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Messages - rjbull [ switch to compact view ]

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2901
Treepad Asia does not really work with Asian languages. It works only if you have that language version of Windows installed.

I didn't realise that.  It's not good.  Treeline supports Unicode, I think, but is still a standard treepad-style organiser.  Its data format is XML, so you have some hope of conversion later.


2902
I really wish MemoryMate had been better adapted to the Windows environment. The current version released by Brownbag simply does not work

You're not the only one to say that about Memory Mate; see e.g. John Buckman's outliners page

Scrapbook is nice and I used it for some time but the search and formatting functions are too limited (and I had problems with bugs at the time, v2.20 may be better).

ScrapBook 2.20 is dated 21 April 2006, so it's hot off the press.  I haven't used it "for real," but it looks best suited to simple actions and short records.  Pity...

It occurs to me that despite being tree-style, you might find Treepad Asia a possible stopgap because it supports Asian languages.  You can always ignore the tree style  :)  You get rather better search facilities if you use the free Treepad viewer, but it's still limited compared to Memory Mate.  I've been tinkering with Treepad Lite lately, largely because it has a simple file format, and most other programs can directly import its files anyway.  So if I do find something better, it won't be such a problem to change.


2903
tokjdm,

I find this thread very interesting. I have been looking for the ultimate note taker for years and am not satisfied with my current choice (one note). Someone talked earlier about Memorymate (a DOS program) and this is still my reference today (although I can't use it any longer because of the format restrictions).

I still haven't seen anything as clean, simple and effective as Memory Mate, with its limited but sensible Boolean search terms and indexed database, giving retrieval that's both fast and precise.  For large quantitites of scraps of unstructured data, the tree model isn't very useful, certainly not as useful as a full-text, free-text database.

Another important factor is unicode compatibility

You might want to look at ScrapBook which is a small freeware cardfile program with a Unicode version, but, you would probably find it too simple for most needs.  This Wiki entry on cardfiles might also be relevant.  ScrapBook was mentioned in a recent post on TinyApps Blog

Infoselect and Inforecall are just tree-based programs, like treepad

Info Select for DOS didn't start that way.  It was a bit more like Memory Mate, and put little windows that matched the search on screen.  I haven't looked at the Windows version because of the cost.


2904
I'm EXTREMELY confused by the interface after working with it for almost two hours.

The interface is somewhat strange, yes.  I suspect that's in part owing to attempting to put everything on a single screen without a help file.

It X's files, and then it doesn't. It won't preview parts of names, and despite examples using $$ everywhere, it shows nothing.

I think "X-ing" files, marking them for operations, is controlled by more than one thing.  That is, you have to specify the right wildcard in the top left hand box, and ask 1-4a to perform an operation.  E.g. if I want to search-and-replace say "044" in a filename with "zzz," it doesn't mark files with an X until the right wildcard is set, and I've ticked the "Replace" box, and set the search text to "044."

I doubt that helps very much; I only needed 1-4a for simple operations, mostly inserting or replacing bits of text, though I didn't have any problems with those.  Since I discovered the power of Total Commander's inbuilt equivalent, I've seldom used 1-4a.

Just noticed something else.  If I launch it form a COMMAND.COM DOS box under Win2K, it comes up with a plain top bar.  If I launch it with the switches "/e /noc" (expert mode, no online check = don't connect with the Internet) it announces its version number on the top bar.

Possible work-around for the looong FAQ: save to disk, reduce HTML to plain text, search/view with your favourite file searcher/viewer?


2905
I have spent time in the YOU ESSE OF HAY, and Chinese beer resembles the worst of their beer.

A Brit I vaguely know who's a long-time US resident sometimes drinks Miller Light as it's the only one he likes.  You can find proper breweries here and there, but you have to know where they are.

It's strictly of the " straight in, straight out" lager variety, with virtually NO individuality.

They also told me Chinese beer wasn't like our beer  ;)

Bear in mind tho' that these are the personal opinions of a tee total Buddhist, ( I only drink Guanzhou's pineapple shandy for sore throats and the Guinness for the vitamin B12 when I need it, ( I'm also a vegan, and B12 is in short supply)).

And in Buddhist Tibet they eat yaks, partly because they haven't always got anything else...

<phew> talk about boldly going off topic where no man has gone behind before...

What else did you find out about the lady photographer?

She's now 80, and writes books about education...

2906
I'm pretty sure I've seen thumb drives with built-in thumbprint recognition systems, but that might be more security than you want.


2907
And you wouldn't like the chocolate here

I'm in the UK.  The landlord of my local pub likes Chinese beer.  He knows because he did a charity cycle ride in China.  And a lady photographer I once met said she liked it too...

