Messages

26

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 26, 2008, 04:25 PM »

Most likely your web server has cached an old version of one (or more) of the JavaScript files.

-erwind (August 26, 2008, 03:09 PM)

I don't have a web server -- do you mean a browser?   (I don't use a proxy server, FWIW.) All ctrl-F5 gets me is the textfields to start an upload from scratch. This is with Firefox 2, but that's what I've been using all along with success. I even cleared the browser cache, but as I'm typing this I've still been on the 40-second stage for about 10 minutes now. (Edit: looks like something is up with FF's cache -- I'll play with it some more locally.)

When I switched to IE7, it worked flawlessly. YourFonts seems bulletproof with IE, even with irregular/nonstandard input. Here's a sample -- looks like a great way to make dingbat fonts too!

27

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 26, 2008, 01:29 PM »

Erwin, if the recognition process fails or crashes, does that mean everything's shut down until it can be reset? I tried a test and I just ended up sitting at the "~40 seconds" part of the process. After that, even ones that worked before failed silently also after uploading. I did try the website in another window (tab) and it stayed responsive for everything else.

28

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 25, 2008, 08:31 PM »

I got an error but I'm not sure what it might be related to.

-Cavalcader (August 25, 2008, 03:11 PM)

It was due to a typo on my side, sorry 

-erwind (August 25, 2008, 05:05 PM)

No problem -- those things happen. I think you've got it nailed, at least for normal operation! The only thing I noticed is that while there are links at the bottom of each "step" page to supplement the ones in the column on the right, there's no such link at the bottom of step 6 to take you to the step 7 instructions (Install & Use). A minor point, but it may leave some people stuck if they're only using the page-bottom links.

That's correct, it all started with Scanahand. And now Scanahand is getting improved due to all response I received during the beta of yourfonts.com. I'm surprised how much valuable information is has given me. So thanks again for testing!

Glad to help! Thank you, too, for the nice new font.   Now that everything works while I'm being nice to the site, shall I try to break it for a little while by feeding it silly or incorrect stuff? I know that's normally done in testing, but I still thought I should ask first so you're prepared for nonstandard input.

29

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 25, 2008, 03:11 PM »

Well do give it another try, as it should now be possible to name the font the way you like.

-erwind (August 25, 2008, 11:07 AM)

I got an error but I'm not sure what it might be related to. It popped up sometime after the recognition process started, with less than 40 seconds remaining. All it said was that it was an Uncaught Exception, which could be anything. I'm guessing it may be related to the second template page, since I tried that this time round.

I did notice that the scanned page had less white space than the first one did, so maybe it's that they weren't scanned with identical framing? If you have any specific questions about non-public info relating to the scans or filenames, feel free to PM me. I know you've got the PNG files on the server, but I'll save 'em here as well for another test run.

But do keep in mind Windows might be confused if you name your font '@@' or ''''.

I might get confused too if I do that. 

Great! Do give FontCreator a try and let me know if you like it!

I'm off to download it now. Scanahand sounds interesting too! Guess it uses the same basic engine as YourFonts, huh?

30

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 18, 2008, 08:56 PM »

Your post allowed me to make the online service even more rock solid! I still need to find a way to allow people to use the copyright symbol, but that's just a matter of time ;-)

-erwind (August 18, 2008, 03:18 PM)

That's great to hear! (Both.) Please post a note here once you make progress with the (c) symbol and I'll give it another shot.

Actually the generated font is an OpenType font with TrueType outlines. Not a fancy OpenType font that contains OpenType Layout Features, but still an OpenType font.

Interesting! I was just going by the TTF filename extension. I hope that doesn't make it harder to find an editor that'll let me tweak the results. I'll read the page you linked and see what I can learn.
 

I can see I have to work on the horizontal positioning of a few characters, so maybe version 2 of the web app would permit tweaking after recognition.

That's not on the to-do list.

Ever? No problem, then -- I'll dig up an editor somewhere. I think I've got one in my downloads dir.

31

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Firefox security addons?

« on: August 17, 2008, 10:22 AM »

Didn't know about Flash LSOs, thank you.

-Ehtyar (August 17, 2008, 02:35 AM)

Glad to help!

an extension called Objection on mozdev [...] performs a similar function but is not automated.

It's good to see more people becoming aware of Flash "cookies", which don't expire. Also, BetterCache isn't a very descriptive name -- it tries to keep people from exploiting your cache regarding privacy issues, but it's a fairly obscure technique (so far).

