Topics

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General Software Discussion / Is there a utility that can remap a given key or shortcut to a unicode char?

« on: April 09, 2023, 07:14 PM »

Although I live in the UK, due to circumstances beyond my control, I am now using a US keyboard, and have therefore set the keyboard layout to US in Windows 11.

I don't want to faff around with the shortcut of "ALT key and type the number 0163" to obtain the £ symbol. Instead I just want to use something like Right Alt + 4 to obtain it. Microsoft Powertoys allows you to remap keys. However, it doesn't seem to allow a £ symbol in the "Mapped to" section (unless one of the special VK "Virtual Key" codes might do the trick).

I've tried pretty much all the keyboard remapping tools shown here, but unfortunately, none of them allow you to remap to a key outside the current keyboard character space. Since the £ symbol doesn't exist in the US keyboard layout, they therefore don't allow you to map to that character.

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Announce Your Software/Service/Product / WildGem 2.10 Christmas 2022 release (updated from 2021's v1.5)

« on: September 22, 2021, 07:16 AM »

Download and home page here: https://www.skytopia...om/software/wildgem/

Please see my latest post in this thread for v2.10 info!


OLDER INFO BELOW:

Wildgem version 1.50 is a big update since the last version (1.32). For more information, see the previous thread on the topic here.

Wildgem is a free (beer), portable, and ultra sugary wrapper for Regex. It takes all the juicy bits from Regex, but makes writing expressions much simpler by providing unique and memorable symbols to replace the sometimes arcane and easily forgotten syntax from pure Regex. The program is great for people who don't want to get into Regex, but who find the usual find/replace feature in many text editors or programming languages too limiting. Nevertheless, Regex experts will still appreciate the colour coding, lightning speed, large input/output areas, realtime updating as you type, and the ability to still write pure regex.

It has been featured over at Ghacks, Trishtech and also on Donation Coder's very own Coding Snacks section.

Simple usage:



Advanced usage:



In this v1.50 update are some big new features:

 - First a MAJOR bug fix which prevented many people from using it. I falsely assumed that everyone had the Arial Unicode MS font when in reality, this font is only distributed with Excel 2013 (and earlier?). As a result, the special Wildgem symbols wouldn't appear. In v1.50, alternative fonts are used as a fall back.

 - Second new feature is the new "Optional" symbol which emulates the useful '?' from Regex. This was a much needed addition to Wildgem and now more or less completes the basic Regex feature set.

 - Third new feature is the Load and Save project functions so you can easily continue from your earlier expressions that you built and edit them.

 - Finally, the best new feature is the "Multiple line functions" which allows you to express multiple regex/Wildgem commands in one sweep. This is much nicer than trying to cram a bunch of Regex into a single line/command.

As always, .NET 4.0 framework is needed. This should come with Windows 10 by default however and is otherwise a simple download for earlier versions of Windows.

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General Software Discussion / Removing near-duplicate rows in Filemon / Process Monitor to more easily analyze

« on: December 21, 2018, 06:57 AM »

Tried to post this to SuperUser, and even offered a bounty, but didn't get much luck.

I am looking for a Filemon/Procmon type program which has better filtering and more importantly, allows you omit near-duplicate lines from being logged. There can be hundreds or thousands of these rows, and they really complicate trying to find other transactions.

For example, take a look at this image. I don't want to see Irfanview updating its .ini file 1 zillion times, specifying every single time it locks, queries, reads, writes, unlocks, or whatever else it apparently wants to do.

Process Monitor is apparently not up to the job, but maybe there's similar software which can perform this fundamental task?

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General Software Discussion / Fast and flexible graphing software?

« on: July 02, 2015, 04:56 AM »

Can anyone recommend software for showing 2D graphs from CSV data?

I want to be able to freely and smoothly move around the graph with the mouse (with the mouse wheel as zoom!). It should support linear and exponential graphs, and in between if possible. Translating the graph by dragging it would be cool, as would retranslating the graph as the deltas between each data point.

It should preferably also display many columns of data at once (multiple lines on the graph), and allow you to set which column/s go under and beside the margins (for example, timestamps in the CSV). Colour coding the graph would be ideal, especially if it allows you to program in the rules about how it should be coloured (e.g: colour green if the maximum magnitude delta is under 5%, and blue if it's under 1% over say, a five minute window).

