick -- lots of people loved it, but I couldn't do anything useful with it hogging all that RAM.

Sprint -- I remember being impressed with Philippe Kahn's demo (have a secretary pounding text into it and whisk the plug out of the wall in the middle of the typing frenzy, then power back on to see just how much was lost (nothing.) But it wasn't a "nice" WP -- can't define what I liked and didn't like, it just didn't suit me -- and I went back to WordStar.

PC Outline I had a license for, but it didn't leave a significant impression on me. LIST, though, I had forgotten about but I absolutely loved it.

This is not helping me feel any younger...

407

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 05, 2011, 04:07 AM »

Actually, I did mean the Internet in that I was referring to Fido's behavior as a 'network of networks' communicating under a commonly shared protocol; as opposed to 'the web', which I always took (perhaps erroneously) to refer to the global collection of linked hypertext documents accessible via the Internet. 

-40hz (August 05, 2011, 03:28 AM)

No, in that sense you're quite right. Although Fido was -- AIUI -- modelled on the internet as it then was, and therefore couldn't have predated it.

Because that meant they missed out on all the aggravation (even if they also missed out on all the "fun") of running a Fidonet node. Onward! )

Hah. It WAS fun. Even when it wasn't, the choice to NOT do it always existed, so it MUST have been fun.

I still sometimes miss 2:25/108. You can tell, can't you?   

408

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 05, 2011, 03:54 AM »

Fido knew how to do message quoting, too. UseNet standards -- the ones we mostly all use now -- are far nastier.   

-oblivion (August 05, 2011, 02:17 AM)

Do you mean: http://www.riddle.ru...dl/fido/FSC-0032.001 ?
I thought it is Usenet standard (at least the one I had used on NNTP groups).

-fenixproductions (August 05, 2011, 03:21 AM)

Because it cost the users (and most of the sysops) real money to send and receive every character, the Fido standard was designed to focus on clarity and conciseness. The standards exist in Usenet too but the costs are borne elsewhere and the upshot was -- mostly, anyway -- that messages were quoted in their entirety below the response.

Different Fido message editors handled things differently; my favourite (Xpress) did quotes very well, retained initials of initial posters in messages that were more than a conversation just between two people, and actually seemed to encourage the "selective quoting" that allowed the sensible ones to just quote relevant text (and the mischief-makers to use quotes to make different points to what the poster actually meant but hey, nobody's perfect and it was usually for humorous purposes  )

I agree that some of the current ways are totally messy.

Outlook's got a lot to answer for. Although I can only think of one email client that gets some way towards "proper" quoting -- The Bat! -- and one other -- Thunderbird -- that can be persuaded to work nearly as well as The Bat with some effort. And an addon.

As an ex-echo moderator (and briefly and scarcely in any important way an ex-Regional Echomail Controller) I do my best to keep to the standards Fido taught me when emailing and writing in fora but it's FAR harder than it ought to be. Odd: Fido was organisationally anarchic but internally totally standards-driven and mostly compliant; the Internet's almost the exact opposite. Maybe there are some clues there...

409

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 05, 2011, 02:17 AM »

This was our Internet before there was an Internet. (Note: FidoNet is still around too!)

-40hz (August 04, 2011, 02:33 PM)

Strictly speaking, you don't mean the Internet, you mean the web. The Internet started in the early 70s, and FidoNet was -- what, 1985?

From that viewpoint, I'd add Silver Xpress, FrontDoor and Portal of Power to the list. The first got me understanding what Fido was all about, and the latter two ran my point system and my BBS, in that (chronological) order. (No, I know most readers here won't know what on earth we're talking about. Move on, move on!

Fido knew how to do message quoting, too. UseNet standards -- the ones we mostly all use now -- are far nastier.   

410

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 05, 2011, 02:04 AM »

And how could I forget SpinRite, by the Heavenly Steve Gibson?

-oblivion (August 04, 2011, 11:07 AM)

You were smart enough to use  DESQview and QEMM, bt you fell for SpinRite? O_o

-f0dder (August 04, 2011, 05:19 PM)

You never needed to reinterleave an MFM HD, I take it? Spinrite was 

I grant it lost a lot of its usefulness once RLL drives came along, and IDE and subsequent technologies have made it a niche "recover from low-level errors" thing that I think I've only ever needed to suggest somebody use once in the last decade or so, but I still appreciate the quality of the program -- from a distance.

Why is that wrong?

disk was slow

That's what you get for not using Spinrite [DARFC] 

411

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« on: August 05, 2011, 01:05 AM »

FBackup 4 works fine.  I've used it to mirror my notebook's drive to the MyBook.

-kyrathaba (August 04, 2011, 05:12 PM)

That was on my list of things to try -- but my first experiment is underway. PureSync. Free, has the sync on shutdown option that 40Hz recommended, installed with no glitches, seems easy to configure... looks good so far.

412

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« on: August 04, 2011, 02:26 PM »

I'm going to start with the top two recommendations over on TechSupportAlert and, if they don't do what I want/need, I'll try AJC: looks good, and not too expensive. (SFFS IS too expensive, on the other hand, and will be kept in reserve for the point that I decide that nothing else will do. Thanks to everyone!

