Messages

76

Developer's Corner / Re: help recompiling notepad++ plugin

« on: January 27, 2008, 08:41 PM »

Hey BlackCat,

I can get that compiled for you.. I'm a big fan of NotePad++ also.. Let me see what I can do...   

77

Living Room / Re: Suffering over USB

« on: January 18, 2008, 08:55 PM »

I have been pretty impressed with the eGo, it has a d/c in, but I never have used it; but it also has a USB cable that has two connectors on one end, and if the power output of the one port is not enough you can plug the 2nd one in for more juice, I have never had to do that I just thought it was good thinking to include it 

78

Living Room / Re: Suffering over USB

« on: January 18, 2008, 01:33 PM »

From horrible experiences with USB mass storage devices I'd have to agree with Darwin on this, sounds like a power problem...

Either the port is not putting out enough power, or the device is pulling too much..

I carry my entire environment around on external storage, and I started with a VERY slow USB flash drive ( 4gb ), and decided to upgrade to a 8gb with much faster transfer speeds ( 200mb/sec ) because apps took forever to start. It was a Corsair Survivor GT, and for a while it was perfect. But then I had the same problem you describe. In my case the volume would just disappear, the drive would still show as connected, but there would be no volume mounted, to make matters worse, some of my volumes were truecrypt volumes and would become corrupted during a write operation.  I got on the Corsair forums and had a tech helping me, had me try it in multiple systems and with multiple powered hubs, but it would still happen during heavy file usage. I sent it back, they sent a new one... same problem.. I gave up..

I ended up buying a Iomega eGo newegg, which is a 160gb external usb drive about the size of two decks of cards. Other than one incident with running chkdsk /f (read here: My Bricked eGo) it has been working flawlessly, of course I do incremental backups every week just in case

You can use this app to see what kind of power requirements your USB device has: UVCView.exe, you can download it from Microsoft, or PM me if you want me to send it to you.. it is under 200kb..

good luck..

 

79

General Software Discussion / Re: wanting a code snippets collection? use oneNote AND keep syntax highlighting

« on: January 17, 2008, 01:55 PM »

Just found this while checking out the Syn2 plugin for FreeCommander

SynTree v0.5 coders sourcebook
download [838.16Kb | 2050]

Programm used to store code snippets. For a long time i was using TreePad Lite and always want to syntax highlight & code indenting. But i've not fount any such progs in internet, so i 've to write myself.

    * Features : Tree-like code snippets organizer
    * Highlights incuded : Apache conf, Assembler (x86), C++ Source, CSS, Delphi&CBuilder Form, Delphi, HGL, INI, JAVA, Java Script, MSDOS Batch, PERL, PHP, SQL (Standard), Text Files, VBS, VRML, Windows Registry Files, XHTML.
    * Autocomplete function names & function parameters hint (Need extention)
    * TreePad format support (text only)
    * Fast hide prog to tray by Esc, restore from tray - Win + T

http://sepa.spb.ru/?syn_eng

80

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor Needed

« on: January 15, 2008, 12:15 PM »

I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for, but it is free and has a lot of plugins to support different file types:

AbiWord

http://www.abisource.com/screenshots/

81

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 09, 2008, 10:41 AM »

Can you send me the problem DFT file?

82

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 09, 2008, 09:59 AM »

why is the Found Families is less than the Families?

I noticed this also, every file seems to have a blank family which needs to be read so the index is correct, but it has no values. I don't completely understand why it is there..

83

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 08, 2008, 09:07 PM »

That's great! Thank you so much for making this program.

No problem.. I learned a lot doing it, that was the idea

So did you figure out how to do this?

Yes, basically the dta file data is stored in order of how it is indexed, so as long as you read it in and store the individual and family position, the references between individual and family work out correctly.

What do you mean base 16?

