Messages

1

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Photo Downloader Kiosk

« on: October 20, 2008, 08:20 AM »

Skrommel: I decided to try your script just for the fun of it, copy pasterde the code from your original post and ran the script. The only problem was that I couldn't close the window, nor do anything else with my computer since the window steels all focus. (I realise this is a "feature" of the program, but for the unknowning user testing this, it's very annoying.) I could barely launch Task Manager and had to look up how to use tskill and taskkill to kill all autohotkey.exe processes. Perhaps it would be a smart idea to include a close button in your script by default and explain to people who actually want to use this as a kiosk how to disable the close button (Just comment out the "gui, add, button" line of code for example). I'm really happy that I didn't have to restart, because I've been upgrading a Magellan GPS for a colleague on my computer for the past 2 hours and it was just about finished when I tried PhotoKiosk.

I'll have to do some research on how to close the window before I run it again. I'm guessing it's a nice program though. I'm curious on how you create the thumbnails and also about why it's not listed in your main software page? Is it too early or are you not planning on listing it there?

2

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: October 17, 2008, 11:42 AM »

VideoInPicture: I'm a regular reader at www.lifehacker.com and it was pretty funny seing this post today. Congratulations on all the positive reviews! Also, I've now tested Fanix Fullscreen with Autodesk Inventor and it works like a charm, it has the exact functionality that I was looking for in my original post. It's a great program.

3

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: October 09, 2008, 08:12 AM »

Skrommel: That's a great find! It works wonderfully and it's something that could actually be very practical as a day-to-day program. I would consider giving it space in my startup folder had any of you made the program. I had thought about how to make the other controls from the parent window available once a certain control was made fullscreen, Fanix Fullscreen seems to have solved that very nicely.

I can't reliably report on the CPU usage because my old laptop is usually overly-taxed as it is. It seems though, as though it's fairly nice on resources.

Also, I don't actually normally use Autodesk Inventor myself but I'll hassle one of our engineers soon and post the results.

4

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: October 08, 2008, 03:09 AM »

VideoInPicture: Am I the only person that refers to you by your nick? In any case I wanted to congratulate you on both "Window Extractor" and "Present This Window", I'm very pleased that others have realised their usefulness.

Unfortunately, neither seem to do the trick for Autodesk Inventor: Window Extractor makes it crash, and Present This Window creates a "static" fullscreen presentation, whereas I hoped to be able to continue to interact with the window and its controls and make it a "live" fullscreen presentation. Window Extractor really was perfect for this purpose and it might also be that it works with older versions of Autodesk Inventor.

On another note, since these programs are almost identical in use and function wouldn't be completely natural to combine the two into a single Fullscreen Presentation program with two different "modes"?

5

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Folder name column in Windows Explorer

« on: October 01, 2008, 09:41 AM »

fenixproductions: That looks like a great starting point, but if mattmas is correct it won't have any effect at all on the Vault interface.

mattmas: I thought Vault used the Microsoft Outlook GUI, but I suppose it's just made to look that way?

6

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: October 01, 2008, 09:29 AM »

VideoInPicture: Doh! That's explains quite a bit... Any progress on the magnifying approach?

7

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Folder name column in Windows Explorer

« on: September 30, 2008, 11:07 AM »

mattmas: "Unfortunately, it's not possible to customize the Vault user-interface", that's why I've been wondering if it's possible to customize the standard windows explorer instead. A few of the columns which can be selected in Vault's search pane seem to be standard windows explorer columns, so I was hoping that if we could add a column to the standard windows explorer it would also show up in the Vault interface. But by the sounds of it, it's not going to be worth the work.

8

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 30, 2008, 11:02 AM »

VideoInPicture: Sorry for the delayed reply! I've tested Window Extractor a few more times and it consistently makes Autodesk Inventor crash. It probably has to do with the fact that the program is changing the parent of the window.

