Messages

6426

Site/Forum Features / Re: Changes to Forum Profile Visibility

« on: May 10, 2010, 07:43 AM »

@OldElmerFudd:

...but I'm a little dense, admittedly.  

Well, that might put you at an advantage here, then - being a a little dense being less worse than being very dense...
 

6427

Best Archive Tool / Re: Versions??

« on: May 07, 2010, 09:17 PM »

@MohKraats: Many thanks for the suggestions/pointers. Some new to me there, so I shall look them up.
In response, these are My backup requrements: (sorry if this is off-topic)
I started to ensure that I understood my backup requirements and that I had some sort of relatively foolproof backup system in place since 1990. The backup methods and processes have changed over the interim, such that today I perform backup to portable hard drives using HandyBackup.

I originally started to use ZIP archives to save disk space, but now that disk space is so cheap, space is no longer an issue. I use archives now mainly to make lots of old files (that I am unlikely to want to change) into one big one, thus making for faster transfer time on full backups. I use Google Desktop, and that has a plugin that enables it to search in ZIP archives, but it cannot yet search in other archive types (as far as I know). I am gradually converting any RAR archives that I still have, to ZIP. I only used RAR archives because their compression efficiency was roughly 10% better than ZIP, but, as I said above, "space is no longer an issue".

Any backup or archiving systems which use a proprietary compression method or which necessitate being around if you want to inspect or edit the backups are not of much use to me, which is why I like HandyBackup for regular full/incremental backups and for occasional syncing backups. I can't test them for the recovery of backed-up data all that easily if they are locked up in some proprietary format, so I aim for the lowest common denominator (the prevailing standard Windows system file structures and formats). I "manage" my backups using xplorer², which has some superb locking, viewing, mirroring and syncing features available in the two browser windows it gives you. What used to be an arduous, complicated, error-prone and tedious task is now something that I can do standing on one hand and in little time. I can compare directories and backups in a trice, visually. I tend to weed out obsolete stuff from the backup drives and on my hard drive, mostly using these features.

By the way, in case you haven't gathered this, I should mention that I am a bit paranoid about backups and data quality. (Comes from mainframe computer systems training.) I also run S.M.A.R.T. checks on my hard drives, replacing them before their performance/quality falls too far and before they become unreliable. So far I haven't had any accidental data losses, though I have had to recover from mistakenly deleting some stuff that I should not have deleted in the first place - though it was not "mission-critical". I tend to regard my data as being variously:

• Worth backing up. (all data, and some source programmes).
• Not worth backing up (e.g., system files, programme directory - I can always reinstall those).
• Online and instantly available (on the hard drive).
• Online and available after a delay (on the Internet, in the "Cloud").
• Offline and available online after some delay (on a backup hard drive).
• Sometimes available from duplicate backup sources (hard drives, thumb drives, in the Cloud).

Being somewhat paranoid (and very thrifty) I am having some difficulty entrusting my "mission-critical" backup solely to the Cloud.

6428

Living Room / Re: A really cool modern visual illusion

« on: May 07, 2010, 08:25 PM »

@superboyac:

In my recent explorations into drawing and shading, I've learned that the default way to shade is to assume the light is coming from the upper left.

Well, in Nature, the light source moves from East to West, and is higher than us, or "overhead" most of the time, so that assumption is probably at least two-thirds true!   
Except perhaps at sunrise or sunset when the light is almost on the horizontal, or in far north and far south parts of the world when they get those long winters with the sun seemingly barely able to lift itself off the horizon. Oh, and in Hammer horror films where the light often seems to mysteriously come from below/underneath when anything scary is going on...

6429

General Software Discussion / Re: Clipboard Managing-Which one?

« on: May 07, 2010, 06:40 AM »

Quote from: Ampa on Today at 19:50:16
Please Mouser, can we have a way to integrate FARR and CHS?
(Cross link to previous threads asking similar things)

Funnily enough, I was thinking only today that if there were an additional feature that I would like to see in CHS, it would probably be the option/ability to search for a character string using the FARR search box (i.e, same as KlipKeeper).

