Messages

51

Living Room / Re: Has your phone replaced your camera?

« on: September 03, 2008, 12:16 AM »

Well, I don't have a digital camera, so I guess it's a yes from me..

My Nokia N82 (5MP, Carl Zeiss, Xenon blitz) does a somewhat decent job though.. It's not up there with the seriously professional cameras, nor do I expect it to be..

52

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: August 19, 2008, 05:54 AM »

@Cloq, this is the closest thing you can get:

Rightclick My Computer, click Properties, Advanced, Environment Variables.
Depending on whether you want it for only yourself or the entire computer,
either add a new user variable named COMSPEC or edit the system variable named
COMSPEC.

The comspec variable should consist of the path and executable, i.e:
C:\Program Files\JPSoft\TCMD9\tcc.exe

It won't modify any shortcuts etc refering to cmd.exe, but it will for everything that
"asks" what program to use to run the commandline (i.e queries COMSPEC).

53

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: August 18, 2008, 06:11 PM »

@Darwin, if you are like me you'll not regret upgrading

I tend to prefer the TCC (4nt .exe is the same, present only for compatibility) myself..
I've never understood the reason for the folder/file display in tcmd as I don't see how they can be used properly (I use DO for file management).

They did move to web forums, which I prefer, but apparently left the newsgroup available for reference..

I always worry about mailaddress harvesting when it comes to newsgroups (maybe due to experiences in the old days).

54

Living Room / Re: Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

« on: July 19, 2008, 11:51 PM »

The easiest for me in later years has been to have my own domain and MAKE SURE to own it myself, i.e not bought with a hosting package.
I then get myself a hosting package from another company (where you can disable the catchall account).

The reasoning is that if the host goes bust or whatever I'll just get hosting with someone else, change nameservers, and create the exact same mailaddress at the new one and
viola, nothing needs to be changed at all.

I don't use gmail etc, I like to keep my own mail.. especially because you can't know what they're doing with it.

55

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« on: July 05, 2008, 12:29 PM »

However, Metaproducts Inquiry integration with Opera 9.51 is still broken.  For those who want to be able to access Inquiry from within Opera, the only solution is to keep Opera 9.27.

Next Inquiry release should fix this, hopefully !

-MerleOne (July 04, 2008, 06:20 AM)

If you haven't done so already, please report it in metaproducts forums or via support.
They have a tendency to be quite fast to fix issues, although I've only dealt with Oleg and Alexander.

Mass downloaders issue with O9.5 was fixed in a few days for instance.

56

Living Room / Re: DC Forum Members -- Tell Us About Your Website

« on: July 04, 2008, 01:17 PM »

myarmor, that's your component!?!
fantastic 

-mouser (July 04, 2008, 01:07 PM)

Yes it is, and thank you..
More about that in the bio.

Edit: Removed some unnecessary detail which doesn't seem to fit the thread.

57

Living Room / Re: DC Forum Members -- Tell Us About Your Website

« on: July 04, 2008, 12:53 PM »

I have only one somewhat relevant, and that is Delphi Scintilla Interface Components
It's just for my Delphisci component project, and has been somewhat unmaintained for a while due to various reasons, but
that seems to be possible to change now.

58

General Software Discussion / Re: Stardock doesn't treat you like a criminal!

« on: July 04, 2008, 12:29 PM »

J-Mac, the reason the title fits, and without it being ironic, is that the usual game or whatnot
from most other publishers often contains DRM etc, making the legitimate user going through
h*ll and back just to use it.

In the line above is the difference.. Stardock's doesn't, instead they focus on giving additional
advantages to the registered user such as updates which not only fixes bugs but also has
a tendency to extend features etc.

However, if you are a pirate and such, you might not be so welcome to seek support, updates
etc in the same way a paying customer might be.

Just my 2 cents

59

General Software Discussion / Re: Stardock doesn't treat you like a criminal!

« on: June 26, 2008, 08:18 PM »

I have bought many of their products, ODNT Ultimate, GalCivII series etc..

I just have to agree with the rest of the folks in this thread..
Stardock is a company that operates with a different scheme than the rest entirely..

They're support is quite good too.. and compared to most of the other companies I've encountered, it's very good indeed.

60

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command Console LE from JPSoft

« on: June 12, 2008, 11:35 AM »

How does this compare to tools like PowerCmd and Windows Powershell? I've used Powershell before and enjoyed it, but also found that it took longer to start up than regular Command Console by a few seconds.