Today I thought of a very easy solution which doesn't involve setting the parent of the window. This solution is actually something that could be done very easily with AutoHotkey but considering your app already works very well, perhaps you could incorporate this. How about making sure the parent window isn't maximized (i.e. If the window is maximized, restore it) first, then finding the size of the given control, then resize and reposition the parent window so that the control fills the entire screen? Isn't it perfectly possible to set the size of a window to be larger than the screen size? This approach is easy, simple and would ensure that all functionality of the window and its control is kept intact. Perhaps you could incorporate several approaches and list them as option? What do you think?

Also, since this is meant to be a presentation tool. Perhaps it should be taken into account that the users might be using multiple monitors? Would that be difficult to somehow accomodate?

9

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 18, 2008, 06:46 AM »

VideoInPicture: I tested your app with Excel 2003 since it seems to handle windows similarly to Autodesk Inventor. Window Extractor worked flawlessly and expanded the spreadsheet to fullscreen and back again, so your app is definetly a keeper. However, when I tested it with Inventor, the program crashed miserably right away. I'm not sure why or what could be done to workaround this. Any ideas?

10

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 18, 2008, 05:45 AM »

Fantastic! Thank you so much for your efforts. I'll test this today and post the results asap.

11

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 08, 2008, 02:50 AM »

Skrommel: It would be great if you found something on this. I hope it's your own script you wind up finding because that will give us the possibility to customize it. Takk!

12

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 05, 2008, 02:36 AM »

lanux128: Thanks for the tip, I might be able to find some code I could use in one of those program's but out-of-the-box, neither had the capabilities that I'm looking for. This seems like something that nicely complement the other commands of WinWarden. If only Skrommel were here....

13

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Folder name column in Windows Explorer

« on: September 05, 2008, 02:23 AM »

Thank you for the replies!

jgpaiva/tomos: I personally use XYplorer because it is one of the few explorer alternatives that supports portable file associations. It also has the "Copy fil path" built in to it which I use incessantly. For this purpose though, this is not an option. I need to add a new column to the standard windows explorer because the program in question (Autodesk Vault) uses the same columns as windows explorer.

gogogadgetscott: Vista's "Folder path" is exactly what I'm looking for and the fact that it's already a feature of Vista might be one of the reasons the developer hasn't bothered to address this issue. It will solve itself once people upgrade from XP to Vista. (I hope that last comment doesn't spark an entirely different discussion;) ). It's funny, I made an almost identical program in VB6.0 a while ago and created a tiny installer for it with NSIS. It's called "Copy Full Path" and does just that. But that doesn't solve this problem either because I need to be able to visually see the folder path of multiple files.

Any ideas?

14

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Very Simple File Copier Windows

« on: September 04, 2008, 01:32 PM »

Since you mentioned that you currently use Robocopy, I thought you might be interested to know that there is a GUI for Robocopy available here: Robocopy GUI

15

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 04, 2008, 01:28 PM »

VideoInPicture: Thanks for your quick reply but this is slightly different to what I'm looking for. I know of Zoomit from the Sysinternals suite of applications, like the rest of the suite it is very reliable and does exactly what it says on the tin. Ideally though, I do not want to zoom anything because that will distort the image and possibly complicate user input. Ideally, I just want to be able to stretch a given control to fill the entire screen and be able to interact normally with it.

16

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Folder name column in Windows Explorer

« on: September 04, 2008, 01:20 PM »

Hey!

This is again relating specifically to Autodesk Inventor and even more specifically to Autodesk Inventor Vault. Inventor is a CAD software to create 3D models and drawing and Vault is a database which keeps track of all the files (Drawing numbers, revisions, links etc). It has a search feature which works fine but which doesn't display the folder in which the files are found which is important. The standard file search of windows does exactly what it should, it displays the file names of all files that meet the search criteria and it shows the names of all the folder in which the files are found. In Vault it is possible to select what file information you want to display for example modified and created dates, file sizes etc. These columns are the same columns which are available in the standard Windows Explorer. My question is, is it possible to create somekind of shell extension which will add a custom column to windows explorer? This column should display the path of the file name (with or without the filename itself). See screenshot attached.