KK has a useful thing in the shape of the ability to search the klips for a character string using the FARR search box. It's very fast. By comparison, though CHS has more functionality and is pretty sophisticated, I have sometimes found it to be a bit tedious to find an old clip in CHS, whereas it pops up real fast in the KK/FARR search. (e.g., kk +sall string)

+1 vote from me.

6430

General Software Discussion / Re: Clipboard Managing-Which one?

« on: May 07, 2010, 06:38 AM »

Yes!   

6431

General Software Discussion / Re: Clipboard Managing-Which one?

« on: May 06, 2010, 09:18 PM »

As someone who uses text clips (not images) quite intensively, I can recommend this combination:

• mouser's CHS Clipboard Help and Spell. This is an excellent text-only clipboard assistant, with some unusual and useful features. Fast and efficient, and also recently updated.
• hamradio's KK KlipKeeper. Though this partially duplicates CHS' database of clips, it is a handy backup for the paranoid, and it also enables ready access to fast searching of the clips saved, via the FARR search line.
• The AutoHotKey script in the Quote box below. The script by default gives an unformatted paste on Ctrl+V, and a formatted paste on Shift+Ctrl+V. The formatted paste only works on the last Copy action to the clipboard (I think any older text saved in CHS or KK is saved without its fomatting properties).

; AutoHotkey script -------------------------------------------------------------------
UnformattedPaste:   ; Unformatted paste - Ctrl-V = Remove formatting from Ctrl-V (paste), unless SHIFT key is also pressed.
   ClipSaved := ClipboardAll ;save original clipboard contents
   clipboard = %clipboard% ;remove formatting
   Send ^v ;send the Ctrl+V command
   Clipboard := ClipSaved ;restore the original clipboard contents
   ClipSaved = ;clear the variable
Return
;-------------------------------------------------------------------

I have also tried these free clipboard utilities, but have not exhaustively trialled/tested them:

• ArsClip (Very good). Saves images and text.
• ClipGuru (Very good). Saves images and text, and gives extensive source details for every clip. Has some features not always found in other clipboard assistants. The web site says they have gone away. The last free version I have was v2.8.0, and if you want an installation file for it, you can download it from here.
• ClipM8 (Very good). Saves images and text. Shareware version includes some image editing functionality!
• Ditto (Very good). Saves images and text.

Hope this helps or is of use.

UPDATE 2010-12-23: I just found ClipGuru v2.9.0 as at 2010-03-10 on freewarefiles.com.
I have also saved this for people to download from Box.net in case it goes from freewarefiles.com.

6432

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor -2.81.01 - May 4th, 2010

« on: May 05, 2010, 10:37 AM »

@mouser: Thanks! I use ScreenshotCaptor quite a lot - it is very useful - so all improvements are welcome.   

6433

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: May 04, 2010, 11:43 PM »

@mouser:

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

+1 vote from me

Not sure what to suggest re "the rest of the content on the site".

6434

DC Gamer Club / Re: Mechwarrior 4 is now FREE!

« on: May 04, 2010, 02:00 AM »

@lanux128: Thanks, but I wish you hadn't posted that information. (Sigh!)
Procrastination, here I come...

6435

Living Room / Re: A really cool modern visual illusion

« on: May 04, 2010, 01:50 AM »

@lujomu: Yes, a great image. My daughter sometimes videos my chin and mouth upside-down to make it look like a talking face (after drawing some eyes on the bottom of my chin). There are some amusing YouTube clips along the same lines.

6436

Living Room / Re: A really cool modern visual illusion

« on: May 04, 2010, 01:45 AM »

@mouser: It is very interesting, and also a coincidence - I was playing around with 180 degree screen rotation the other day, showing my wife the same thing. I also demonstrated using the mouse (which moved "upside down" too). It nearly did my head in.
This is a relatively well-known perceptual illusion and is attributable to how the brain interprets what the eyes see. Our eyes actually "see" everything upside-down anyway (the image of what the eye receives is upside-down on the retina at the back of the eye), and the brain learns at an early age to translate the image to the right way up, using light, colour, shadows and lines as reference points and cues to make it all make sense. So what we THINK we see is already a perceptual illusion conjured up by our brain's image-processing system.