But I doubt it would get through the customs to mouser  :D


2908
Living Room / Re: Downloading your Gmail Account
« on: April 19, 2006, 08:11 AM »
As far as actually being a competitor for gmail, lycos isn't one -- the only significant competition I see is Yahoo/MSN -- both of whom are seriously overhauling their webmail clients.

Allen,

Have you noticed that Yahoo has a new email beta out now?

2909
General Software Discussion / Treepad Lite 3.0 released
« on: April 18, 2006, 05:15 AM »
Those of you who like tree-style hierarchical notekeepers / outliners / PIMs might like to know that Treepad Lite, the small, freeware version of Treepad, has finally been updated.  From their Web site:

New features in version 3.0

April 15, 2006

Options
* Added: a settings screen containing many new options. You can access the settings screen through "menu: View/options" or the new options toolbutton.

Toolbars
* Added: a new button to open the options screen has been added to the file toolbar
* Improved: the 'Follow Hyperlink' icon on the 'navigate' toolbar has been replaced with a better icon.
* Improved: the 'Search article' icon has been replaced with a nicer icon
* Added: the right-click toolbar menu now also contains menu items for the infobars
* Added: the right-click toolbar menu now also appears when right-clicking on the article title bar, just below the article.

Skins
* Added: one can now switch between ten skins to adjust the appearance of TreePad's toolbars. Menu/view/skin or toolbar popup-menu/skin. The following skins are available: classic, silver 1, silver 2, blue sky, blue metallic, chrome, aluminium, vanilla, purple and green. The 'classic' skin corresponds to how the program looked during the last few years.
* Added: a new skins menu has been added to the toolbar popup menu, as well as to the view menu

User-interface
* Added: Windows XP themes support
* Improved: the tab below the article has been replaced with a nicer looking panel displaying the name of the article
* Updated 'About' screen, menu: help/about

Tray icon
* Many new tray icon options, such as: show in tray when minimized, show in tray when active, show in tray and taskbar when minimized, etc. etc. Menu: View/options

Tree
* Added: a tree folder icon for each node. You can hide (and show) this icon using the options screen, menu: view/options


Hmmm...  haven't tried it yet, and a bit ungenerous to criticise a nice little freeware, but those features seem designed to make it look prettier, not make it more powerful...


2910
What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package
« on: April 13, 2006, 10:52 AM »
UK members might like to look at the latest edition (dated June 2006) of Computer Shopper, which has a review of anti-virus packages.  Very briefly, they rated them as follows.  Ratings take into account accuracy of detection, where F-Secure, Kapsersky, Steganos and NOD32 were best, but also cost of purchase, cost of renewal, features and interface.

5   Kaspersky
5   Steganos 2006 (*)
4   Trend PC-cillin 1.4
4   McAfee 2006
4   F-Secure 2006
4   AVG Free Edition 7.1
3   ZoneAlarm AV 6 (excluding the firewall)
3   Norton 2006
3   NOD32 2.5
2   Bullguard 6.1
1   Panda Titanium 2006
1   Avast! 4.6 home edition

(*) Steganos is a re-packaged Kaspersky with less features, but very cheap.

URL for the magazine is  http://www.computershopper.co.uk  though I don't think they post the magazine article.




2911
What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package
« on: April 13, 2006, 10:31 AM »
Are F-Secure and F-Prot completely separate companies?  Not just F-Secure being a re-packaged version of F-Prot with more features?



2912
Finished Programs / Re: DONE: abbreviations importer
« on: April 12, 2006, 03:44 AM »
patteo,

Which macro program are you using?

Would you get more mileage out of IntelliComplete or Instant Text (reviewed on DC by Harrie?)


2913
Living Room / Re: Alert for new threads?
« on: April 11, 2006, 03:51 AM »
goto search->advanced and check " Topic subjects only"

I didn't spot Advanced search (it's fairly well hidden).  Thanks  :)

2914
Living Room / Alert for new threads?
« on: April 10, 2006, 04:43 AM »
SMF gives you these options:
Show recent posts  (full text display). Show recent topics.
Show new replies to your posts.

Is there a way to show new threads started since one's last visit?  Also, is there a way to restrict Search to searching for thread titles only, not full text?


2915
I'm not popular, but it has saved me on many occasions when I forgot about my family's birthdays :D

So it stopped you getting even more UNpopular  ;)

TheBat! - phew, what a lot of options.  But basic things are still pretty easy to do.  Good piece of work.

2916
RJ, your comment is quite common in my email this week. Seems most people use other tools, viz., their file managers like Total Commander or Directory Opus to rename files on the fly. This fact of utilization will need to be noted within the review, I believe.