Can this be done within a few hours of coding??


Thanks in advance,
Murple

17

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Toggle Fullscreen of Control

« on: September 04, 2008, 01:01 PM »

Hey!

I would like to have a small program that will allow a user to stretch a given region of the screen (a window and/or control) to fill the entire screen and then "unstretch" it back to its original size and position. The program wouldn't need a user interface of its own, hotkeys would probably suffice. More specifically, I need to stretch a window in Autodesk Inventor which is a 3D CAD program and give the user the ability to show only the 3D model on the screen without any of toolbars, buttons, taskbars etc. that clutter the working space. This program would be of equal interest to many other 3D packages (That don't have this feature already) or other software. It's main intention is for presentation purposes where you want to clean the screen for distracting elements. I suppose this could be accomplished by hiding the regions of the screen that are not of interest, but I am looking for something that will make maximum use of the screen real estate.

I have experience with AutoHotkey but I haven't been able to find a suitable solution. I've tried a few different approaches so far:

-Set the size of the control to be equal to the screen size and set the control to be the topmost control.
This didn't work because the control is a child of the parent window (Autodesk Inventor) and I couldn't set the size of the child control to be larger than the size of the parent window. The control is stuck inside the parent window.

-Detach the control, set its parent to a new gui and set the size of the gui to be equal to the screen size
This is when I came across Skrommels DetachVideo. This seems to be very promising and a great starting point. Extending and modifying DetachVideo to detach and stretch any control would do the trick nicely. One issue with this approach is that even if all keystrokes and mouse clicks are "forwarded" to the parent window, the parent window has "lost control of the control" so the program might not function properly?

-Create a separate window which magnifies the original control
This might work as well, but I couldn't get things right and ideall I would like not to distort the image (zoom). If nothing else works then this will suffice.

Related links I've come across:
Similar request for program
SetParent function (make a gui belong to another window)
holomind's ScreenMagnifier

I've attached some pictures showing the Autodesk Inventor main window.

• The first image shows the standard window with the window of the 3D model maximized inside the parent window.
• The second image shows the standard window with the windows of the 3D model "restored" inside the parent window.
• The third image shows what I want the full screen to look like. This essentially shows the entire goal of the program
• Snapshot from WindowSpy

Can this be accomplished?


Thanks in advance.
Murple

18

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« on: February 11, 2007, 07:40 PM »

ClipWrite isn't very good yet, mostly because it's slow because the code sucks and it's still buggy. But in functionality, this is what I had in mind:

#singleinstance force
;Run the script, then enter Win+C and type your text. Hitting the enter key, will hide the window and copy what you wrote to the clipboard. Ready to be pasted elsewhere.
coordmode, mouse, screen
;The codeline Enter:: means that hitting enter will close the program and copy the text. This makes it very quick to close, but it disables your enter key when elsewhere when the program is running. What is the workaround for this? I want the code in the Enter:: section to be executed only if the gui


#z::
 gosub, BuildGui
return



Enter::
 GuiControlGet, MyEdit
 if ErrorLevel = 0
  {
   clipboard = %ControlText%
   Gui, destroy
   SetTimer, UpdateGUI, Off
  }
return

#q::ExitApp


BuildGui:
 CustomColor = EEAA99  ; Can be any RGB color (it will be made transparent below).
 Gui, +AlwaysOnTop +LastFound +Owner  ; +Owner prevents a taskbar button from appearing.
 Gui, Color, %CustomColor%
 Gui, Font, s20
 Gui, Add, Text, w500 vMyText c800080, XXXXX YYYYY  ; XX & YY serve to auto-size the window.
 Gui, Add, Edit, vMyEdit
 GuiControl, Move, MyEdit, x10000 y10000 
 ;GuiControl, hide, MyEdit


 ; Make all pixels of this color transparent and make the text itself translucent (150):
 WinSet, TransColor, %CustomColor% 200
 Gui, -Caption  ; Remove the title bar and window borders.