What does the trick in the case you show (and you can see it just by turning the screen upside-down) is mainly the shadows around the objects, which give a false sense of 3D right-way-up (it's still all 2D), and the brain adroitly reverses it when it's upside-down, rationally using the same reference points and cues.

You can get a similar illusion by:

• Staring at 3D line drawings - they seem to "pop" in and out in your perception.
• Staring at that animated image of the silhouette of a slowly spinning woman. Your perception can make her seem to rotate left or right, but not everyone can deliberately change the perceived rotation. She's not rotating in any direction at all, but she looks as though she is.

Some people might say that animated graphics of Angelina Jolie seem to animate more smoothly and look more attractive when she is pictured naked as opposed to clothed, but I couldn't possibly comment.

6437

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: May 04, 2010, 12:43 AM »

@mouser : I would like to pick up on your comment (Reply #65 on: 2010-05-03, 06:47:53): (and without teaching my grandmother to suck eggs)

"so i propose we put the organization/exposure/view/browsing improvements as our first priority."

I should perhaps first off say here that, having a somewhat autistic, pedantic and analytical mind, I do not understand the driving purpose behind the question ("How can we Improve DonationCoder?"), and thus I do not understand what areas of DC are potential candidates for improvement. I therefore feel unable to make any useful, specific suggestions to "fix" an undefined problem - if there is indeed a problem (though a lot of ideas do come to mind, which could be useful in a brainstorming session).

However:
(a) the quote above would seem to indicate that the way in which people view/browse is seen as a problem to be fixed, and so it is being assigned "1st priority" (I'm not sure what that means - is it "mandatory", or "urgent and important"? Could there be other 1st priority problems placed alongside it?).
(b) I do not see the "Why" of this. I could be wrong, of course, but it does not seem to have been demonstrated that organization/exposure/view/browsing is in fact a causal problem and therefore needs fixing. Therefore, if it is a problem then it might be just a symptomatic problem, the cause lying elsewhere.

Just supposing it does need fixing though:
IF the way in which people view/browse is seen as a problem to be fixed, THEN:

• Do you restrict your problem definition to the view/browse limitations of using the nested structure of the DC forum, and address/"fix" that?
• IF you do that, THEN where do you consider how else DC users might be viewing the content of the DC forum?

I only mention/question this because, whilst I have no idea how other DC users view/browse the site, I have always found the nested structure to be logical, but a very rigid/cumbersome constraint - which makes for S-L-O-W going - so, very early on I decided to avoid the constraint roughly 98% of the time by using new technology. Specifically, by browsing/viewing all the NEW forum comments and topic posts in my Google Reader (a feed aggregator technology) - thus never going near the actual DC forum for that purpose. If I wanted to subsequently see all of the related thread history for an item, then I would click into the relevant NEW item in Google Reader, and hop straight into the DC forum nested structure, to that that item in its specific thread in the DC forum. Once you are looking at that level of detail, the nested DC forum structure seems to be VERY well-suited to information-gathering.

Using Google Reader in this manner:

• You can keep tabs on every single comment and new posting, and do it with minimal time spent on the activity.
• You can sort and filter duplicated NEW comment titles - thus simplifying the view of changed discussions and reducing the number of lines that need to be scanned (see the greyed-out lines in the screenshot below).
• You can sort and filter just NEW topics (using sort on the Donation Coder unread items, "-Re:" - as in the other screenshot below)

The thing is, therefore, that, IF you restrict your problem definition to the view/browse limitations of using the nested structure of the DC forum, and end up doing something similar (say) to what I have described, then that would mean that you had put considerable thought and effort into duplicating what can already be done using Google Reader (or other feed aggregator technology) within a browser.

This might be relevant to CWuestefeld's comment (Reply #12 on: 2010-04-24, 07:49:09):

"I haven't been using DC as much as I used to. I think at one point I would check for new posts every hour. Lately, I might check once at lunch, if that."

I hate the thought of missing something in DC forum, but there's stuff that's interesting to me and there's stuff that isn't, so, how do you sort what is (for you) the wheat from the chaff AND avoid using the actual forum? I don't have the time/inclination/patience to go off to each forum or blog or whatever I am interested in. I therefore use a feed aggregator to collect the information and then I scan/sort through it. IF you use Google Reader (or some other feed aggregator) in similar fashion, THEN there's no need to EVER use the DC forum itself until you spot something of interest to you. Then you can go straight in to the point itself. Potentially a real time-saver.

