Messages

1

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« on: May 03, 2022, 12:47 PM »

Yeah!

I made sure to do the following:

- Scanned the portable Word 2003 package with the same virus scanner that our IT uses.
- Found out that this virus scanner is also listed on VirusTotal, and did not complain about the package there either.
- Switched the work laptop to airplane mode.

And then went for it and started the portable Word 2003.

And what can I say, it runs beautifully in all its Office 2003 design glory, even perfectly crisp on a 4K screen:



Now I just have to get my settings, Normal.dot and Dragon.dll into the package as well.

By the way, any Word options that I change in the portable version are being saved!

When I close Word and open it again later, the exact settings I changed earlier are active again. Isn't that awesome.

This is probably due to the fact that the program creates a VOS folder (probably "Virtual Operating System" folder), in which all files and settings, including (virtual) registry settings, are stored.

Edit: unfortunately, my dictation program Dragon NaturallySpeaking does not recognize any dictation when I dictate in the portable version of Word. I suppose this is so because all of Word's components, DLLs etc. are stored at different paths from where they ought to be

2

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« on: May 03, 2022, 03:07 AM »

Hi and thanks for your detailed information!

Meanwhile, I had performed various tests. As you say, it turned out that this should definitely be done in a fresh virtual machine. I used Windows XP in VMware Workstation Player.

In contrast to the captured installations on a work laptop with Windows 11, which took hours, turned out to be like 1.5 GB in size and did not work properly afterwards, the recording of the installation of Word 2003 in the virtual machine took only a few minutes and was smaller than 50 MB!

I had also come across Cameyo in the meantime and had used it for the capturing and packaging, in what I believe was the latest version from here.

Word 2003 packaged this way seems to run fine. However, when moving the package from the virtual machine to my desktop PC with Windows 10, I got various messages from Defender regarding alleged malware.

While I know that these are false positives, I am now hesitant to run the package on the actual target machine (my office laptop where I do not have admin privileges). If a virus is reported there, then I unfortunately have the IT department coming after me right away

Also, I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to dictate text in Word 2003, which is also a major reason why I use this old version, besides my hundreds of macros and customizations in Word 2003.

Word 2003 still shows unmatched compatibility and speed together with NaturallySpeaking.

For this to work, NaturallySpeaking needs a DLL loaded in Word by the name of dgnword.dll. I can probably include this DLL in the virtualized Word 2003 package (using Cameyo) as well, can't I?

3

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« on: May 02, 2022, 08:23 AM »

Hello Software Connoisseurs,

While the above discussion is a little over my head, perhaps there are opinions on the question of what is the best/easiest/most robust way to convert any Windows-installable software into a portable application?

Before I try out everything, especially the free Enigma Virtual Box (which doesn't seem to have a snapshots feature), furthermore paid solutions such as BoxedApp or Turbo, I would be grateful for hands-on experience any of you guys might have.

In particular, I am interested in virtualizing, or making portable, older office programs like Word 2003.

Also, is it possible to change any program settings with such a virtualized installation package when running the packaged program? I would think probably not, since these can hardly be saved back to that single exe file, right?

Many thanks already

David

4

General Software Discussion / Re: What Indexed PDF searcher (Desktop Searcher) has all of the following?

« on: June 03, 2020, 01:01 PM »

Thanks Yatom, found it.

BTW, I also like the "Found Fragments" view setting very much, which I just discovered today.

5

General Software Discussion / Re: What Indexed PDF searcher (Desktop Searcher) has all of the following?

« on: June 03, 2020, 03:22 AM »

Archivarius [has "jump to search term occurrence" buttons] too.

-Yatom (June 03, 2020, 12:03 AM)

Yeah sure. That's why I can't switch to any program that doesn't do that. Like X1 Search, Lookeen, DocFetcher or FileLocator Pro, who all don't have that feature.

you can designate the regular search hits to be underlined, while the Find on Page locator remains non-underlined.

-Yatom (June 03, 2020, 12:03 AM)

How did you do that? I can't find an option like this in Archivarius.

What a bummer that the developer / support isn't around.  This is such a great program.

-Yatom (June 03, 2020, 12:03 AM)

So true.

6

General Software Discussion / Re: What Indexed PDF searcher (Desktop Searcher) has all of the following?

« on: June 01, 2020, 06:21 AM »

Thanks Yatom.

The issues #1 and #2 that you noted would mean that dtSearch would also not fit my needs, as compared to Archivarius 3000 which displays those things instantly (at least when the index file is on a SSD).

I can confirm that Archivarius, while finding text box and highlighter comments, it doesn't find text in Sticky Note comments in PDF files.

Let's hope that Likasoft will be revived somehow... 

One could also think so, since they allegedly have many customers from large corporations such as Siemens or BP.

Have you guys tried Copernic Desktop Search recently?

I must say that I particularly like those "jump to search term occurrence" buttons and the multi-color highlighting:



It is a mystery to me why not every search tool has this very feature.

7

General Software Discussion / Re: What Indexed PDF searcher (Desktop Searcher) has all of the following?