Where decimal is base 10 ( our natural number system ) you have 10 unique characters, computers are binary ( which is base 2, on or off), base 16 is binary shorthand (hexadecimal) and has 16 characters 0-9 A-F. So he wanted to represent a month and only use one character. So he stored it in base 16 which would give him 12 unique chars plus a few, and then converting back you could use something like the strtol C runtime function with the radix of 16 to get the original number back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal
http://www.cplusplus.../cstdlib/strtol.html

Really? Like which tags?

This is from the help file that comes with the compiler:
The Dynamic Family Tree Compiler uses the following subset of the records defined by The GEDCOM Standard - Release 5.5 (Electronic Version).

Unless explicitly listed below, all other records are ignored.

Spoiler

INDIVIDUAL RECORD

0   @XREF:INDI@ INDI

1   NAME <NAME PERSONAL>
      2   NPFX <NAME_PIECE_PREFIX>
      2   GIVN <NAME_PIECE_GIVEN>
      2   NICK <NAME_PIECE_NICKNAME>
      2   SPFX <NAME_PIECE_SURNAME_PREFIX>
      2   SURN <NAME_PIECE_SURNAME>
      2   NSFX <NAME_PIECE_SUFFIX>

1   SEX <SEX_VALUE>

1   BIRT
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   BAPM
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   CHR
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   DEAT
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   b BURI
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   OCCU <OCCUPATION>

1   TITL <NOBILITY_TYPE_TITLE>

1   FAMC @<XREF:FAM>@
   1   FAMS @<XREF:FAM>@

1   NOTE @<XREF:NOTE>@

1   NOTE [<SUBMITTER_TEXT> | <NULL>]
      2   [CONC | CONT] <SUBMITTER_TEXT>]

1   OBJE
      2   FORM <MULTIMEDIA FORMAT>
      2   TITL <DESCRIPTIVE TITLE>
      2   FILE <FILE REFERENCE>


FAMILY RECORD

0   @XREF:FAM@ FAM

1   MARR [Y | <NULL>]
      2   DATE <DATE_VALUE>
      2   PLAC <PLAC_VALUE>

1   HUSB @<XREF:INDI>@
   1   WIFE @<XREF:INDI>@
   1   CHIL @<XREF:INDI>@

NOTE RECORD

0   @XREF:NOTE@ NOTE <SUBMITTER_TEXT>
   1   [CONC | CONT] <SUBMITTER_TEXT>

A regex match would probably work without too many errors unless someone was deliberately trying to mess with the program.

The problem is there can be either a date or a place, or both. Trying to figure out which is which is the tough part. Date seems to always come before place, never the other way around, and they are always separated by commas; but commas can be in dates. It is definitely not an exact science

If you want I could send you the 19 DFTs I'm trying to convert. I don't have the original GEDCOM files though...

Since the app is pretty much ready, I'll just PM you a link to the download and you can process the files and let me know what does and does not work.. Probably send you the link before I knock off for the night.

84

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 08, 2008, 04:25 PM »

The DFT to GEDCOM converter is pretty much done, the command line version anyway. It supports conversion from dta files or dftdbs.zip files, so there is no need to extract the dta files from the zip archives is you don't want to. I did find some problems. Like most compilers it looks like some data is lost in the compile process. The DFT compiler only supports a limited set of GEDCOM tags and the rest of the data it just ignores, so that data is gone. The DFT compiler also combines some data like death/birth/baptized/married info into one string and I have done my best to parse it apart, by trying to match the date string with a regular expression that you can override from the command line, I get it right most of the time, but I'm sure a few oddball entries will get past. It also looks like the DFT compiler ignores multiple NOTE entries in individuals, and just drops the data.

An example of a string with birth/death/baptism/marriage data in it looks like this:

b: 11 JUL 1866|c: 5 AUG 1866, Gringley on the Hill, Notts|d: 1 APR 1956, Sherwood Hospital, Nottingham - i: Beckingham, Notts

and in GEDCOM it needs to look like this:

1 BIRT
2 DATE 11 JUL 1866
1 CHR
2 DATE 5 AUG 1866
2 PLAC Gringley on the Hill, Notts
1 DEAT
2 DATE 1 APR 1956
2 PLAC Sherwood Hospital, Nottingham
1 BURI
2 PLAC Beckingham, Notts

This is a well behaved string, but not all strings conform, so some hand editing of the GEDCOM file might have to occur in the situations where the app can't figure it out.