I'm not too interested in fancy 3D isometric views or ray-traced global illumination - functional above eye candy is preferred.

Free would be nice, but otherwise under say $50 if possible. Please say that such software exists so I don't have to create it

***Edit*** Oh just to add: I created a comparison of such software eight years ago, though each one had their own faults, and I'm sure some have advanced since then!

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Announce Your Software/Service/Product / WildGem 1.1

« on: June 15, 2015, 01:34 PM »

I originally posted an idea for a new "find and replace" program here. A couple of people liked the idea, so I developed it into a real application.

It takes the good bits from Regex, but makes the syntax simpler in a few ways. The program is great for people who don't want to get into Regex, but who find the usual find/replace feature in many text editors too limiting. More information on its advantages can be found in the link below, or in that thread from earlier.

For those who missed it, or who want a faster, non-glitchy, updated version of that beta edition, download the latest version 1.1 here:

http://www.skytopia.com/software/wildgem (requires .NET 4)

Here's some screenshots:

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General Software Discussion / WildOpal - hypothetical new idea for a "find and replace" program

« on: May 24, 2015, 11:38 AM »

I wanted to do a simple 'find and replace' in Notepad++, and found out that it can only support simple WYSIWYG queries or over-complicated Regex statements which can sometimes feel like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. After some frustration going down that road, I decided to think about how a "find and replace" feature should work, at least for 99% of purposes. I wanted something elegant and simple, yet clear and relatively powerful. I wanted NOT to worry about escaping special characters, yet I didn't want to lose the power that would usually provide or the efficiency of using the keyboard.

Colour coding, multiple lines, dual/split display, and on-the-fly updating come as standard (as per my other program Opalcalc ;).

This is what I've come up with so far. It's not a working program yet. I wanted to see if there was much interest in developing this further, and maybe even there's something already out there similar as I'm not overly keen on reinventing the wheel.



The unique unicode-flavoured characters offer numerous advantages over typical Regex/Extended syntax queries which rely on existing symbols:

1: It's clearer to formulate expressions and see what you're searching for, and whether certain characters are supposed to be 'special' or 'not'.

2: It's clearer for someone who has to read the expression and who had no idea what you were trying to do.

3: No worry about having to escape characters which may otherwise interpret normal text as 'special' commands. In comparison, with Regex, you may need worry about escaping more than ten different symbols over a text file!

4: Expressions can be reused for different texts without worrying about escaping anything in those texts.

5: Each symbol is easier to commit to memory, so the learning curve is greatly shortened.

Function keys are used for the special characters, so no speed is lost if you're only typing.

I've been pretty frustrated with how cumbersome and arcane the syntax can appear when formulating Regex queries. I hope many of you appreciate the advantages such an approach would provide. By all means, I'd be interested to hear any tweaks or additions to the general concept if you can think of anything! What kind of programs come closest?

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General Software Discussion / Program to override usual window close button with superfast TerminateProcess?

« on: March 26, 2015, 01:30 PM »

I'm often looking for enhancements to improve Windows. Is there any program I can use to over-ride the usual close functionality with something a little....nippier?

You may notice when you quit a crashed program with the standard close button, it still takes a while to close. Using the task manager on the other hand is usually a much faster experience. Yes, I know it's supposed to be 'dangerous', but I'm prepared to experiment with the feature, and if I run into any problems I can always fall back to the old, slow way of exiting a crashed app. Perhaps the program I'm looking for could detect if it's crashed and end it quicker than Windows usually would. Or maybe a side-feature will allow you to close it normally by clicking Ctrl and the close button.

On a related note, a browser I used to use called Opera took *so* long to close, that I always ended up quitting it with the task manager just to save time and prevent the HD from thrashing. I never suffered any ill effects as a result.

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Announce Your Software/Service/Product / SunsetScreen v1.0

« on: March 15, 2015, 09:49 PM »

Most of you reading a forum dedicated to software (such as this one) will probably have heard about F.lux, and how it 'warms' the screen so you can sleep better at night, or at least have a screen which doesn't glare as much.