So, to summarise:

• Rule: If it ain't broke, then don't fix it.
• Technology: Use new technology (e.g., including feed aggregator technology).
• Problem definition: Distinguish between symptomatic/superficial/"perceived" problems and causal problems.
• Priority: Only assign priority to addressing causal problems (i.e., expend your finite efforts where they can be most effective).

6438

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 26, 2010, 02:19 AM »

@MilesAhead: Sorry!
I was making (or trying to make) a joke there, but it was ironic and a joke on myself. (The "jerk" pot calling the kettle black - and yes, I thought it was a neat twist too!)
If you took it seriously, then I really do apologise. It was meant to make you smile. I really didn't mean for you to take it seriously. I maybe should have included a smiley or three.
Here they are:                                      (better late than never)

6439

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 26, 2010, 12:15 AM »

@40hz: Nice graphic image!
Oh, and I suppose the points you make are er, interesting, too.

Seriously though:

"Does Donation Coder have anything like a current mission statement?"

Absolutely spot-on.

If there is one- i.e., something like a mission statement or "vision" - then what is it, and why is it, and are the reasons for it being the way it is now changed?

If there isn't one, then should there be one, and why? If there is a "Yes", and a solid reason in response to this Q, then what could we do to help mouser to pull a coherent and useful mission statement or "vision" together?

This is the sort of thing that I was getting at in my initial post in this thread, before I had a behaviour melt-down to "jerk" status. From experience, if you use pretty basic questions like that, then there is a very real potential risk of discovering something useful - but I have only seen it work in a deliberately collaborative environment.

6440

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 25, 2010, 11:50 PM »

@Shades and @MilesAhead: Could we keep on-topic please? It would seem to be a diversion to talk about AJ. I only happened to make reference to AJ in passing, as an example of the sort of content quality improvement that we might consider for the DC site. AJ therefore was not the topic.

In fact, "improving the Search function" was the topic that was clearly focussed on in my last post, where I think you will agree that I added some real quality and much-needed technical foresight and clarity of vision to the otherwise dull points about Search being made in comments by @urlwolf and @JavaJones.

It is regrettable, and I am as disappointed as you no doubt were, that there was a prudish DMCA-style take-down of the extremely high quality example graphic file that I attached to that post.

6441

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 25, 2010, 09:11 AM »

@urlwolf and @JavaJones Maybe we need to think outside the box here. We need to round the square and put our best foot forward, making the most of the potential synergies. We need to kick ass! You can bake shoes in an oven, but it won't make them into biscuits! I kid you not - do eagles flock?! (Note: Taken from an EDS management vocabulary training handbook.)
Whether the search function is "broken" or as good as it might have been could be irrelevant if the user came away from the search with a really good feeling after the experience. Who cares then whether it worked or not? This is what the "user experience" is all about. It's all a matter of perception.

Look at the stats: The gender distribution of search users over the past 12 months was mainly (i.e., not counting hermaphrodites or other people who understandably might be confused about their gender) 97.3% male, and only 2.7% female. That's right! You can see who your target audience is right there! It's the guys! Of those users who had a "bad" or disappointing user experience because of the search quality/result (approx. 44% in both groups, interestingly), 27.6% of the males and 0.25% of the females have said that THEY WILL NOT USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION AGAIN. This could be quite serious, and is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed. That's why you need to think outside the box, because the answer is unlikely to be inside the box, especially if it is a very small box, though I suppose if it was the Tardis then it might be in there, somewhere.

Moving on.
Going forward together, with synergy, what could be done to:
(a) effect a significant improvement in the user experience?
(b) encourage the self-absented/disappointed users to come back?

The answer is simple!:

• (a) Build a delay into the search response of (say) 10 seconds after the search has been started. (The optimum time delay could be decided by experiment.)
• (b) Have a largish (say) 4cm high animated icon of a naked Angelina Jolie - or maybe any babe - blowing you a kiss or doing something nastier, but only during the 10-second delay i.e., it stops after the delay, when the search results are presented. An example of the sort of icon thingy I am talking about is attached.
• (c) Announce that the search function has just been upgraded to perform 120% better.

