Messages

26

General Software Discussion / Re: What was a great program that's now been forgotten?

« on: March 27, 2020, 12:46 PM »

A newer one (early 90's) that I liked was 386Max!  A DOS program, it allowed the user to load memory-resident programs and drivers in the unused memory space between the 640k and 1meg area, so that more of the 640k space was available to regular DOS programs.  It also allowed easy configuration of the memory above the 1meg mark to allow programs to use Extended and/or Expanded memory.

-autohost (March 27, 2020, 10:14 AM)

Now that brings back memories. Quarterdeck QEMM/386 and DESQview. All that extra memory and multi-tasking DOS apps too. (Should have mentioned it above when I was reminiscing about the BBS -- DESKview let me run a BBS and use the PC for other things at the same time. Sounds trivial now, but pre-Windows that was kind of revolutionary. Not cheap but once you had it you never, ever wanted to do without it again...

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General Software Discussion / Re: What was a great program that's now been forgotten?

« on: March 26, 2020, 11:28 AM »

Holy cow that brings back memories. I used it in MCAS Iwakuni, Japan while stationed there in 1988. If you took a few to learn the syntax you could really do things very quickly. Thanks for the memories!

-reynolds_john (March 25, 2020, 12:34 PM)

WordStar was awesome for touch-typists. You could do everything without moving your hands away from the home keys. Sure, there was function key support too -- later on, anyway -- but anyone who'd learned it properly could bash out documents faster than anyone working on pretty much any other platform.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What was a great program that's now been forgotten?

« on: March 25, 2020, 10:47 AM »

Lotus 123, the best spread sheet I ever used when working 30+ years ago.

-tomgee88 (March 25, 2020, 10:35 AM)

I liked CA SuperCalc better -- for what little it's worth. Similar in many ways but SuperCalc had something that was just awesome -- it worked out whether what you were typing was a number, text or a formula and just acted accordingly. So the prefixes you had to type in 123 (or pretty much anything else before or since) to identify what you were entering in a cell -- no need. Lovely.

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Living Room / Re: Do good mice still exist? Looking for recommendations.

« on: March 25, 2020, 09:05 AM »

Not sure if this is the response you'd want but -- do you need a mouse?

I have been using graphics tablets instead of mice for ... well, it's definitely over 15 years. My first was a rebadged Wacom Volito 2 that I got in a bundle with a drawing package. (No, it wasn't. I'd forgotten -- my first was a thing called a Hyper-Pen in about 2003. My first GOOD one was the Volito2.)

It's a bit of a culture shock. You're probably used to relative movement with your mouse and graphics tablets rather demand (although most don't insist) on absolute positioning -- so if you're intending to click in the middle of the screen, you tap in the middle of the tablet.

Mouse movement is achieved by moving the tip of the stylus around just above the tablet, with (typically) left clicks done by tapping the tip on the surface, right clicks by hovering in the appropriate place and pressing a button on the stylus with your forefinger. If you can write comfortably, you already know how to hold the stylus -- and you don't need to worry about the RSI associated with heavy use of mice (mouses?) unless you're also prone to similar issues when handwriting.

The missing mousewheel is an issue for some -- but most tablet software has a way to do scrolling if you can't bear to drag scrollbars around.

There are some cheap but perfectly serviceable tablets out there. Wacom are usually the tablets to beat but tend also to be the most expensive. Huion are pretty good (but some of the drivers don't support mousing across extended desktops so check before you dive in) and I'm just about to pick up a new XP-Pen device that's had good reviews and will replace an older Ugee on one of my systems if it's as good as it seems. Prod me in a week or two and I'll post a review.

And if you ever do any graphics work at all, your tablet will change your life. Honestly. (Don't get smaller than 6" x 4" though, and serious art really needs 10". Costs more the bigger you go, naturally, so stick with toe-dipping until you're convinced. In about a week after purchase, I confidently predict.)

Oh: some styluses (styli?) don't need batteries, some do. The ones that don't are lighter, obviously. Wacom used to be about the only choice for batteryless styli but my new XP-Pen has a passive stylus so again, there are options.

I have a couple of cheap wireless mouses (mice?) that I cart around with me if I'm carrying a laptop around but anywhere I'm static for any length of time, I put a tablet.