Cue SunsetScreen which is like F.lux but improved. In fact SunsetScreen is the only app of its type to allow you to precisely change the hue, saturation and brightness to allow you to match the screen's colour to the indoor lighting. This makes the screen look more appropriate whilst still encouraging the production of melatonin for a good night's sleep.

But perhaps a bigger advantage of SunsetScreen over any other program is the ability to set the sunset and sunrise times to match your sleep pattern, and not the whim of the seasons. For example, in winter, we only get a short day, and programs like F.lux would have the day colour too late, and the night colour too early. SunsetScreen fixes this so that you get a consistent colour changing cycle, whatever time of year it is.

So if you want to maximize seratonin production during the day, and melatonin at night, download SunsetScreen from here:

http://www.skytopia....nsetscreen/index.htm

(btw, I'm the same guy who created SonicPhoto and OpalCalc. Like those two, I'm the developer of SunsetScreen).

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Screenshot Captor / Screenshot Captor used as solution to SuperUser.com question

« on: February 20, 2015, 01:29 PM »

Just like to thank the author of Screenshot Captor, as it's the only tool I've found so far which captures a window which overlaps the screen's resolution (I needed to grab a 6000x4000 pixel window!). Amazing tool, and something I could have only expected from DonationCoder.

On Superuser.com, the bounty-winning answer (awarded by me) used Screenshot Captor as part of the solution: http://superuser.com...rger-than-the-screen

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Announce Your Software/Service/Product / SonicPhoto

« on: September 01, 2012, 08:53 AM »

Like OpalCalc, I am the sole developer of a new program I've been working on hard these past few months called "SonicPhoto" (actually, my brother did help a bit with the graphics this time). In a nutshell, it converts from a picture (photo, drawing, anything) to sound.

It's similar to a program called PhotoSounder, and even though it lacks the in-built graphics editor and sound importer of that program, it has tasty automatic stereo, and a harmony feature which AFAIK is completely novel to this kind of thing.

The main page is found here:
http://www.skytopia..../software/sonicphoto

Unlike OpalCalc, this one's priced at a fixed amount ($40-100). However, if any of you have previously donated to OpalCalc, I would be happy to give the Silver edition (worth $40) away for free as a thankyou for your support.

Here's the demo video:
http://youtu.be/8BGr1u-Oz8M

Despite being version 1.00, I would say it's already very solid and shouldn't crash or have any bugs (famous last words).

Love to hear any comments and/or criticism. You guys are the first to see it!

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Announce Your Software/Service/Product / OpalCalc 1.43

« on: April 07, 2012, 04:56 PM »

I am the sole developer of "OpalCalc" for Windows XP/Vista/7 (requires .NET 3.5 or higher), a program with a short but colourful history. It's been featured on LifeHacker, PC World and MakeUseOf, and is currently rated 4.6/5 (20 reviews) at Softpedia.

But since then, it's got quite a lot better Here is the download page:

http://www.skytopia.com/software/opalcalc/

The standard Windows calculator falls short in a number of ways, but most of all it won't allow multiple calculations at once, or allow you to go back and edit previous sums. Before OpalCalc, it turned out nothing on Windows like this existed. The Mac had something called 'Soulver', but a port didn't seem likely soon, so I've slaved away solid for almost a year creating something I hope many of you will appreciate.

The video on the site gives a good overview, but briefly:

Opalcalc uses a special 'notepad' interface where answers are displayed next to the sums, and update live as you type. This makes it ideal for quick sums, or more involved calculations, perhaps such as shopping lists, a work timetable, tax return, math problem, programming debugging, and much more.

You can work with dates and times, money and currency conversion, units (+ conversion), percentages, and use custom variables and functions. OpalCalc supports dozens of in built functions, full colour coding, printing/loading/saving, advanced notation support, excellent documentation and much more.

The pricing is interesting and I think sympathizes with the philosophy of donationcoder.com. Users can use the generous 'demo' (5 lines, but no time limit), and if they upgrade, they can pay a fee of their choice. Even 1 dollar would get them the full version. Furthermore, there are no passwords, keys or DRM of any sort - the license lasts forever, and upgrades are free.

Any comments and reviews would be appreciated. Feel free to dish out any constructive criticism (the amount I've had so far has only allowed me improve OpalCalc, so it's all good!).