-icekin (June 08, 2008, 08:37 AM)

I guess the nearest comparable item would be PowerShell in that Take Command replaces the commandprocessor
entirely, not just use the same old but adds more fluff.
TCC would most likely be easier to handle than PowerShell, at least for those that have created a batchfile before,
powershell seems to bee too much of a difference..
In addition it extends just about every internal/external function the normal command processor has, in addition to adding several new ones.

61

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 12, 2008, 11:09 AM »

Darwin, try to run a command with several parameters, then try to use Ctrl+0-9..
It's somewhat nice in that it inserts the parameters from the previous commands..

Shift + arrows to select, Ctrl+Y copies the commandline, Ctrl+v pastes, these can be redefined,
and lots of other shortcuts.

It seems you did the same as me, I went ahead a somewhat long time ago and got DOpus and 4NT myself.  
Btw, the newest versions of DOpus9 will use TCC/4NT for Ms-dos batch functions if you set comspec environment variable to
the full filepath of tcc.exe or 4nt.exe.

Oh, and regular expressions in dir,copy etc is a nice touch.. , not to mention the batch extensions,
in addition to supporting active scripting etc.

and something like this (download ftp rfc's from ftp.sunet.se if and only if all exists) in a batch file:
@echo off
iftp /P ftp://ftp.sunet.se
cd ftp:/pub/Internet-documents/rfc
iff exist ftp:rfc959.txt .and. exist ftp:rfc1579.txt .and. exist ftp:rfc2151.txt then
   echo Filesize of rfc959.txt is %@filesize[ftp:rfc959.txt]
   copy ftp:rfc959.txt;rfc1579.txt;rfc2151.txt c:\tmp\
else
   echo Some of the files to copy were missing.. skipping.
endiff
iftp /c

you can also do this:
copy https://www.donation...c=13646.0#quickreply c:\tmp\qrep.htm

everything above is internal commands. the ftp functions is only available in non-LE version.
-- hrmf, the forum truncates the display of urls..

62

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 12, 2008, 08:11 AM »

the price is steep

-Darwin (June 11, 2008, 05:28 PM)

That's one of the reasons I never got it.

PromptPal takes 3 seconds as stated (just timed it) and TCC9 was slightly longer, so say 5 seconds to load (I didn't time it when I had it installed and am not interested in installing it again to time it now). I just timed PowerCMD as well and it opened in under a second.

I'd really like to see a comparison of the features of these three, along with Console.

-rjbull (June 12, 2008, 04:32 AM)

No doubt the price is rather steep, that's one of the reason I posted the news of the sale,
although it's still a bit steep.

A comparison between Console, PromptPal and Take Command?

I havent tested the two former programs, but from their websites it doesn't sound to be a fair compare at all as both
PromptPal and Console seems to add only look and a bit of ease to the commandline, but underneath it apparently still are using the same old Windows XP command processor.

Take Command has a small bit of ease too, but it's a commandline replacement in its true word, i.e just about everything
about the commandprocessor itself has been extended significantly compared to the normal command processor.

Comparison between the different JPSoft TC products here.
More detail of exactly what commands,functions and variables, can be found by clicking the link "look here" on that page.

63

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 12, 2008, 12:29 AM »

I haven't touched prefetch and the Task Scheduler is running as I type this. Now you've got me interested... I'll probably re-load the trial and actually time it this time.

-Darwin (June 11, 2008, 09:47 PM)

No doubt it is a good program, but it's you who dictate whether the price is right or not.

The commandline (it is sort of the engine itself, as 4NT was) version doesn't get it's own icon when you install, but it's easily created..
Look for tcc.exe in the program files\jpsoft\tcmd9 folder.

The gui version is a bit slower, but not much.
Both of them have their advantages.

64

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 11, 2008, 05:38 PM »

Heh, heh... TC is upgraded once a year - you can count on it.

-Darwin (June 11, 2008, 05:28 PM)

The pricing and the most likely target of that app I can agree with you on

To be fair, most likely v10 will be around in feb/march, which is way longer than 3-4 months,
but that is to be expected.

You haven't turned off the Task Scheduler service? or changed the prefetch registry settings?
Your speed sounds like did the first couple of runs of tcc after install, which then gets down to <=1 sec after
the prefetching does it's magic.

Btw, the last couple of upgrades users of v1-8 has been eligible for it if I remember correctly.