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N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Release: Customizable Remote Administration Panel (CRAP)

« on: February 10, 2020, 11:39 AM »

Can't think how I never noticed this before.

I've been after something that can do exactly what this does for ages. Specifically, since I noticed that I couldn't find a way to make runas work in other tools I use.

My first impression was slight confusion -- I think you have to have read the initial request and at least some of that background, and I found some of the screenshots helpful and illuminating too. Probably fullblown documentation is unnecessary but maybe a couple of lines of text with a brief description of what each of the fields is typically going to be used for, and a couple of complete examples maybe:

For instance, if I want a button that runs Active Directory Users and Computers as a user with admin privileges from an account without them, you might have:

Image file: <sysroot>System32\mmc.exe;0

Command prefix: runas /user:domain\superuser "<sysroot>System32\mmc.exe dsa.msc"

Button caption: something like "AD Users"

and Button tooltip: "Active Directory Users and Computers"

and "Ignore variable text" checked as this one's probably gonna have to be run locally

along with a little bit of explanation that, at least for its intended purpose, the variable's going to be the remote machine you're aiming the command at rather than anything else, everything would have fallen into place fairly quickly.

If I had a suggestion for a possible improvement: a checkbox that will assume the use of runas and a little bit of program allowing a username and password to be stored and easily amended with a view to adding them to the runas command in the appropriate place without displaying it in cleartext, that'd be rather lovely.

But in general: wonderful! Thanks!   

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General Software Discussion / Re: What was a great program that's now been forgotten?

« on: February 10, 2020, 09:10 AM »

(Anybody remember Rusty n Edies, FidoNet, and Boardwatch Magazine?)

-40hz (January 24, 2020, 05:58 PM)

One part of that. I ran a FidoNet BBS right up to the early 2000s -- 2:25/108 -- and may have been among the last phoneline-based systems.

One of my old USR Courier modems was repurposed as the hardware part of an automated fax system that was finally switched off for the last time less than two years ago.

[Fun fact: not sure it was much used but I used a Courier for dialin access to my work system back in the mid 1990s. Security was handled with a password provided via whatever the heck comms program I was using, after which the Courier dropped the line and dialled back the number associated with that password. Hack that!

Oh yes. The whatever the heck comms program was probably Telix. That was pretty awesome too.]

And I just turned 58 on Friday. Which, given the above, is suddenly starting to sound believable.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: BUG? Second Past Always As Plain Text

« on: January 30, 2020, 08:10 AM »

Clipboard Captor would be the name I would choose now.. Perhaps with support for multiple formats it can evolve into Clipboard Captor..

-mouser (January 30, 2020, 05:05 AM)

...Mm. I can envisage an automagic link to the ScreenshotCaptor image repository, which would help to justify the name change, even if the use is relatively trivial...

Do people really care about supporting formats other than richtext format, like internal application formats?

Not really. I don't think.

(Maybe...)

Mm. It's an edge case. I might think about using it if it was there, perhaps if it was something that could be switched on and off for captures relatively easily, or via a dedicated keyboard shortcut...

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: BUG? Second Past Always As Plain Text

« on: January 28, 2020, 09:48 AM »

some use it in environments where space is at a premium.

-wraith808 (January 28, 2020, 09:25 AM)

For instance, on the encrypted thumbdrive I cart around with me...

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: BUG? Second Past Always As Plain Text

« on: January 16, 2020, 10:25 AM »

It sure would be great if you maintained the source format, though.

-djMot (January 15, 2020, 07:26 AM)

I actually make specific use of the talent of CHS to strip formatting out of heavily formatted pasted text, it's a useful feature to me, so if this is changed, I hope the current behaviour might be left accessible in some way!

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Possible suggestion -- variables in clips

« on: January 15, 2020, 07:51 AM »

I like the idea of a paste with the program asking for variable to replace before pasting.. It wouldn't be very hard to add.. The real question is whether it would be smarter to write it as a built-in function or whether it would be better to have a way for CHS to be told about a standalone exe it should invoke to paste certain formatted clips, and let the 3rd party tool do the prompt for variables followed by replacement and paste..