The Epilog to The AWK Programming Language by Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger says they were astonished at seeing people writing AWK scripts that were more than one page long, as they had conceived of AWK as one-liners or very short scripts.  It seemed that
rather than writing in a "real" programming language, [people] were stretching the tools they liked.

Perhaps the built-in, ready-to-hand, familiar tools are adequate for most people, most of the time?


2917
For example, BRU cannot rename files using mp3 track information. Its developer, Jim Willsher, holds that mp3 extraction slows down the program too much and recommends specific mp3 renamers for that purpose.

That's not a bug, that's a feature  :)

Jan Falke's RenameFiles utility. When you open it up, it does 90% of what most people do with a renamer on the fly. I love his description of Preview: (for cowards!)

A place I go on holiday has several coats of arms in its stained-glass windows.  The motto of one of them reads "Non timeo sed caveo," which my rusty Latin translates as "I am not afraid, but I am cautious"  :D

I think you're right that Jan Falke's program does most of what most people want, but it isn't as visual as some of the others.  I mostly now use the multi-rename tool built into Total Commander, which remembers the "macros" for inserting text at specific points, remembers search-and-replace strings, etc., in pull-downs  This seems similar to what's been said above about Ant Renamer, which I haven't tried.


2918
The formerly expensive ForKeeps message archiver has just been updated.  At the same time they have dramatically dropped the price and even made some aspects of the program freeware.

Details here:  http://www.fkeeps.com/fkindex.htm

From their Web site:
Drowning in email and newsgroup or CompuServe Forum messages? Can´t find the information you need? Looking for a way to organize, archive and index your messages so you can quickly find what you are looking for?

Look no more - ForKeeps can do the job for you! Import from a variety of file formats into ForKeeps' relational databases. Browse, maintain and search your messages in one place, regardless of how and with which browser or mail program they were downloaded.

The tools provided within ForKeeps to organize and find the information you need are superior to those you can find in any browser or mail program.


Yes, ForKeeps version 1.0 was released in 1996. No other message archiver has survived on the market for such a long period.

This will be celebrated by completely changing the price structure of ForKeeps:

    *      The Pro Forum & Newsgroup Message Archiver is now freeware!
    *      The price of the full Pro Mail, Forum & Newsgroup Message Archiver is slashed from $124 to $39.
    *      Upgrades are now free. For registered users this means that anyone with any combination of a ForKeeps Mail Message Archiver (Standard or Pro) license can now upgrade to a Pro Mail, Forum & Newsgroup Message Archiver for free. Those with any other (non-Mail) ForKeeps license can upgrade to a Pro Forum & Newsgroup Message Archiver for free.

Version 4.90 contains the full Pro Mail, Forum & Newsgroup Message Archiver.

For non registered users it will be free during a 30 days trial period. After that period the Mail Archiver part will be blocked, unless the program is registered. However, the Pro Forum & Newsgroup Archiver parts are freeware and will always be available.


2919
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« on: April 07, 2006, 09:14 AM »
I had everything backed up, as TB has a very effective backup/restore feature.  Unfortunately, the backup was on the same hard drive -- in my defense, I was in the Navy and didn't have a lot of options on where/what to do with my data.

And I daresay that was before USB sticks and external HDs were so common.  Still, it's nice to know about TB's backup/restore features.

It's not picking on the bat specifically -- this is the case, in my experience, across the board.  Search is often thrown in as a feature not the focus

I keep thinking about converting things to Inmagic, the text retrieval system.  I doubt it will ever happen, but that would (for me) be a good way of storing/retrieving text.

No.  Well, TB does have virtual folders now -- they're a relatively new feature (Last year or two) -- I haven't spent enough time to know just how effective they are, though.  Even with virtual folders, one can lose a lot of time organizing

I think I read that they're dynamic, which I took to mean, once you'd set up a search profile, any new mail would automatically be filtered through that search as well and the relevant virtual folder updated.

I do keep my mailing lists in separate views, though -- as I don't need them mixed with personal mail or vice versa.

That makes very good sense...

re: m_s
-- Might be time to start a new thread about mail conversion/archival :)

I think I'd better put a note in general software about the new version of ForKeeps.


2920
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« on: April 07, 2006, 09:08 AM »
I recently reinstalled XP on home and work machines, and I've not got around to reinstalling FK on the work machine - which is where I use it: as I said, I've not used it much in awhile, so it's a pretty low priority. 

Suggest you take another look - just this week, there's a new version out.  More interesting, they've slashed the price of the Pro version from $124 to $39, and even made some parts of it freeware!

Which means I don't know which version I have...