65

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 11, 2008, 05:14 PM »

Two points to be made here, first the second: a new version will no doubt be rolled out in about three to four months (I took advantage of the same deal on an upgrade from TC/4NT bundle v.7 to 8 this time last year. Version 9 came out in the fall).
The other point is that I've run the trial of this twice now and cannot believe how long it takes to load - over 10 seconds with 2 GB RAM under XP Pro. PowerCMD loads pretty much instantly and PromptPal feels quite sluggish in comparison at around 3 seconds... Add a third point to the mix and note that even with the $10 discount an UPGRADE to TCC 9 is $39.95 while licences for the other two mentioned consoles run about $20 and there are frequent updates to PowerCMD, less frequent updates to PromptPal, and upgrades are much less frequent that TCC... I no longer even have TCC 8 installed.

-Darwin (June 11, 2008, 04:36 PM)

June->February is way longer than 3-4 months, even if you expect v10 to be released next february.
I upgraded in february, when it came up for sale, but before the final was yet available.

If it really do take that kind of time on your computer, then I'd assume you most likely have a very slow computer,
or it is a downside of the trial itself..
On my computer it starts immediately (The pure commandline, i.e same interface as 4NT 8 ), and the gui (Take command)
uses about a second more.

I've never seen TCC 8, but I know TC8 and 4NT8 existed, and the latter was just as fast as this one.
With v9 you get all items you used to get in the JPSuite rolled into one, so 4NT (now TCC)/Take Command/Tabbed Command Interface
are all there.
TCMD and TCI are rolled into the TCMD executable, and TCC is standalone (and used by tcmd).

Slow updates (not upgrades) is usually a bad thing..

Powercmd seems to be the same old cmd with a new suit (no extensions compared to cmd, otherwise you'd expect
it to be listed among the features), although it seems to have other advantages.

Version 9 release is only about 4 months old (I got it when v9 became available for purchase, but before the final was released).

However, I just mentioned if anybody was interested, those that aren't...well..

66

Found Deals and Discounts / Take Command v9 New $20 off, Upgrade $10 off,TC/LE $10 off

« on: June 11, 2008, 03:42 PM »

Just thought you'd want to know..

Quote from the newsletter:

**********************************************************************
Get Special Summer Savings Now!
**********************************************************************
If you've been thinking about buying Take Command v9 or Take
Command/LE v9, now is the time.  We are offering special savings on
all of our products through the end of the month. 

Save $20 on new copies of TCv9 (use coupon "Summer20"). 

Save $10 on upgrade copies of TCv9 (use coupon "Summer10").

Save $10 on new copies of TC/LEv9 (use coupon "Summer10").

These special savings will be gone at the end of the month, so act
now.

http://store.jpsoft.com

67

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 09, 2008, 11:20 PM »

Yes, accessing environment variables from D+DR could be useful enough - I just wonder whether all (or "all the important", anyway) shells interpret "/c" the same way? Also, what if you have your %ComSpec% set to an "alien" shell that doesn't support the .bat file syntax? (ie., bash)? There's lots of issues to consider

By the way, it seems like ShellExecute does honor the batfile/cmdfile registry entries, but don't care about %ComSpect% at all. But with ShellExecute, you don't get to redirect stdin/stdout...

-f0dder (June 09, 2008, 09:36 PM)

Comspec is usually a pointer to cmd.exe, so it is implicitly expected that all shells entered there should be externally compatible (parameters) with cmd.

With the availability of environment variables on the D+DR this would be mute as no extra handling would be needed for comspec.

68

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 09, 2008, 09:25 PM »

myarmor: smartest thing would be adding some specific rules for .bat/.cmd and let you specify the app+commandline to use. This could probably be written as some fancy regex thing that could be used for other things as well...

And yeah, this did turn out somewhat convoluted, from what could have been a relatively simple issue - turned out the underlying mechanics are "somewhat fuzzy" though

-f0dder (June 09, 2008, 06:19 PM)

Yes, it might just work.
However, you could turn this into a generally useful thing, as those environment variables could be somewhat useful to access on the D+DR commandline somehow..

I suggested this as an alternative earlier on in this thread as this opens up the comspec for those that wants it, but it also opens up every single environment variable globally defined, such as homedrive,homedir,systemroot, or whatever..

This functionality could make it possible to use the exact same .Ddr for different users, making it possible to unrar files into subfolders of the current users Download folder for instance.
And you could send the same file to a friend and he could use it without changes (at least as long as the same language is used).

Regarding the initial comspec implementation itself, I've implemented the suggested behaviour a couple of times myself for some custom utilities without any issues..
Usually it's more or less straight forward except detecting .bat and .cmd files, then executing it with the contents of the comspec variable, and prepending "/c " before the commandline itself.