-mouser (January 15, 2020, 02:38 AM)

Playing with the existing functionality here, I've built myself a working (if slightly clunky) solution and I think maybe what's there could be refined just slightly.

The %customdate% variable and a template is the route I took: effectively pasting a predefined string followed by the %customdate% variable, where I've defined customdate to take the format I want. It's okay but only if I only download one podcast from that series on any given day, in its current form... and, of course, I have to invoke it by shift-clicking on an entry and picking it from a menu.

The alternative approach that I couldn't make work was using the modify format/case functionality -- there's an option to add a date at either the top or bottom but not without including a line break.

But I still like the idea of a prompt for a variable that might populate a named variable like customdate, and I also wonder if a counter variable similar to the one you use for filenames in ScreenshotCaptor might be a useful thing for filenames too. It feels to me like a standalone exe to be called might be overkill, but I'm not the programmer here, just someone who treats the clipboard like his personal slave

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Possible suggestion -- variables in clips

« on: January 13, 2020, 06:09 PM »

Are your podcasts common file types like MP3, and if so, do they contain metadata tags?

-rjbull (January 13, 2020, 03:02 PM)

I used to use RenameMaster for something else entirely and had entirely forgotten its existence. And the Bulk Rename thing -- I used that to pull info out of long filenames and get them into an 8.3 format for a gateway process I designed nearly a decade ago, and I'd forgotten about that one too.

The approach is not unreasonable, and I hadn't thought of it! I could probably also do something like this in XYplorer too. But my preference is to create the file with the right name (by overriding the name Acast presents me with in the DownloadStudio save file dialog) if I can as it's then a single stage process with just a minor intervention.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Possible suggestion -- variables in clips

« on: January 13, 2020, 05:59 PM »

You could use a custom date ('R - Time/Date TextClips' from the Quick menu of CHS

-Ath (January 13, 2020, 02:07 PM)

In all my time using CHS, I've never ever used the Quick menu.  And while I was hoping for a more general-purpose kind of solution (on the basis that I could probably find lots of other things I could do with a facility to populate and use a variable on the fly) this might very well solve this problem for me -- thanks! 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Artists: What digital hardware+software do you use for digital sketchin/painting

« on: January 13, 2020, 05:49 PM »

my tools of choice are Serif's DrawPlus for vector graphics

-oblivion (January 13, 2020, 08:42 AM)

That's their pre-Affinity one, yes?  Are you still happy with it on Win10?

-rjbull (January 13, 2020, 03:43 PM)

Yes, but only the 32-bit version seems okay. The 64-bit version has a nasty habit of hanging during the loading process.

Not that it's relevant, but I never went with Affinity because, having been a Serif user since about 1993, when they ditched their old codebase for a completely new start, making a conscious decision to abandon support for the previous product line, I felt a little aggrieved. So I'm wringing all the value I can get from the Serif products I have licences for -- DrawPlus, PagePlus, PhotoPlus -- and I don't much care how good Affinity is, I'm not going there.

I have several graphics tablets: [...]10 inch Ugee

-oblivion (January 13, 2020, 08:42 AM)

I've heard of Wacom, but never of Ugee.

-rjbull (January 13, 2020, 03:43 PM)

Cheaper alternative. It was a 10" tablet for about £40. Has sixteen configurable buttons at the top of the tablet and eight programmable function keys down the side, the stylus came with a collection of spare tips and a stand and, as long as you don't want to use it on an extended desktop across more than one monitor, it's a decent enough choice. Mine is the M1000L -- although I've had it a while and it's probably been superseded by now. As I said, it comes in handy for tracing stuff -- although, now I think of it, I think I bought the transparent layer separately.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Artists: What digital hardware+software do you use for digital sketchin/painting

« on: January 13, 2020, 08:42 AM »

For those of you who spend time sketching/painting in digital medium, I'm curious what tools, both hardware and software, you find the most enjoyable to use?
Anyone use a drawing tablet? A fancy screen with pressure sensitive pen etc?

-mouser (September 08, 2019, 01:04 AM)

A bit late to this party...