Results?

• This would be guaranteed to blast the user experience up by a factor of 150% (at least)! Do the math!      
• The take-away would an enormous feel-good factor for 99.97% of your target audience, who will tell 87.3% of their friends about it, 99% of whom will rush off to try it out and tell their friends about it, thus increasing the number of users of the DC Search function at an exponential rate!      
• The big king hit in this? Nobody in the target audience will be driven away, and THOSE WHO HAD LEFT WILL COME BACK. That's right, they will drag their sorry asses back when they hear about the new search function (99.8% probability).    

How d'you like THEM apples?!
This thing could go viral, man! You'll have millions of people pushing that "Search" button all day long! I know I would be! Server overload! None of them will give a fig about the quality of the actual search or its results, and ALL OF THEM - that's 100% - will be happy campers now! In fact, you could disable the search itself and just print the same fake results page every time - save the server load - and still no-one would notice!

Editor's note: 93.75% of statistics are made up.

[EDITED TO REMOVE ADULT PICTURE -- mouser]

6442

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 25, 2010, 01:01 AM »

40hz:

@IainB - was your comment above this in response to my question above that? Because if so, you lost me.

Just to clarify: My comment was one of exasperation - a sort of a tired "I told you so", addressed to the world in general.

6443

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 24, 2010, 09:23 AM »

Define the purpose of the question - i.e., exactly what information is the question intended to be extracting, and WHY?

6444

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 23, 2010, 01:05 PM »

One of the most persistent bugbears that I and several other DC-ers have found with Donation Coder is the total lack of any still shots of Angelina Jolie when she has appeared nude in films.
Fixing this major drawback would go a long way to increasing the happy-happy index of DC-ers - and not all of them men, either, I can assure you.

This would effect an immediate improvement in the DC site's street-appeal, and new audiences would flock to the site in droves. Your hit counters would go off the scale and nobody would be using AdBlock. Think of the potential advertising revenue! This is the sort of thing the Japanese are crying out for. Anyone who doesn't agree with this is a moron and should be pepper-sprayed directly in both eyes, told to "shut the f#ck up", and have their toenails pulled off - in that order.

You could start things off gradually by providing some animated naked AJ smileys in the Quick Reply tools, and then working up to several full AJ nude albums a bit later on. That would be some subtle trajectory, aaaall riiiight! An AutoHotkey script might be useful - one that just jumped you straight into the albums area, without having to mess about and waste time navigating the stupid boring bits of the DC site. Instant gratification! This is the sort of thing that makes our country great and I'm proud to be a Kazakhstani.

This is proof-positive that there are only 3 kinds of people in the world: Those who can count, and those who can't.

6445

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 23, 2010, 03:01 AM »

The question was: How can we Improve DonationCoder?
Experience indicates that a structured approach usually assists in encouraging a diverse group of people to collaborate in answering general questions - questions to which there could possibly be complex and conflicting answers.

Here's a suggested approach: (to help make the most of the probably not inconsiderable potential thinking power of the DC "Brainstrust.")

1. Definition of the question: (objective is to remove ambiguity and improve clarity of purpose)

• Define the purpose of the question - i.e., exactly what information is the question intended to be extracting, and WHY?
• Review the question and rewrite it, as necessary, to better reflect the purpose.
• Define the question more rigorously, or restate it in terms that can enable rigorous definition.
• Define any terms used in the definition.

2. Define requirements for the forum to provide answers:
Define the required structure and rules for answering the question. For example:

• Brainstorm: This implies that "anything goes" - opinions, POV, structured reasoning, daft ideas - with the rule that all critique of the answers must be deferred until all the ideas are in, whereupon evaluation of the ideas can commence.
• "The Emperor's new clothes": Only allow answers with a positive or non-critical spin. (Implies never discussing "the elephant in the room".
• Critical thinking: Answers to be demonstrably the product of rational thought as opposed to beliefs or "opinions" or ideas off the top of the head.
• Or some mixture of the above (but always define them.

