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Messages - worstje [ switch to compact view ]

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26
You are technically correct on pretty much everything, Vurbal. :)

I just wanted to keep it simple and to the point for the sake of clarity. (That and I had to dash out for a meeting, so I didn't have the time to be very in-depth.)

27
Switches, parameters... They're basically different words for the same thing, although the context matters greatly.

Parameter usually refers to anything passed after the program / batch file itself.
Switches refer to things like -f, --preserve-root, /help, /? and so forth.

Suppose you have a batch file you call like: test.bat One Two Three Four Five Six

Then in that batchfile itself, you can refer to 'test.bat' with %0. If you want 'One', then you'd use %1, you'd use %2 for 'Two' and so forth.

28
General Software Discussion / Re: change mouse behaviour
« on: January 27, 2015, 04:27 PM »
While I don't want to be a negative influence and squash your morale, this is a pretty tall order you are asking for here.

Programs are designed to be interacted with by a user. Some parts are not intended to be changed, and the kind of tricks you describe are meant to change such things. But with that comes all the nitty-gritty stuff that takes some hackers who really like that sort of thing to figure out adequately. Code injection used to be rocket science before the great security realization dawned upon the worlds collective consciousness, making a bad thing, and nowadays it has been given more hurdles to make it even more difficult. (Look into AppInit hooks some time; there is a reason these are hated upon nowadays!) The tiniest of mistakes while hooking into another program can make it behave erratically or outright have it crash at random times; there's a lot of pain ahead of you if you really decide to sink your teeth into this subject. I dare say very few people could tell you how to do it, and especially not 'exactly': comparing this sort of exercise to brain surgery would not be too bad of a comparison to make.

A more suitable alternative would likely be to interact with the Windows accessibility APIs. These do not require hooking and can do a good amount of the things you may want it to, as they are intended to allow programs to control Windows more easily for the handicapped who may not be able to press multiple keys together, read actual text and more of those things. Of course, this may not be as successful with something like responding to rightclicks in the empty area of a webpage.

Finally, there's also the option of tackling your needs with different approaches. Develop a plugin for Firefox to do what you want done in that program. It is _far_ simpler to take that route and simply leverage all the existing plugin infrastructure than it would be to reverse-engineer Firefox' behaviour.

I have done code injection and hooking in the past, and it was some very simple stuff, but getting it stable was a nightmare. If you value your sanity, do not go there.

29
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Cautomaton
« on: January 21, 2015, 10:43 AM »
Yet more updating... but this one doesn't really matter (unless you are like me and are really attached to the old hat...) as it only involves licensing and legalese-esque little details.

Oh, and I added a little blurb in the ReadMe on how to get started using Cautomaton, so I suppose there's that, too.

v1.0.1 (2015-01-21)

    Absolutely nothing changed! Except all the stuff that matters...

      Changed: ReadMe.txt has had a huge makeover. There is now a tutorial
        as well as a clear statement regarding the license.
      Added: The version history now has its own file in Changelog.txt.
      Changed: the Cautomaton icon has been changed because the licensing for
        the old icon is unclear with regards to commercial use. (Hopefully, its
        author will respond to my inquiries at some point in time, because I
        already miss the awesome hat!)

30
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Cautomaton
« on: January 04, 2015, 01:31 AM »
If it had broken, I'd blame Windows XP. Buggy piece of #@$%#$%. Ahum...

Thanks for giving a whirl. Duly appreciated!

31
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Cautomaton
« on: January 03, 2015, 02:18 PM »
Well, you stole the surprise away now, mouser!

For those unaware.. he's talking about the long-anticipated (by an imaginary someone, I'm sure! :tellme:) release of Cautomaton v1.0.0! It introduces the support for invoking a context menu on multiple files that I've wanted to put in there since the moment I started implementing Cautomaton several years ago.

Thank you to mouser for testing v1.0.0, for organizing NANY for yet another year, and to everyone else I say... have a good 2015!

v1.0.0 (2015-01-03)

    Over four years have passed - most of which consisted out of my eternal
    procrastination - but at long last, magical version v1.0.0 has come. Who
    ever said Cautomaton was in eternal beta? Not me. (It was implied, though!)