« on: May 31, 2020, 01:09 PM »

Count me in for the search for the best file indexer/desktop search tool. (BTW, why has the original thread been locked?)

I'm running into limitations of Archivarius 3000 lately, particularly the lack of development and support by Likasoft, and some persistent bugs.

Docfetcher looked promising, but unfortunately, the find and preview features are somewhat limited and clunky (finds PDF comments but doesn't show them in the preview pane, doesn't find PDF search terms when they are hyphenated at the end of a line, all search terms are highlighted in the same color, slow preview of large PDF files etc.).

The highly praised Lookeen is unusable for me because there is not even a proper preview highlighting all occurrences in the found documents.

I'd love to find something sleek and fast like Archivarius 3000, which is however also actively developed and has a large and active user base.

I have half a million files, mostly *.msg, Office and PDF files, but also other file types like e-mail attachments, archives etc.

8

Living Room / Re: Archivarius questions (help using)

« on: May 28, 2020, 03:24 AM »

Hi all,

sadly, Likasoft seems to be dead. I also mailed sales a few weeks ago and got no answer, similar to tech support who stopped answering years ago.

What I've been trying to figure out for a long time with no success is how to search for exact phrase matches containing hyphens like for example "20-30".

Also, when searching for any exact phrase matches, it never seems to be possible to easily locate them in the preview pane, because Archivarius wouldn't create find buttons for the phrase you looked for. Instead. it creates buttons for each single search term inside the search phrase, see screenshot:



It can be seen that although searching for "20-30" as a phrase, Archivarius found the phrase "20, 30".

Additionally, it didn't create a find button for "20-30" in the preview pane's toolbar, but instead two separate buttons for "20" and "30". These are not of much use because the separate search terms "20" and "30" occur many times throughout the document, which makes it very difficult to actually locate the occurrences of the search phrase "20-30" in the preview pane.

Thanks for any hints or ideas how to improve exact phrase search!

Cheers
David

9

Living Room / Re: Archivarius questions (help using)

« on: May 20, 2020, 02:59 AM »

Thank you very much Yatom!

That looks very promising and I will make sure to try your detailed How-To the next time I need to search in certain directories.

I'm glad to have found this place where one can exchange experiences and questions about Archivarius 3000.

Best regards
David

--
Edit: I just tried to search with this string

[Select]

music dir:"d:\My-Folder\*"

However, it doesnt find any files in or below the 'My-Folder' path this way. Instead, it finds all files anywhere that contain "music" in the file name.

How weird is that?

--
Edit 2: OK I now found that everything under "Search Attributes" (which I never understood anway) must be cleared in order for the directory search to work:



In this case it doesn't even give any "false positives" from other directories.

10

Living Room / Re: Archivarius questions (help using)

« on: May 19, 2020, 11:44 AM »

Wow, just found this very special thread about a very special software.

I actually somehow suspected that, if at all, this would have to be found on Donationcoder

Anyway, I also had difficulties with searching for exact matches of words. Likasoft support (when they were still responding some years ago) told me that in order for this to work, I would have to create my index with "morphology processing" disabled.

I hope that helps.


Something else I never really have figured out is searching for files only under a certain path (say, like D:\Documents\Project_ABC).

I'd be very thankful for ideas on how to do this, should it be possible.


Apart from that, I also haven't found any desktop search solution that comes remotely close to Archivarius 3000 regarding speed and ease of use. It even runs portable on my company laptop and indexes the entire network server like it's nothing. And I'm talking file numbers in the 7-figure range here.

However, should Likasoft be dead, sooner or later we'd all have to look for a replacement

Thanks for any comments guys

11

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Copy massive folder/file directory....

« on: December 03, 2019, 10:02 AM »

Okay, I'm done.

I shall look no further and simply use the ingenious Freefile Sync, which does everything those st00pid specialized file copiers can't do properly -- and then even much more.

12

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Copy massive folder/file directory....

« on: December 03, 2019, 09:44 AM »

Hi @all,

Has someone already found a copier tool that is simple -- and that simply works?

It should preserve the modification date of folders, and also copy hidden folders as hidden.

Thanks heaps!

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Best 'no frills' clipboard history tool?

« on: May 28, 2019, 10:27 AM »

I don't think that people get that questions are asked because others want feedback from users that they sort of trust.

-wraith808 (May 28, 2019, 10:23 AM)

14

General Software Discussion / Re: Best 'no frills' clipboard history tool?

« on: May 28, 2019, 09:16 AM »

 

15

General Software Discussion / Best 'no frills' clipboard history tool?

« on: May 28, 2019, 06:32 AM »

Hi Forum,

I am looking for the simplest possible application for managing clipboard history.

I only and solely need the two following features:

1) immediately paste the clipboard's content as unformatted text using a customizable keyboard shortcut
2) saving the last 10 to 20 clipboard entries as unformatted text (no images, no formatted text, no fancy frills, no search function, no cloud function etc.)

Thanks heaps for suggestions!