413

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« on: August 04, 2011, 01:28 PM »

(see attachment in previous post)
For user files your best bet would be to use a file synchronization utility that has a "synchronize on shutdown" option.

-40hz (August 04, 2011, 12:24 PM)

That really hadn't occurred to me. Brilliant -- exactly what I want, with a side benefit of not slowing the system down in use.

I shall research. Thanks! 

414

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« on: August 04, 2011, 11:07 AM »

Stuff that revolutionised my life: in the late 80's, WordStar IV. (WS3 was still a bit too CP/M.)

In the 90s, DESQview/386 (ie the version that included QEMM). dBase IV in one window, WordStar 6 in another, and SuperCalc V in a third and you can take Windows 3.1 and shove it where the sun don't shine.  Learn-and-replay keyboard macros. Multitasking on a PC before anyone else could get close. I can't bring myself to throw it away, either, although I know that box will never be opened again...

And how could I forget SpinRite, by the Heavenly Steve Gibson?

In the 00s, Directory Opus. (I know, but I spend a LOT of time playing in filesystems.)

In the 10s... probably too soon to say. My favourite things are mostly browser-based -- like Lastpass, and Speed Dial. I'm falling in love with Sagelight, although my first loves for Things Graphical are all made by Serif.

AutoHotKey's starting to look like a keeper, too.

Also... the agenda, database and contacts applications built into my old and much missed Psion 5mx were (a) superb and (b) still unmatched, anywhere. (I keep thinking about paying for the Pro version of Essential PIM just to give me an excuse to complain at the developers until they've replicated the Psion experience.)

I feel old...   

415

General Software Discussion / Realtime backups

« on: August 04, 2011, 10:39 AM »

I don't backup enough.

I upgraded my desktop machine's internal HD to a terabyte beast a while back and I now use the old drive in an external case, connected via USB, to make the occasional image (I use Paragon. It's okay, but the current version seems to have abandoned incremental backups, so I'm stuck making the occasional image and I don't use it for file-based backups.)

The old drive isn't big enough for more than one image, and when I picked up a deal on eBay for an Iomega 500Gb Prestige USB drive with their backup software thrown into the deal, I thought it was a Good Plan.

The drive works fine.

Their realtime backup software -- QuikProtect -- works if I install it on my netbook (Win7 Starter) but the install to my desktop (Vista, 32-bit, 4Gb RAM) didn't just not work, it caused the first bluescreen I've had on the system.

I used to like Iomega.

I had to use System Restore, via Safe Mode, to get the system to boot normally again.

I posted a query on their forum and the only response so far is a suggestion that I might like to try the most recent version of the software, here's the download link. (Since I downloaded it on Tuesday, I can't imagine that I was that far behind the times. Easy response, for sure, but it assumes that I'm stupid and I'd FAR rather they assumed intelligence first.)

So I have two questions:

1. Does anyone with any experience with Iomega's QuikProtect have any suggestions as to whether I should put my system back in the firing line again or just give up with it?

2. If I wanted something that did a similar job -- effectively backing up a configurable number of generations of a configurable set of files and folders, in realtime on a "set and forget" basis -- to a USB-connected HD, would I have to hand over serious quantities of money? (Hint: I felt guilty enough about the new HD. Please don't make me hand over more extra cash than I have to!)

I guess if I forget the "realtime" bit, I could probably do the job for free with something like Toucan... it's just that I'll forget.

416

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Bitdefender Total Security , IS or AV for only $9,95

« on: August 02, 2011, 04:06 AM »

Although the offer's expired, they've extended a special pricing deal to August 7. ($9.95 for AV, add $10 for IS, add another $10 for TS.)

For what it's worth, I tried the AV product a year ago and hated it so much I removed it. (My license has only just expired, apparently.) However, that was an underpowered XP machine that I no longer own... I have NOD32 on my desktop machine and MSE on the netbook; am debating trying the AV product on the netbook. I have a few days to think about it...

417

AutoHotkey / Re: Preventing fullscreen and getting back when that's failed

« on: July 30, 2011, 04:25 PM »

Get the simplest case working first before adapting it.

-MilesAhead (July 28, 2011, 01:03 PM)

I did that; still failed. I asked over at the AHK forum; lots of people read my post, but nobody answered.

Eventually, I came to the comclusion that the reason it didn't work was because a fullscreen DOS app doesn't have the same attributes that are being tested for to detect a fullscreen Windows app, and racked my brains for a while to see if I could come up with an alternative approach.

I discovered that (under XP, anyway) Alt-Enter with the desktop as the foreground app brings up display properties. That led me to a plan...

[Select]

#IfWinActive, MyCode
; MyCode should be replaced with the appropriate window title -- can be set in a batchfile with Title "<whatever>"
; semi-disable Alt+Enter
!Enter::
SetMouseDelay, 70
click 2000,2000 ; click somewhere far, far away from any open windows
; Alt-enter on desktop brings up XP display properties, in a fullscreen DOS app it pushes it back to a window
send !{Enter}
click 275,430 ; the Cancel button on the XP Display Properties dialog, regardless of tab
WinActivate, MyCode
return

So I don't actually test for the state, I do something that affects both states differently and deal with the outcome -- I click cancel, or I click in the window with the DOS app in it, which just selects it or some text in it depending on whether quickedit mode is on or not. Either way, I have a solution.