      Added: the long-awaited support for multiple files!
        The first file listed is the primary source for the context menu that
        will be loaded. This matches the normal Windows behaviour: the one you
        right-click on determines the way the context menu is built up.
      Added: support for files in arbitrary locations. So now you can create a
        context menu that applies to "D:\Donkey.txt" and "E:\Elephant.bmp".
      Known issue: Windows versions prior to Vista may have odd-looking menu's
        when dealing with multiple files. Menu items may be missing, doubled
        and/or placed in weird positions. I _think_ this may not happen any
        longer, but I lack (the will to set up) a proper test environment for
        such old OSes at this time. This issue should not affect invocation
        that relies on verbs or text matching; as long as the items appear
        somewhere invocation should still work.
      Added: yet more debug messages (/d). Most are of a very technical level
        and inspired by the above features, but in case of problems these might
        just help one find a cause (and maybe a solution) for an issue they are
        experiencing.

32
Try looking at file copying software like TeraCopy, TotalCopy or similar. I used these over a decade ago, so they may not be the best option anymore. You can just copy files with them as usual, but besides some retry-stuff in case of dropping connections, there's also a speed slider I'm pretty sure.

33
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Cautomaton
« on: December 22, 2014, 05:35 PM »
Guess what time it is? NANY update time!  :Thmbsup:

JoTo brought a little problem to my attention involving a certain program through /v, and he wondered whether I could make it work since the match and positional options were too unreliable for him to depend on due to the many localizations of the program in question. Turns out it I could work around the bug in the other program in Cautomaton, and thus update v0.9.5 was born!

Merry christmas, happy new year, have a NANYful time!

v0.9.5 (2014-12-23)

    This one deserves an update, doesn't it? Well.. it happened entirely due
    to a good friend telling me Cautomaton was not delivering the goods. He
    was right, although it technically is a bug in another shell extension.
    Thus, a work-around was born. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc!

      Added: a work-around for buggy shell extensions that refuse to heed /v.
        Cautomaton now tries to invoke it a second time by scanning manually
        through the menu to find the menu item in question and retrying the
        invocation while mimicking an actual user. This method is however not
        as efficient as a verb invocation usually ought to be; depending on the
        shell extensions that are installed on a system, there could be a lot
        more activity involved in the background. Verb invocations should be
        the most reliable option to begin with, so I expect little trouble. :-)

34
N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: The NANY Retrospective Thread
« on: September 17, 2013, 02:32 AM »
JottiQ has pretty much fallen into non-development. There was a guy who donated  :-* and asked for a feature I sadly couldn't deliver on. :-( In the end, I consider JottiQ feature-complete; most of the things people want are stuff that has to happen on the server end that I do not control. :-)

Cautomaton never really had users to my knowledge. Except mouser maybe; I recall he added support or a template or something in one of his robots, so maybe it had more use than I've come to hear about. :-)

All my other apps were 3-4 day hackfests that never got released because I started too late :tellme: and later on lost interest in finishing them. Ah well. Maybe this year!

35
Yeah, that logo turned out pretty crap. Can't say I'm surprised.

The only good choice is the color.. but it's kind of hard to mess up on a single color that is pretty much defined by the old logo already, too...

36
Living Room / The Best CPU Coolers: 10-Way Roundup
« on: September 06, 2013, 07:59 PM »
AMD may not be getting as much enthusiast love as it used to, but the company's APU range is still where it's at for home theater-style systems, so I didn't hesitate to pick one up for a new compact media-streaming box recently. Unfortunately, while the chip was a relatively powerful yet affordable solution for playing 1080p content, it was surprisingly loud -- we're talking enough noise that I thought something was wrong with my power supply. Upon inspection, it wasn't the PSU and nothing was wrong per se, the stock AMD cooler was just being obnoxious, especially for a living room setup.

I thought I could get away with slowing the CPU fan in the BIOS, but that caused a drastic temperature spike and left me seeking a more elaborate solution. It's one that proved to be relatively simple: the Xigmatek Janus, a small heatsink and fan combo for Mini-ITX systems.

Strangely enough, that very same day I found myself facing another CPU cooler problem while building a Sandy Bridge-E rig with my friend. Having bought all the parts, we discovered that the Core i7-3820 processor didn't come with a cooler. Instead, Intel sells its heatsink/fan separately for $30. Although I knew he'd need a cooler, I wasn't prepared to answer my buddy's question when he asked which model to purchase.

It had been years since our last CPU cooler roundup so my knowledge was a little dated ...



from Techdirt (and mousers demand that I post it)

37
Developer's Corner / Re: WinRAR and software publisher
« on: September 05, 2013, 09:04 AM »
For as far code-signing goes (I assume you mean you want your companies name to show up in UAC prompts and the sort), you need to pay a fair price for it. They're like SSL certificates, except waaay pricier.