I didn't mean version numbers, so much as whether it was worth having the e-mail only or e-mail + newsgroup or both + whatever versions, which is probably moot in view of ghe above.

five versions of the CompuServe software installed, in order to be able to read messages from all the different versions!  FK fixed that nicely.

That gives me some hope!  :)


2921
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« on: April 07, 2006, 03:53 AM »
m_s,

I've used ForKeeps for two years now, and it was absolutely invaluable for accessing an archive of 5 or 6 years of CompuServe and Pegasus message.  It's really easy to work with and very simply does what it says on the box.

Which version of ForKeeps are you using (I see there are several, with different capabilities and prices), and which version(s) of CompuServe access software were you using?  I'm still using a Win 3.1(?) WinCIM 2.0.1 from 1995   :-[


2922
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« on: April 07, 2006, 03:48 AM »
I haven't used The Bat! in a dedicated fashion in a few years--not since I lost my hard drive with everything on it.  I just haven't been in the mood to setup everything the way I like it -- you wouldn't believe how many hours I put into making TB 'perfect' for me.  Just don't have the energy to do it again, maybe one day . . . :)

Is TB's configuration in one or more identifiable files, so that you could back those up in case of disaster?

a well organized mailbase is easily more a hindrance than asset.  I say this for two reasons -- first of all, the amount of time spent setting up and maintaining a convoluted hierarchy of folders and sub-folders.  Secondly, the amount of time spent decoding this.

I've only just started with conventional email clients (mostly been using CompuServe) and haven't got very far yet.  I'm assuming I'd keep identifiable folders for mailing lists, but I hadn't thought farther than that.  Sounds like TB needs a faster searching system...

up having to check multiple folders.  If, perhaps, you organize by people as well as by subject, you can never know for sure if you filed a message by one or the other -- unless you copy it over into each -- but then you're increasing your mailbase potentially by 100%.

I thought TB had virtual folders?  It was really all a single message base?



2923
Living Room / Re: Keeping track of software license/serial keys
« on: April 06, 2006, 10:35 AM »
pmowbray,

Two things.  One, as I understand it, XML may be an open format, but it isn't necessarily easy to work with.  You rapidly run into an alphabet soup of acronyms.

Sure, but the XSLT would be specific and transform one format to the other format. User doesn't need to see the xml.

But I don't know what an XSLT is...  see what I mean about alphabet soup?  I wouldn't expect to have the know-how to do the conversions myself.

Oh, just remembered; the author of Treeline says it can be used as a "crude" (his word) XML editor, if that's any use to anyone.


It's got it's own field (not part of notes) and has a pop-up to insert the various variables and constants for you

So, simply more powerful, then.  I think I very briefly looked at PINS but dumped it.  Probably didn't look hard enough, and came to KeePass after I'd more or less forgotten the others...

So not more complex, just easier to use.  :)

I didn't make that clear, again.  I was wondering aloud how complex the tasks of logging in would/should actually be, which is some of what dictates how complex the program needs to be to match.


2924
Living Room / Re: Keeping track of software license/serial keys
« on: April 06, 2006, 10:17 AM »
My license keys are all stored in fsekrit.  I keep a copy on my computer, my palm's SD card, my usb drive and a copy on my ftp server.


Keeping multiple copies is a *** GOOD *** idea: encryption is obviously vital: it helps if data files are small: and it's always nice if it's free.  So, people might like to consider MemPad by Horst Schaeffer

Direct link: http://home.mnet-onl...t.muc/win/mempad.zip

Don't go straight for 2.52 beta, may be some problems, go for 2.51 which is solid.  MemPad is not a full tree-form notetaking software, it just looks and feels like it.  It's very small, very fast, completely free, and encrypted.  My list of about 300 nodes is about 100K.

2925
Living Room / Re: Keeping track of software license/serial keys
« on: April 06, 2006, 08:16 AM »
If all notetaking programmes agreed to export to xml it'd be relatively simple to transform that into an import xml file for a different notetaking programme.

Some of them use XML as their native format, e.g. Treeline and ShadowPlan, though the latter's more focussed on Palms.

Two things.  One, as I understand it, XML may be an open format, but it isn't necessarily easy to work with.  You rapidly run into an alphabet soup of acronyms.  Two, the original post wanted a way to store registration information, so any format should be encrypted, which would mean it wasn't true XML any longer (OK, the app should be able to export in a clear format, or at least to have encryption removed).

Just had a look at KeePass and it does infact look excellent: very similar to PINs (my current standard). PINs has a better Auto-Text entry and URL definition, but KeePass could produce better trees (deep).

How much better auto-text?  Also, how complex does one really need?  Is a RoboForm fan going to jump in here?




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