69

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 07, 2008, 11:25 AM »

third and final question -- is there any value in letting the user manually specify the command shell to use when launching .bat files instead of checking %comspec%.  this would be useful for people who want to use an alternate shell not configured through %comspec%

-mouser

Probably the most failsafe method of doing it, and definitely the easiest.

EDIT: I just checked the (32-bit) version of kernel32.dll from my XP64 system, and indeed CreateProcess has hardcoded checks for .bat and .cmd, and hardcodes "cmd /c".

-f0dder (June 06, 2008, 11:58 PM)

Yes it might be..

Hmm, the most straightforward would be to just ignore this..
Sometimes I'm surprised how a straight forward minor change can be talked into being a big big thing.. 

70

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 08:58 PM »

@Mouser, I'd noticed you had your fill of that kind (an opinion I share), so I wanted to make sure this wasn't seen as one.

I'm still rather new on these forums you know.

71

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 07:31 PM »

Btw, if you want to check out what I'm talking about, there's a free (limited featureset, still more advanced than
the default command processor) named TCC/LE, a trial of Take Command, and a trial of Take Command LE at jpsoft.com

---
Mods: I'm not trying to advertise their product, but I thought you might like to look at it and see why I want it to be used
instead of the normal command processor.

If you consider THIS post to be an advertisement, then please remove it if you want to.

72

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 07:08 PM »

So really, this is no fault of mouser's - pretty annoying anyway, as it sounds like .cmd and .bat need special manual handling in order to use %ComSpec%...

-f0dder (June 06, 2008, 06:30 PM)

No more than the code above (and that one includes an execute example, not just the code to extract the
comspec, then refer to it in the createprocess statement).

You would use comspec for batch files, i.e .bat and .cmd as you guessed.

73

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 06:54 PM »

right ok, well i'm quite happy to check for the launching of .bat files and use %comspec% when launching them.. the only real question is whether i should just do that always, or do i need an option to let the user say they do NOT want %comspec% being used, and would prefer default of cmd.exe.

-mouser (June 06, 2008, 06:47 PM)

The default value of %comspec% IS:
%systemroot%\system32\cmd.exe

try to type SET on the commandline.

74

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 06:51 PM »

Quoted from the Win32 SDK documentation, CreateProcess:
To run a batch file, you must start the command interpreter; set lpApplicationName to cmd.exe and set lpCommandLine to the name of the batch file.

It is the cmd.exe part in the text above that is changed to the contents of the comspec environment variable.

// This simply expands the comspec environment variable, then tries to execute a batch file using the expanded contents
// as the command processor.
// Note, this tidbit looks like h..., has no errorchecking, no redirection, and probably has lots of issues,
// but its just a demonstration.

#include <windows.h>
int main(void){
   STARTUPINFO inf;
   char cmdspecstr[MAX_PATH];
   PROCESS_INFORMATION pinf;
   ZeroMemory(cmdspecstr,sizeof(cmdspecstr));
   if (GetEnvironmentVariable("COMSPEC",(LPTSTR)&cmdspecstr,MAX_PATH)==0){ //In case we have an error of some kind while getting the string.          
          strcpy(cmdspecstr,"c:\\windows\\system32\\cmd.exe"); //here we could've retrieved the systemroot environment variable instead of pointing to a hardcoded path.
        }
   ZeroMemory(&inf,sizeof(inf));
   inf.cb=sizeof(inf);
   CreateProcess(cmdspecstr," /c c:\\tmp\\test.bat",NULL,NULL,true,
       NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,NULL,NULL,&inf,&pinf);
       return 0;
}

75

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Suggestion: Use Comspec

« on: June 06, 2008, 06:02 PM »

The reason that there is a bit of confusion and probably what f0dder is getting at, is the fact that i dont ever call cmd.exe explicitly.

I actually dont use shellexecute either, i usee CreateProcess because it allows me to pipe the output and capture it to be displayed in the program.

So the point is that the OS is the one deciding to launch cmd.exe to execute the .bat files.  Which is i think why f0dder was suggesting that maybe there are other places where you should configure the OS to tell windows to always launch .bat files with tcc.exe.

I could however try to either check the environment and try to launch bat files with replacement COMSPEC or allow an option of how .bat files should be launched explicitly rather than relying on OS to decide which program to use.

Question: Would you ONLY use %COMSPEC% for launching .bat files? or would you use it for ALL shelling of any executable?

-mouser (June 06, 2008, 05:56 PM)

Please reread the my previous message, I edited it a bit..

the expanded %comspec% would be used wherever cmd would, or the alternative, should you decide on that would
also do just fine.