I felt quite clever.  Although I grant it's a lot less elegant than I'd like.

--tim

418

AutoHotkey / Re: Preventing fullscreen and getting back when that's failed

« on: July 28, 2011, 09:58 AM »

edit: I haven't tried it but according to the help you can get the handle of the active window like this:  WinExist("A")

so isWindowFullScreen(WinExist("A")) should return true if the active "window" is in full screen mode.  At least for single monitor systems anyway.

If it returns true just Send the !{Enter}.  If not just eat the key combo.

-MilesAhead (July 27, 2011, 04:42 PM)

Thanks, but...

  I can't make this work.

The dos app is running in a window with title "Joe System."

I'm using the code pretty much as you've given it, except that I'm using it after a

[Select]

#IfWinActive, Joe System

directive.

It certainly blocks !{enter} as it should, but it continues to block it when the program's full screen.

I've tried to find variants on the WinExist("A") function to return the correct process in case the NTVDM doesn't react the way a fullscreen Windows program would -- which is what I suspect the issue is -- but I've had no success at all.

So still the only thing I can do is deactivate the script (I've set ^!x::ExitApp up at the top) and then use !{Enter}.

Can I check my understanding of this is right? The isWindowFullScreen function goes at the bottom of the script, after a return that ensures the code is only executed when called, WinID is the variable into which the value returned by WinExist("A") is stuffed, and the true returned by the function is the boolean state not a variable I need to initialise elsewhere?

If I have that right and I'm not missing something else I should be doing, then a fullscreen 16-bit DOS app can't be detected in the same way as a fullscreen Windows prog. 

-- bests, Tim

419

AutoHotkey / Re: Preventing fullscreen and getting back when that's failed

« on: July 27, 2011, 04:08 PM »

I am not sure if this is a solution or not, but can't you just Alt-Tab to minimize the window and work as normal?

-steeladept (July 27, 2011, 12:04 PM)

It gets you back to the desktop, but it doesn't re-window the fullscreen app. Not quite what I want to achieve.

There's a side-query to this: is there a better way to resize the display font in said DOS window than use a set of mouse- and keyboard macros to do "right-click on title bar, select Properties, select Font tab"... and so on? It works (and reasonably well) but feels inelegant...

-- bests, Tim

420

AutoHotkey / Re: Preventing fullscreen and getting back when that's failed

« on: July 27, 2011, 04:02 PM »

How are you blocking Alt-Enter within your script?  Are you doing it like this?:

Code: Autohotkey [Select]

1. !Enter::Return

-skwire (July 27, 2011, 12:15 PM)

Yes. I wondered if I could make something that would check to see if something was fullscreen before allowing the command to be processed.

Effectively, what I think I want to achieve is a situation where Alt-Enter works in one direction only -- back from fullscreen to windowed.

-- bests, Tim

421

AutoHotkey / Preventing fullscreen and getting back when that's failed

« on: July 27, 2011, 12:00 PM »

I have a problem.

I've built an autohotkey script that, amongst other things, prevents Alt-Enter from doing anything. That was on purpose...

Thing is, under certain circumstances, a DOS app can force Windows to push it to fullscreen. If that happens, there's no way back...

Is there a way I can detect if that's happened and temporarily re-enable Alt-Enter?

-- tim

422

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: The Humble Indie Bundle #3

« on: July 27, 2011, 02:02 AM »

Hi
The Humble Indie Bundle #3 Pay what you want

-ha14 (July 26, 2011, 01:01 PM)

Got. I'm on their mailing list since the first bundle. Excellent value, and this bunch is -- in my HUMBLE opinion  -- the best yet!

-- bests, Tim

423

General Software Discussion / Re: Grid Layout software? Does it exist?

« on: July 12, 2011, 02:27 PM »

I'm sure not too many people are terribly interested in it.

-superboyac (July 12, 2011, 10:26 AM)

That one's new to me -- and I'm definitely interested. I've never found a good planning tool that worked the way my mind does. Not sure this is it but it looks like it's well worth a try -- so thanks, Mahesh2k!

424

General Software Discussion / Re: DOS Batch Functions Tutorial

« on: July 04, 2011, 05:45 AM »

[
From memory, there was a batch compiler in 4DOS (I referred to 4DOS in a post above), but I never actually needed to use it except to try it out, so cannot comment on it.

-IainB (June 18, 2011, 09:24 PM)

I remember looking into it -- I used and loved 4DOS for years -- but it was a separate license fee, particularly if you wanted to distribute things you'd made with it, I think.

I have now found the source zip for Batchcompiler. If anyone wants it, PM me and I'll email it. (The zipfile is only 14.6k)

425

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Editor - $39.95 Lifetime Promotion Ending July 1st

« on: June 26, 2011, 03:08 AM »

Pick it up while it lasts.. 

-Bionic71 (June 15, 2011, 09:04 AM)

Thanks for pointing that one out -- it's an excellent deal!