16

Coding Snacks / Re: The Best Way to handle finding and removiong Duplicate Files

« on: March 16, 2019, 03:37 PM »

Done. I am very confident that one does not have to look any further than to AllDup.

17

Coding Snacks / Re: The Best Way to handle finding and removing Duplicate Files

« on: March 16, 2019, 04:46 AM »

Hi forum,

is there any news on a possibly best duplicate finder?

I'm looking for a program where I can check a specific folder (typically like the "Downloads" folder...) to see if the files it contains already exist somewhere else on the computer -- possibly also under a different name.

Thanks for tips or experience!

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: February 15, 2019, 01:14 PM »

Please read posts #9 and #10.

Thank you.

Edit:
added another link
https://stackoverflo...three-way-merge-tool

19

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: February 10, 2019, 07:24 AM »

I can feel your pain.

This also looks interesting, but unfortunately is not yet able to actually show/highlight the fuzzy text matches that it detects in the background:
https://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/string_similarity/

20

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: February 10, 2019, 05:51 AM »

Aaaarggghhhh, this is 2019 and BeyondCompare still can't wrap text to the width of the respective window 

This unfortunately makes BeyondCompare completely UNUSABLE for text analysis (other than for program code, possibly).

This is also valid similarly for ExamDiff Pro. While ExamDiff Pro can (sort of) wrap text, the output is not practical for text analysis.

Summing up my experience: while practically all off-line tools like the ones mentioned above might be well suitable for comparing program code versions, they are completely and utterly unusable for text analysis.

This is what the comparison output of the typical off-line program looks:


Below is what the comparison output of Similarity Texter looks, and this is what I'm after:

21

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: February 10, 2019, 03:27 AM »

Thanks, I see now that at least ExamDiff Pro says that it has some sort of fuzzy comparison.

In the meantime I found this, from the makers of Vroniplag. IMHO this tool blows everything else out of the water, at least when you're looking for text comparison with lots of moved blocks.

I will try ExamDiff Pro  and  BeyondCompare and report back.

Additionally, I am now looking for a tool that can find and highlight repeated blocks of text within a single file. So far, the only solution I found is Textanz:



Textanz however only highlights repeated blocks in one single color which makes it very tedious to follow up when there are lots of (possibly nested) repetitions.

22

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: February 09, 2019, 08:00 AM »

Hi all,

I was just going to report that I tested some online and off-line (*.exe) diff tools again. Thereby, the installed tools, like the latest versions of WinMerge and Meld, proved to have no chance against the best online tools. Both WinMerge and Meld fail completely as soon as the texts become just a little dissimilar.

I checked like a dozen online comparison tools, and the best ones (by far) still seem to be Vroniplag (great multi-color highlighting of identical textblocks including moved block detection), and wikEd diff (highly configurable, including moved block detection). Vroniplag even lets you copy the results including all the color highlighting into Word, however only if the comparison is done with Internet Explorer. Both with Chrome and Firefox, this does not seem to work properly.

Copyleaks.com seems to be even more sophisticated since it at least tries to detect similarity also when there are small differences like for example OCR errors. Also, you can click on text passages and it will highlight the respective passage in the other text. However, it is a) terribly slow as compared to the other two mentioned above, b) has no multi-color coding for quick overview, c) breaks longer texts into multiple pages that you have to click through, and d) you can't quickly edit one or both of your texts and redo the comparison with the edited texts.

I am yet to discover a service or tool that uses some kind of fuzzy logic or artificial intelligence in order to spot and visibly highlight similarities in a "stepless" manner, for example by using some sort of heat map color highlighting of the similarities.

Cheers
David

23

Best E-mail Client / Re: What's with all the blank lines in emails recieved from Outlook users?

« on: June 28, 2018, 04:10 AM »

Coming back to this ten years later, and it is still not fixed.

If someone sends me a mail from Outlook and I copy and paste the mail text somewhere else, I usually get like four paragraph marks (one of them followed by a non-breaking space) between every single paragraph

Is that because even the guys at Project FixOutlook.org took a bribe with that silly giant poster that Microsoft sent them (instead of fixing Outlook) -- which apparently froze them with a foolish grin instead of moving on with kicking Microsoft's ass?

--
Edit, JFTR:

I asked if they could make TB! start any editor of your choice, i.e., present the message you were working on as a file for your preferred text editor to work on.  That's the way many systems worked back in the Fidonet DOS days.

-rjbull (August 07, 2009, 10:57 AM)

http://forums.mozill...a780573bee2#p2934663

24

General Software Discussion / Re: Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

« on: May 12, 2017, 11:59 AM »

For completeness, lately I've been playing around with the online diff tools at wikEd and at Vroniplag -- and must say that they are both pretty amazing with regard to moved blocks detection. Moved blocks are even detected when they additionally have been edited in one or both copies of the text.

25

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make a local copy of an ancient Web forum?

« on: May 02, 2017, 04:27 AM »

OK thanks!

At the moment, I try BlackWidow. BlackWidow simply creates an Explorer-like view of the entire website, and after the scan is finished, you download (only) the parts you want.



Does HTTrack allow a similar approach?