It really sucks; I tried looking in the past to see if I could get one of these on the cheap, but it wasn't meant to be.

38
DC Gamer Club / Re: Anyone in for a 4-pack of God Mode?
« on: August 27, 2013, 04:51 PM »
A four-pack of most other games and I would have been in without giving it a second thought, but this is the one kind of title that absolutely holds zero interest with me. Sorry. :)

39
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font INCREDIBLY small
« on: August 27, 2013, 10:46 AM »
I think it might even be the case that monitor have 4 subpixels per pixel, two of which are green - exactly because of what you mention with green being the color we are most sensitive to. And yeah, I can't recall seeing green either - but I didn't want to leave that color out because I figured that would just bring new questions I have no real answers to. xD

Compression artifacts are hell. I've done some video encoding, I've done plenty of research into codecs and all that jazz.. and I just notice everything. Practically, my biggest annoyance is with JPEGs and/or other undersized wallpapers; the blurriness ruins wallpapers for me. It either has to have a native resolution matching or trumping my screen, or I can't use it. People don't get it, saying it looks fine. Really annoying. Alas, that's a different conversation entirely though. xD

40
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font INCREDIBLY small
« on: August 27, 2013, 08:49 AM »
That's exactly why I leave it turned off. IMO it does exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to. The subpixels used to extend font edges just make it look fuzzy to me.

Just to make sure: ClearType is properly configured? There's a couple different layouts for subpixels (think red-green-blue or blue-green-red), and it is badly configured it can look absolutely terrible.

Besides that, I can understand liking a Cleartype-less font; it indeed does have some charms. (And compression artifacts.. depending on the kind of compression and the degree of it, I can't stand it either. But it is very situational for me.)

41
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font INCREDIBLY small
« on: August 27, 2013, 06:30 AM »
Yes, that is indeed ClearType at work. ClearType basically uses knowledge of the physical layout of subpixels (the red, green and blue components that give a normal pixel its color) to emphasize the weight of letters. This is why, when you take a screenshot and zoom in on the pixels, the edges tend to be frayed with dull reddish, greenish or blueish shades.

42
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font INCREDIBLY small
« on: August 27, 2013, 02:30 AM »
After resetting Windows to 96 DPI, rechecked PicPick / GreenShot Options screens.  They're a bit smaller than before, but STILL WAY easier to read than SSC.


It sounds like you're misunderstanding the options in Windows. The DPI setting doesn't change the dot pitch (size of pixels / number of DPI). In fact if you're using a flat panel monitor nothing can change the dot pitch. It's fixed at the monitor's native (highest) resolution. It can simulate lower resolutions, but unless they're exact multiples of the horizontal and/or vertical native resolution there will be some blurring. If it's a CRT monitor you can lower the actual resolution. In either case you need to do that in the options for adjusting resolution, not DPI.


The Windows DPI thing is a weird monstrosity. The original design was for it to be flexible so that things would always be the same physical size, but pretty close to the beginning it got 'rusted' stuck in the default. (Probably because flexible UI and pretty UI are hard, especially so in those low-resolution beginnings.) In other words, it pretty much never 'matches' any hardware intentionally in the world that we know.

Changing the Windows DPI setting does not change the resolution; the amount of pixels outputted and put onto your monitor should be the same regardless. If you play with the DPI setting, the only thing that seems to really change nowadays are the sizes of fonts, because those are the only visual thing that was 'designed' with DPI in mind. (Except in certain cases like SSC, where that DPI is not taken into consideration.)

Calling it a 'DPI setting' nowadays is honestly really confusing, because it has little to do with any physical DPI anymore. The fact only very select elements can be trusted to grow/shrink along with changes to it only makes it more awkward. There is honestly one thing it is good for nowadays, and that is what cathie28 is using it for: increasing the size of fonts without needing to change the resolution.... assuming programs listen! :-(

43
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font incredibly small
« on: August 26, 2013, 04:07 PM »
Wow, that's a mouthful.
The font size looks decent to me,

Where does it look "decent size?"  In your Actual Options screen?  Or looking at my screen shot?  I noted that AFTER my shot is attached on the forum, it makes the font looks bigger & darker than the actual GUI or the actual screen shot (when viewed in SSC)  - least, to me.  I promise, font is much smaller & lighter in actual GUI.

I was going by your screenshot. The letters don't look much different from my default DPI setup, but since my eyes are still fine that may have been a bad way of expressing myself. I've seen many websites in the past that like to use smaller text for entire paragraphs of text, so all I meant to say is 'I'm reading this and not feeling annoyed about the size being wrong compared to what I am used to'.