If you did something more like this (and you have already started to try and lay some rough groundwork for the forum of responses), then you would be more likely to be able to gain some measure of the results - e.g., those answers that met whatever criteria you had established for them in the first place.

If you did not do something like this, then, as likely as not, you will probably get a completely random result. This would be chaotic, by definition.

So what? Well, you may be able make the most of your potential audience:
(a) People who may have worked hard to learn to discipline themselves to structure their thinking and to apply a rational critical thinking method could be more likely to put effort into contributing that thinking and to respond to a well-structured questioning process (as above). However, they could otherwise tend to be turned off and unlikely to contribute. After all, what would be the point if it was only likely to add to a chaotic mess? (Rather like the majority of business meetings.)

(b) People with unstructured thinking skills or irrational thinking habits (Edward De Bono suggests that that could probably be the majority of us) could probably tend to contribute regardless, because they would have no reason for similar reservations. This would be where you would be likely to get most of the rationalised POV and beliefs from.

6446

General Software Discussion / Re: Here we go again with false positive antivirus actions bricking computers

« on: April 21, 2010, 10:26 PM »

@JavaJones: Yes. When I migrated from Avast! to WSE (MS Windows Security Essentials) I followed the advice of someone on the DC forum and changed the default settings to "Quarantine" action, rather than let the thing delete according to its previous default rules.

I therefore concur with your comment:

"...I think also at fault here is the default behavior being delete, and lack of any white list or safeguards..."

6447

Best Archive Tool / Re: Versions??

« on: April 21, 2010, 07:34 PM »

@@MohKraats: Bit of a long discussion here, with a new conclusion for me. (You could just jump to that, rather than read the whole thing - the "thing" being my thinking.)

First of all, thanks for the Wikipedia links to:
Comparison of file managers
Comparison of file archivers
These made for some interesting study.    

Thanks also because you have got me thinking about changing the way I do things. (Always nice when that happens.)      

"When given the choice between changing one's mind or proving one's point of view, most people get busy on the proof." (JK Galbraith)

When you say:

"...Winrar should better be better, since it is not free."

- I am not necessarily sure that is a true statement, nor am I sure that RAR is "better" than IZarc anyway. If it were a true statement, then (say) FARR would be inferior to some alternative and paid-for product, and I can't see that that is currently proven to be the case. Whether a tool is "better" really all depends on what you want the tool for in the first place - what are the requirements? I realise now that my requirements for archiving are changing, or have been changed, due primarily to changes in disk technologies. This is why I am becoming interested in comparing alternative archiving proggies.

This is how I use archiving:
I have a directory called "Clients", where I build, keep and later archive all my client project/assignment-related folders. A project folder can have 'n' sub-folders, some of which may already have been ZIPped or RAR'd. As a project finishes, I tidy up the project folder - e.g., weeding out any junk or duplication - and then copy the whole thing - i.e., including any already compressed sub-folders - into a compressed archive file (ZIP or RAR).

The reasons I archive in this way are:
(a) to "freeze" the folder and protect it from easy change.
(b) to conserve disk space.
(c) to speed up the disk backup process (reduced discrete file-handling).

My requirements are:
(a) to ensure that I can continue to access and browse archived material immediately and with ease (WinRAR does this.)
(b) to ensure that the archive contents can be searched and indexed by Google Desktop. (GD can search ZIP and RAR archives.)
(c) to use the systems/technology as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Discussion:
After testing the archive, I delete the original source (uncompressed) folder.
I was biased towards RAR as it generally has a greater overall compression ratio (conserves more disk space) and it seems to have less (no) errors compared to ZIP, but a major disadvantage of RAR is that the native ZIP functionality of the OS cannot of course handle RAR format files in the generic file manager, so a RAR archiving and (preferably) browsing tool is a necessary prerequisite once you have created a RAR archive.
I was biased towards WinRAR because it meets the preference for a tool with directory browsing capability and RAR compression and minimal errors rather well.
The weight of my bias towards RAR has diminished now though, as disks have become much larger and cheaper ($ per GB), and ZIP seems no longer error-prone, so I tend to use ZIP now, when creating a new archive, in preference to RAR. ZIP is thus becoming more the standard for me.