 SetTimer, UpdateGUI, 50
  Gosub, UpdateGUI  ; Make the first update immediate rather than waiting for the timer.
 return

return


UpdateGUI:
 MouseGetPos, MouseX, MouseY
 msgWidth = 570
 msgHeight = 120
 SysGet, MonitorWorkArea, MonitorWorkArea, %A_Index%
 maxRight := (MonitorWorkAreaRight - msgWidth)
 maxBottom := (MonitorWorkAreaBottom - msgHeight)


 ;msgbox, msgWidth:%msgWidth%`nmsgHeight: %msgHeight%`n`nMouseX: %MouseX%`nMouseY: %MouseY%`n`nMonRight: %MonitorWorkAreaRight%`nMonBot: %MonitorWorkAreaBottom%`n`nMaxRight: %maxRight%`nMaxBot: %maxBottom%

 if(MouseX > maxRight)
 {
 MouseX = %maxRight%
 }

 if(MouseY > maxBottom)
 {
 MouseY = %maxBottom%
 }

 Gui, Show, x%MouseX% y%MouseY%
 ;GuiControl,, MyText, x%MouseX% y%MouseY%
 GuiControlGet, ControlText, , MyEdit, Text
 GuiControl,, MyText, %ControlText%
return

Could be used together with Jim Biancolo's PlainPaste as a sort of clipboard extension.

19

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« on: February 08, 2007, 06:58 PM »

rjbull,

Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't look like OCR...

You're entirely right, that is not OCR (although one could -stupidly- argue that it's OCR performed by the user as opposed to the computer :). I would love to have a program which would allow me to select part of my screen, perform OCR on it and copy the recognized text to the clipboard. Unfortunately, coding anything involving OCR is lightyears out of my league.

Instead then, I'd like to conjure up a tiny application which allows you to "write directly to the clipboard" in the easiest, fastest most intuitive and least intrusive way. I'd call it ClipWrite.

Thank you for the program suggestions but they weren't quite what I had in mind.

20

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Get current directory

« on: February 08, 2007, 06:42 PM »

Neither did I, I learned it while trying to decipher your code. Glad you liked it.

21

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Get current directory

« on: January 10, 2007, 06:43 PM »

Oh, I forgot to mention that I like your script(s). 

22

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Get current directory

« on: January 10, 2007, 06:42 PM »

Skrommel,

I realise this thread is ancient but I've been roaming the forums and this caught my eye. I read through your code and couldn't figure out why you had to send text to the command prompt. It's odd you can't just do run, cmd f:\anydrive\anyfolder. Anyhow, I found a nice article at microsoft.com which says: "You can use multiple commands separated by the command separator && for string, but you must enclose them in quotation marks (for example, "command&&command&&command")." which means we can use:

[Select]

SplitPath,title,,,,,drive
run, cmd /k "%drive%&&cd %title%"[/

Full script:

[Select]

;GetCurDir.ahk v1.0
;Open the current dir of Explorer in a command prompt by pressing Ctrl-D
;Skrommel @2005

^d::
SetKeyDelay,0
IfWinExist,ahk_class ExploreWClass
  WinGetTitle,title,ahk_class ExploreWClass
Else
  WinGetTitle,title,ahk_class CabinetWClass
SplitPath,title,,,,,drive
run, cmd /k "%drive%&&cd %title%"

See also this great utility: The Command Prompt Explorer Bar

23

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« on: January 10, 2007, 05:55 PM »

I think this is a fantastic idea. I've been wanting to make a small AutoHotkey script for some time which is a simplified version of this. It would just pop-up a transparent, non-intrusive inputbox, allow you to type into it and when you hit enter it disappears and copies the text to the clipboard. I do this sort of thing many times everyday, but since I haven't made the program I usually end up hitting Win+R to type into the Start -> Run box, then do Shift+Home and Ctrl+C, Esc. Anyhow, I just wanted to express my enthusiasm for this project. Too bad the opensource OCR package Mouser found wasn't up to the task.