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General Software Discussion / Re: Best Firefox security addons?

« on: August 16, 2008, 11:01 PM »

Two extensions I consider to be useful, presuming they work as described are BetterPrivacy and BetterCache.
http://netticat.ath.cx/extensions.html

33

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.41.01 - AUG 1, 2008

« on: August 16, 2008, 07:40 PM »

Must be a bad combination of hardware here - even though they are all high-end components. Something are apparently not getting along, but I'll be darned if I can determine which!

-J-Mac (August 16, 2008, 12:27 PM)

One thing that some people overlook is BIOS settings. If you have a custom-built machine, it might be worth a look if you haven't been in there for awhile. I dunno about PCI Express, but my ABIT VT7 2.0 motherboard has a bunch of little tweaks for memory access speed, CPU management and AGP. If it's hardware related, it could be something as simple as backing off one of the performance settings.

Drivers are a major pain to troubleshoot, but you could play with the Windows (XP, anyway) Driver Verifier. %windir%\system32\verifier.exe

34

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.41.01 - AUG 1, 2008

« on: August 15, 2008, 09:40 PM »

Perhaps it is a conflict with nVidia GeForce cards in general

-J-Mac (August 15, 2008, 01:00 PM)

I can help you rule that out. I've got an nVidia GeForce FX 5500 -- definitely not state of the art any more, but maybe that'll help give you a reference point. No problems with flashing or performance hits here; the card's got 256 MB RAM onboard at AGP 8x.

I did also stick with an older version of the driver since they were done updating it for my card; Device Manager says it's version 6.14.10.9371 from 10/22/2006. Related info is XP Pro SP3 (and was fine on earlier Service Packs & driver versions too) and a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM. (It's a relatively basic system nowadays but it still works decently.)

35

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 15, 2008, 09:35 AM »

I just tried one. (Very cool service BTW!) I ran into 3 main problems.

• Through trial & error, I found that the upload process doesn't recognize apostrophes in the Font Name field. It also gave a very cryptic error message ("Please check your inputs"). It probably needs something more like "Please change something in the text you typed on this page. There are characters we don't recognize." The name I used was something along the line of "Fred's Handwriting" (without the quotes). I removed the apostrophe in the font name and the space too, just in case.
• Same thing during the upload -- the filename "Fred's Handwriting.png" (without the quotes) got me "A database error occured. We can't find your upload. Please try again." It's a much clearer error message (aside from the word "occurred" needing to have a second "R") but an apostrophe is a legitimate character in a Windows filename -- dunno about other systems.
• Finally, for the copyright notice I added the copyright © symbol to follow the full legal notice format, but it comes out as two squares in the final font file. That may be a Windows limitation related to the font used to display the TTF contents, but if that's the case you might want to insert a "(c)" in the textfield template instead.
• On a related note, I don't think I saw anywhere on the website that the font is created in TrueType format. I could be wrong, though, because I'm just going by what I remember seeing.

All in all, the font came out quite nice. I did use a 300 DPI PNG file, which came out to be about 1.5 megs, so it didn't take long to upload. I can see I have to work on the horizontal positioning of a few characters, so maybe version 2 of the web app would permit tweaking after recognition. 

36

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 12, 2008, 06:10 AM »

Glad to help -- hey, that's what BETA is all about. 

37

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 11, 2008, 09:59 AM »

The beta period is still going on. On the site the logo still shows a tiny "BETA".

-erwind (August 11, 2008, 04:00 AM)

Sorry -- I'm not sure how I missed that. Thanks!

I noticed that clicking on the Gallery link from the complete.html page gets me this:

• Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in C:\wamp\www\gallery.html on line 1

38

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.41.01 - AUG 1, 2008

« on: August 10, 2008, 09:44 AM »

and this is my "pre-capture" options  (see attachment in previous post)

-lanux128 (August 09, 2008, 09:16 PM)

A problem may be related to the window hiding during capture. That's when I was seeing artifacts from other windows. I wonder if it's a timing thing where, once SC is minimized, the grab is done before the window order is finished changing (as far as which one has focus)?

39

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« on: August 07, 2008, 09:30 PM »

if there's nothing to install, how do you access the encrypted part of the thumbdrive, then?

-f0dder (July 18, 2008, 03:17 PM)

From one of the on-site reviews:

this drive uses two drive letters (e.g. H: for the encryption software and I: for the drive itself)

...so it's a special partition mounted separately from the encrypted info that lets you manage the info. The access software is never separated from the info you're protecting. The only likely issue then would be OS compatibility, unless mitigated by a variety of software versions.