You can also try to help it by modifying how dates are matched by specifying a date format string on the command line in regular expression format, because anything that is not a date is a place. The problem really happens with strings like this:

@info Housewife|b: FEBRUARY 22, 1922, Cork, Ireland|d: MAY 1967, New York USA

the first date is a problem, because of the use of a comma in the date. Everywhere else the comma is used to separate date and place.

My sample set is pretty small too.. I have the file you pointed me to, and a gedcom file I compiled and then de-compiled to test, so once people start using the program chances are there will be things I will need to fix here and there.

I need to test a few more things, but it looks pretty good for posting a link for you tomorrow so you can download the command line tool and test it out.

85

General Software Discussion / Re: Heap memory view

« on: January 08, 2008, 09:18 AM »

Yea.. I use the fluid studios color picker a lot too, and when I went back a while ago to check for updates I found that they had moved everything to flash on both Paul Nettle's site and the Fluid Studios main site , it is so painful to get around... 

86

General Software Discussion / Re: Heap memory view

« on: January 07, 2008, 08:45 PM »

For large systems I usually use Paul Nettle's memory manager in debug builds. I have only used HeapMemView on smaller projects in the rare situation where I'm seeing problems in release builds and not in debug builds, but I agree with you, doing things post-mortem is kind of like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted 

87

General Software Discussion / Re: Heap memory view

« on: January 07, 2008, 02:19 PM »

I have used it a few times in desperation when hunting down memory allocation problems, especially when I'm pretty sure I have something stepping on a pointer I thought was good ( OUCH !! ).

Here is a pretty good explanation of the heap:

http://en.wikipedia....ic_memory_allocation

NirSoft has a lot or really good utils that can help out when you are in a pinch: HeapMemView, smsniff, GDIView and Regscanner are particularly useful. I actually keep the whole set of NirSoft tools as part of my dev tool set..

Another good tool, along the same lines in a way, is ImageViewer; which lets you peak into your device contexts and image handles and see exactly what is in there. If you are doing any GDI work, it can really come in handy:

http://www.codeproje...ons/imageviewer.aspx 

 

88

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 03, 2008, 04:17 PM »

Thanks.. I didn't know how much you had figured out, figured I would pick your brain. That little section is pretty helpful. I thought that is how it was being done, where the famc is an index into the family array, but I wasn't getting it to work. I must be off somewhere, I'll have to go back and check how I am setting up the indexes. I just ported over the function to translate the birth/death info string, which had some tricky bits to it. The part where he is representing the month in base 16 was interesting.. I'm getting there..

89

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: January 02, 2008, 11:49 AM »

Things are going pretty well now, except with the cold ( it is still here ), but I'm not sure how all of the data is linked. Did you learn anything about that from the java code?

90

General Software Discussion / Re: How far can you throw a paper airplane

« on: December 31, 2007, 11:09 PM »

Awwww.. why do you do it.. I had two hours set aside to work on some code.. now I'm obsessed with that damn window..

70.79m and still playing.. 

91

General Software Discussion / Re: wanting a code snippets collection? use oneNote AND keep syntax highlighting

« on: December 31, 2007, 10:32 PM »

Well I have a couple of solutions..

I use a couple of programs for different types of code. I use ToDoList from abstract spoon to manage my projects. It's notes are in RTF and sometimes I want to add small bits of code to the todo note for documentation reasons. So I use highlight with a command script from the prompt that takes the source file as a param and converts it to an rtf file that I feed to Wordpad and then just copy from there and paste into whatever RTF textarea I want. The command file looks like this:

@echo off
highlight -i %1 -o c:\work\hilight.rtf --outdir c:\work -R -D %UTILS%\tidy\WinHighlight --font-size 12 --font ProggyTinyTTSZ -s wsd_Typical
start c:\work\hilight.rtf

I also use evernote with the same process.