For the text on your screenshot being darker... does your ClearType configuration affect how it comes out any?

AND - as mentioned - some font on Options GUI is even smaller than the rest.

What do you consider a "decent size," in terms looking in a word processor, Wordpad, etc., at a similar font style, same SIZE - that's in SSC Options?
Can you type in something in Wordpad (look like Arial) & change font size till it matches SSC Options GUI?  What is the pt size that matches YOUR SSC Options GUI?

If you type in normal Arial (no bold, dark) @ 7 pts or less, in an editor / processor, is 7 pt Arial a "decent size" to you?  It's sure as hell not to me or most people my age, even w/ corrective lenses @ 20/20.  
7 pt or less is what matches my SSC Options GUI.  How old are you (rhetorical question) & how far is your nose from monitor?  Using laptop or desktop?

I'm way too tired for a comparitive measure with my own screen, typing letters and comparing them on a pixel level to see how well they match. Unless other people aren't interested in doing that by the time I get around to re-visiting this topic. :-)

For as far my screen is concerned: I've got a 1920x1200 24" screen, and if I stretch my hands out in front of me the tips of my middle fingers can barely reach my screen. (Unless I hunch over, but I'm keeping my back against the back of my chair here.)

Yes, I increased my Windows font DPI - only to 110 (default = 96).  That works great w/ 99% of everything & I use a LOT of apps.
But, increasing DPI SHOULD make the font on Options GUI a bit larger - not smaller (if it affects it at all - it doesn't, AFAICT).  

I only recently increased Vista DPI from Default.  The font on SSC's Options GUI has ALWAYS been tiii-nyyy.  

Some apps for some GUIs ignore Windows settings (it seems).  Many increase menu & some GUI font size based on Windows settings - even based on font sizes chosen in Appearance Settings > Advanced.  Some apps ignore it all.

I never meant increasing DPI would make the text smaller.  It is indeed supposed to make it look bigger. My point was that the code is probably oblivious to the concept of 'DPI', and thus renders text at a certain fixed size. Because everything else is bigger, of course this same-old-size text appears smaller. But it is the same size as before.

Not sure I understand your intent, there.  Sounds like you're saying, SSC doesn't have ability to adjust  Options GUI font based on Windows settings.  Not surprising - lots of apps can't.  If so, has absolutely nothing to do w/ Options font size being tiny in 1st place.  UNLESS you're hinting that increasing Windows DPI actually caused SSC to REDUCE its font size?  Don't think it did that (hope not - that'd be crazy).

Nope, we would seem to be in agreement (see above). However, from your screenshot, I got the impression your issue was caused by the text being small while being used to the text sizes common to the increased DPI setting. The size as it is is not a size I feel is wrong for a standard computer setting; there is a gotcha here though... one that becomes quite apparent in your Vurbal's later screenshots: the fonts used are different!

The font SSC uses is the more 'antiquated' MS Sans Serif I believe. This used to be the standard for Windows interfaces from Windows 3.1? all the way upto XP. It is optimized for smaller screens, has a plain and crisp look, and generally has its roots in the lower definition world. However, Vista and Office (some version I forgot) finally introduced a bunch of new fancy fonts which became defaults of their own right. Segoe UI is the new one which was engineered for better legibility on screens with higher definition and all that jazz. This font, at similar 'point sizes', is considerably larger (and by consequence more legible) than MS Sans Serif, which is likely another, if not the main reason that the SSC Options look so tiny in comparison.

I've got experience with both camps; many applications I use daily still have their UI rooted in the old fonts, while more modern applications have made the switch. If I compare your screenshot with some of those apps, it is exactly the same size, and I have zero problems using it. But if I compare it with those other applications, it indeed feels tinier.

Is it a problem? Kind of. The one that is most to blame is Microsoft: it is the same OS, but UI standards change from OS to OS to OS. But given the fair amount of users that are likely still relying on XP, it probably isn't feasible to switch over to a full Vista+ look either. (And two different looks is a pain to maintain.)

Finally.. I of course don't speak for mouser. I only speak for me and my personal experiences. :-)

Edit: Also, I understand that your needs require addressing. But this is likely not a simple problem. Rather than a work-around (bigger fonts), or implementing dpi scaling, the entire options window probably needs re-architecting to be less reliant on so much text and categories (Window Capturing 1 & 2? Bad UI right there.) There's a lot more wrong with the options window; this is just one of many cracks that show its age.