40

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« on: August 07, 2008, 06:16 PM »

Just wondering whether the beta period is still active. I thought maybe there'd be an announcement here, but there're already prices posted on the site so maybe I missed it?

41

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.41.01 - AUG 1, 2008

« on: August 06, 2008, 01:31 PM »

All in all it looks good! Here's what I found:

 * Prefs/Email SendTo List: FTP is supposed to be all caps. Makes it more readable/recognizable.
 * Prefs/Image File Format: the background transparency Save As option might be better as a checkbox in the Save As dialog itself.

Also, the UI shows the Prefs screencap with a drop shadow, but other than a larger than visible border, the shadow doesn't seem to actually be there. I notice that the Captor window capture from the menus did include the shadow. Weird...

42

Drag&Drop Robot / Re: LATEST Drag and Drop Robot VERSION INFO THREAD - v1.11.02 - June 03, 2008

« on: June 29, 2008, 03:31 AM »

Looks like a real creative utility -- I'm off to play with it. BTW,

Download from normal release page: https://www.donation...ftware/releases.html

-mouser (February 04, 2006, 12:30 AM)

The requested URL /Software/Mouser/dragdrop/downloads/DragAndDropRobot.exe was not found on this server.
The perils of maintaining multiple link pages.

43

Living Room / Re: "high quality fonts for publication"

« on: June 15, 2008, 04:11 PM »

Desktop.ini

-tomos (May 27, 2008, 12:39 PM)

Hmm, I think I've already got that font.

Seriously, though, thanks for the post! There're some real gems in there.

44

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Robokill

« on: June 15, 2008, 03:23 PM »

Very cool game. I ran out of energy (mentally) on my first run-through after reaching level 8 experience and mission 3, but I'm gonna give it another shot. Will have to try the low detail setting for the game on my somewhat slow computer -- some of the rooms were bogging down the CPU/GPU with too much going on.

45

Living Room / Re: Mintcamp: a new blog of interviews with developers and web designers

« on: June 14, 2008, 04:35 PM »

I agree -- it's good to hear from/about Skrommel. 

46

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to create crosswords?

« on: June 14, 2008, 01:52 PM »

I think one of the top crossword programs for Windows is Crossword Compiler. It weighs in at $30, but from the sound of its homepage it might be worth it:

Crossword Compiler is the professional constructor's program of choice. Most puzzles for the New York Times and other publications are made with help from the program. It has a full suite of tools for designing and filling grids, writing clues, and exporting puzzles.

Its creator is the guy that does WordWeb, the free/shareware desktop dictionary & thesaurus that I've used for years. His customer support is responsive and the quality of the software is quite good. I bet it's worth a look.

   

47

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: kill specified programs "harshly/silently" at shutdown

« on: May 05, 2008, 06:50 PM »

Why couldn't this be an added feature to Process Tamer?

that is quite a good idea really.
since i really want to keep PT tiny and free of extra features people don't need, it poses a bit of a problem.
however, i think maybe the solution is: plugins for Process Tamer.
i have stuff i'm working on for the next couple of months but when i finish i may consider this.

-mouser (January 02, 2008, 03:10 PM)

Nudge, nudge   

48

Post New Requests Here / Re: Rerun StartUp Folder

« on: January 26, 2008, 12:31 PM »

the ReRun links point to the BatteryRun files - not the headings, but the 'alternate' links underneath

-Target (November 18, 2007, 05:46 PM)

Bumping this topic -- Target's referring to the list page.
https://www.donation.../Skrommel/index.html

49

Living Room / Re: Poem of English Pronunciation

« on: November 18, 2007, 10:22 AM »

It's good to see that poem getting the attention it deserves -- it's very creative! I found this introduction attached to it a few years ago:

Multinational personnel at NATO headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language -- until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud.

Another one I came across some time back, not mentioned yet in this thread, is (re)posted as "So you wanna learn English".

For anyone wanting guidance through the madness, there's a great page called Common Errors in English by Paul Brians of Washington State University. It's quite thorough!

50

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.37.01 - OCT 7, 2007

« on: October 23, 2007, 11:26 AM »

Thanks, Cavalcader, but I think you might have been in a hurry, and didn't read my full post.

-deepkent (October 23, 2007, 02:46 AM)

Sorry about that -- you're right, I looked right past that part.