You can find highlight here: http://www.andre-simon.de/

I also use DevProject Manager to store and manage snippets with syntax highlighting, more info here:

http://www.portablef...om/?id=1273#comments

I use to use CodeDepot from Shingel Software, but that project has been dead for a while now..

Anybody else know of any really good code snipped database apps..

You know.. with the scintilla syntax aware control and the sqlite lib it would not be too hard to put together a pretty portable solution based on open source libs, I use the Scintilla control in a few WTL based apps for displaying embedded scripting syntax errors, and it works like a charm. It's the same control that notepad++ uses for it's editor

92

Living Room / Re: This coming year, I am SOO looking forward to __________ .

« on: December 31, 2007, 10:10 PM »

Got a new baby boy, 5 months old now ( first child ), looking forward to the first walk, talk, and line of code

@ Jammo: good luck with the psych stuff, I understand where you are coming from, your positive outlook is a great first step.. 

93

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: December 26, 2007, 03:12 PM »

Things are going pretty well, ran into a little snag with high ASCII characters in text strings, but I have seen this kind of thing before when I use to work a lot with JSP and people would cut and paste from MS Word and the apostrophe char (0x92) would get used instead of the char at (0x47), so I have to work around that issue. But I have not had time to work on it lately with the holiday and I've had an intense cold kicking my butt for the last week; but I will be back to it soon and I'm committed to finishing and having a working prototype for you to test with at least by the first week of 2008

94

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: December 18, 2007, 10:15 AM »

Well.. I have the framework coded up and in a command line app, and so far I have it reading all the data in the file and storing it in internal data containers, so the next step will be to generate the GEDCOM file from the data, but I think I should have something "testable" soon..

95

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: holiday gift for users of Sony Acid (music looping program)

« on: December 18, 2007, 09:06 AM »

Ooo... I'd definitely be interested, I'm a huge Acid user, have been for years. It's hands down the best program for creating music.. I tried to do the whole ProTools LE thing with the mBox, but I couldn't get ProTools to run on my system despite the fact that it easly meets the requirements. ProTools was by far the worst install I have ever had to deal with and the most unstable commercial program I have ever used.. So I guess count me in as interested 

96

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: December 16, 2007, 10:11 PM »

I already started to look at the applet source by using jad and I'm starting to mess around with reading the example file you posted although I'm doing it in C++. I do a lot of work in Java, but I'm happier in C++ because I find Java way too limiting, maybe it is because I'm forced to use it at work  .. If I write something I'd prefer to do a drag and drop WTL app in C++ so people can just drag a bunch of DFT files and drop them on the GUI and have it just spit out the same file names with GEDCOM extensions.. Who knows, let me play around a bit and get familiar with the data structures and then get back to you. I'd like to get my feet wet a bit before I jump in 

97

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: DFT to GEDCOM converter

« on: December 16, 2007, 08:11 PM »

Hrmm sounds like an interesting little project. I've spent a good deal of my career writing parsers and hacking data formats.. Can you give me info on what you learned? I have some familiarity with the GEDCOM format already..

98

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« on: December 16, 2007, 07:56 PM »

I had posted this before on another thread... Great post on analyzing crash dump files:

http://forums.majorg...owthread.php?t=35246

This can really help you track down a misbehaving driver.. 

99

General Software Discussion / Re: Fantastic: XsX Alphablended Cursors

« on: December 14, 2007, 08:32 PM »

Thanks for the heads up on RealWorld Cursor Editor.. Now I have drop shadows.. Nice little app BTW..

100

General Software Discussion / Re: Fantastic: XsX Alphablended Cursors

« on: December 14, 2007, 08:19 PM »

You had to go and point that out, didn't you..  Now all I see is the missing shadow.. I'm interested in your shadow tweak of the cursors...