44
Screenshot Captor / Re: SSC 4.5 options GUI font incredibly small
« on: August 26, 2013, 02:46 PM »
The font size looks decent to me, but I notice the caption bar is larger than usual on your system. This makes me think you've increased the DPI on your system so you get larger letters throughout. Thus, rather than forcing letters to always be tiny, it is a simply matter of the UI not having the capability to adjust alongside the dynamic nature of bigger letters (which involves testing whether stuff will disappear off-screen, wraps to the next line, buttons suddenly being too small for their contents, ugly scrollbars appearing where you wouldn't want them, etc.)

Which makes this a typical bug of a program that does not like to play nice a DPI other than the Windows default. xD

@cathie28: There's no reason other than 'many program environments do not give much thought about playing nice with non-standard environments'. Even when a programmer uses the tools he is given, it often ends up with situations like these. (Of course, there's also situations where programmers use said tools wrongly and it is relatively trivial to fix it; I can't judge this situation one way or another given that I'm not mouser!)

With enough effort, this screen can be fixed. However, this often tends to involve a crap load of work - either by forcing said 'tools' to do stuff they weren't created to do, or by rewriting the entire screen from scratch using another method. I know several programs which have stalled exactly because rewriting screens like these is a huge chunk of time the authors do not deem worth it.

In the end, if this is indeed the root of the problem, it would be up to mouser to estimate the amount of effort involved in fixing it. It could definitely involve a lot more work than a non-programmer might think this would involve.

45
Living Room / Re: Nonplussed - Windows 7 random BSODS
« on: August 26, 2013, 12:58 PM »
What other hardware does the user have at home? I recall reading about a Microsoft kernel/driver engineer who at one point had similarly crazy problems, and he found out that his external harddrive had a bug in its driver that caused such BSODs. (He also managed to get the bug pushed to the vendor and fixed, so that specific one shouldn't be an issue anymore).

Regardless, I can well imagine it being some sort of weird interplay. One wonky USB port, one wonky device, or maybe just some mutual sneaky dislike somehow. It wouldn't be the first time the problem was sneaky like that.

46
Jibz's Tools / Re: Dina font in size 7, 6.5 or 6 ?
« on: August 21, 2013, 05:15 AM »
That looks damn sexy. Awesomeness. I look forward to the final release. xD

47
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: MyWamp Server
« on: July 25, 2013, 04:14 PM »
The one thing you give a screenshot of is the most boring part. Going by that, it looks like it is 'just another webdev bundle program'...

Can you enlighten us on this vagueish paragraph?

MyWamp Server also comes pre-packaged with several web applications that provide useful services for database backup and recovery and even a web-based IDE. Many more features coming soon!

What does it include, what do you have planned? Etc.

48
General Software Discussion / Re: Freeware = CRAP!
« on: July 24, 2013, 06:34 AM »
You most likely have your cause and effect confused. Screenshot Capter is a completely legitimate and quality piece of software. Are you sure you downloaded it from this website?

Regardless, I suspect the problems you have were encountered while browing on another website or installing other software. Screenshot Captor has many thousands of happy users and is one of the most popular pieces of software offered on this website.

49
General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 15 Preview
« on: June 21, 2013, 05:11 AM »
Them ditching Presto is probably amongst the stupidest decisions they could have made. I mean, Webkit is one thing, but they seem to have lost all the features that made Opera the technological leader that other browsers followed (mouse gestures, tabs and lots of other functionality). Right now, it's lost that all.

I'm not impressed, and will probably end up switching to Chrome some time in the next ~6 months. :-(

50
General Software Discussion / Re: Log CPU and memory usage
« on: June 19, 2013, 10:03 AM »
The problem is that there is no such thing as the general state of a system. Tons of things affect performance. Process Explorer shows the biggest troublemakers in its graphs: CPU, Memory, I/O and Network usage. If those are consistently in action while a computer is idle, that is probably the biggest common denominators you can check for for your usecase.

But I still feel uneasy with your snapshot mindset; I just don't know what it will get you. You won't find enough information to tell you what is wrong, unless the problem hangs around until you come to check in on it, in which case you didn't need the snapshot to begin with.

I've had a use for VMMap and RamMap a couple of times while virus & malware hunting in the last several years. They're tools I rarely use, but they're pretty damn useful once you know what you're looking for. :-)

Anyhow, I'll assume you know what you want best. As a computer problem solver, I just can't help but shake off the feeling that you'll end up with (a lack of) information that will make it relatively useless to you to use.

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