In the "Clients" directory, there are currently 48 project folders:

• 3 uncompressed (open) project folders.
• 15 RAR archives
• 30 ZIP archives

In working on current projects, I may need to refer to similar work done for the same or a different client, and that is when I browse through the compressed archives. Though WinRAR can be a bit confusing in the way it does this, it is nevertheless where WinRAR can come in very handy. There is certainly no file manager that can do quite the same job quite so easily. I say this from the experience of having tried several file managers out, over the years, settling for what is arguably the "best" (certainly functionally it is the most powerful) Windows file manager on the planet - xplorer².

The largest compressed archive is a ZIP file of 180Mb, containing many documents, the majority of which are compressed between approx. 60% to 80%.
My old version of WinRAR is able to browse the whole "Clients" directory, whereas IZarc cannot (QED), but my old WinRAR's technology and features are probably not as up-to-date, nor as many, nor as efficient as the current IZarc's.

Conclusion:
If I now did away with RAR altogether, converting all RAR files to ZIP, then I could consider ditching WinRAR and moving to using (say) IZarc - which, as I said earlier:

"...works as promised, and very well too."

6448

General Software Discussion / Re: How to remove ">>>" characters from mail and rewrap mail text?

« on: April 21, 2010, 10:32 AM »

When I reformat text, I use a freeware program called Cleaner (version 1.02), which is a real time-saver.  This utility is ideal if you wish to keep and use text received through email.  It's really annoying to see all the ">" symbols in front of each line.  Not only does this nifty little program remove them from email messages, making the message look cleaner and preventing choppy word wraps, but also it clears any special formatting properties - e.g., losing any special formats that may have been put in by Outlook or Word.
Someone mentioned the newer version eCleaner, above.

If you want a copy of:
Cleaner (version 1.02) - the version I prefer to use - then go here: Cleaner v1.02.zip
eCleaner (version 2.02)  - the latest version - then go to the author's website: http://ecleaner.tripod.com/

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ProcessTamer / Re: Unreported bug in Process Tamer (v2.11.01)?

« on: April 21, 2010, 06:41 AM »

@Dr. Bob: "Grey text"? Don't get me started. Take a look at Writing for maximum reader comprehension

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Best Archive Tool / Re: Versions??

« on: April 20, 2010, 11:20 PM »

@MohKraats: Thanks for the info. Interesting that WinZIP, whilst being ubiquitous seems to be maybe not so hot at what it does. (?)

After using IZarc for a day (!), I find it works as promised, and very well too. However, it seems to be not so well-integrated with the shell as my old version of WinRAR.
For example, with WinRAR, I can:

• open a file in the WinRAR browser
• browse the file, dig down into its nested folders, documents and nested compressed files, using the WinRAR browser
• view, add, delete files in the compressed file
• backspace out of the file and navigate in and out of the folder/directory that the file is in (like using Windows Explorer)
• browse into other compressed and non-compressed folders (like using Windows Explorer
• perform operations on the files/folders I find
• (interestingly) look into a word doc as though it were an XML archive or something, and inspect its structure and contents

- all this without having to invoke WinRAR repeatedly (i.e., just the once).

This is really more about ergonomics and user requirements than functionality or features. That's why I liked WinRAR in the first pace. Not only does it have the same/similar or better functionality to other compression proggies, but also it seems decidedly better-integrated into the file system, designed for people who require to browse files and operate on them "seamlessly" and without being kludgy.

IZarc:

• Can't seem to do a lot of that with IZarc though - which is quite some constraint as far as I am concerned.
• With nested compressed files, IZarc keeps handing over to Windows Explorer (WinRAR just opens them in the WinRAR browser)
• IZarc and its file-handling thus seems constrained and a bit kludgy to me, by comparison with my old version of WinRAR, though I think it is otherwise probably very good when regarded as a compression utility alternative.
• Maybe I don't have IZarc configured correctly, but, if that's the case, then I don't see how to configure it any better than I have done - it has the same file associations as I had previously set for WinRAR, with ZIP NOT associated.
• The left-hand pane on the IZarc browser seems pretty pointless if all it contains is the name of one single file,