I'm not much of a digital artist (as my previous efforts with NANY mug designs will clearly show) but my tools of choice are Serif's DrawPlus for vector graphics, Sagelight for photos and the like if I'm doing image enhancements or a combination of the two if I want to draw or write on photos. And I have several graphics tablets: two Wacom Bamboos (one 10x6, the other 6x4) and a 10 inch Ugee (because I got a tracing overlay with it.)

The Ugee stylus is a little heavier than the Wacom (as it includes a power source -- I have a rechargeable one now but the original took a AAA battery) but both are nicely pressure sensitive for the software that understands such things. Oh, and the Ugee will only drive one screen, whereas the Wacoms do two comfortably.

But I primarily use the tablets for all my computer interactions. The stylus doesn't give me RSI, and a mouse does. Once you're used to the absolute (rather than relative) mode for cursor movement, you'll probably never want to go back.

(I have just bought a Udemy course at a bargain price to improve my digital art skills, and the tablet was a prerequisite.)

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General Software Discussion / Re: Sagelight Image Editor v4 returns as Pay-What-You-Want

« on: January 13, 2020, 07:55 AM »

Just seen this thread.

I bought Sagelight back in 2011 -- had no idea it was so long ago! -- and it's still my favourite image editor. I'd given up on ever seeing it updated and was slowly coming to terms with the prospect of having to find a worthwhile replacement, so this is great news. But what poor Rob had to go through in the hiatus -- had no idea.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Possible suggestion -- variables in clips

« on: January 13, 2020, 06:05 AM »

I have an increasingly anachronistic tendency: I download podcasts rather than stream them, so I can use my MP3 player rather than my phone.

Some podcasts (particularly, it seems, those hosted by Acast), when downloaded from a link in an RSS feed, create files with really, really long and non-readable filenames.

One of them (a new, daily podcast that started at the beginning of the year -- The Last Post, with the remarkable Alice Fraser) is, because it's daily, creating for me a need to have a naming strategy for the things so I can (a) recognise them from everything else, and (b) not overwrite one I haven't got round to listening to yet with today's.

So I have a clip in CHS that pastes "lastpost200101" and I then just have to modify the date part of that to reflect the current download.

So here's an idea: what if a clip could embed a query variable, possibly with a default value, so I could paste the above but have it ask me for the date part of the string before performing the paste?

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N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« on: December 11, 2019, 08:32 AM »

Any last requests?

-mouser (December 08, 2019, 02:01 AM)

I'm late to the party -- so what's new  -- but this is potentially really useful to me.

I have a boss, a couple of subordinates and a variety of weird systems that I have to look after.

I get -- often at fairly random times -- issues that I need to discuss with one or other of the above three people, plus system superusers and so forth, and although I have notebooks and things like Rightnote that help me keep things in order, the advantage of this is that I can add a thought or a discussion point ready for meetings and the like, pretty much wherever I am and whatever I'm doing.

I've been using it for, like, ten minutes so what feedback I have is limited but the only early thoughts I have are: (maybe) a single-tap button for return to list view, and (maybe) an optional button to move the current slide to a predefined category (I'm thinking of a "Done" category, for stuff that's been discussed that I can remove but be able to change my mind about, or reopen for later discussion.

But the functionality that's there already seems quite lovely.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Possible new facility: runas for aliases

« on: November 20, 2019, 01:28 AM »

Where is FARR more secure in asking for a password opposed to entering it in a Windows CMD prompt (without any character echo'ed)?

-Ath (November 20, 2019, 01:19 AM)

That's not really what I was asking for - I just want FARR to be able to trigger the existing Windows functionality, either by allowing me to shift right click from the results window, or by letting me set an option for an alias to always trigger the run as another user function. Having FARR ask for the uid and password is asking too much, I recognise.

It didn't occur to me that I might be able to trigger it in a CMD window without storing anything - I'll experiment.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Possible new facility: runas for aliases

« on: November 19, 2019, 05:30 PM »

Can you use the cmd internal command runas? (Not a FARR user... )

-Ath (November 18, 2019, 01:50 PM)

I could, if I didn't worry about exposing my password. Runas on the command line can be given username and password, or just username and have it prompt for password, but I can't script all that if I want to avoid storing the password as plain text.

The nice thing about shift-right-click is that you get a proper Windows uid/password dialog.

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Find And Run Robot / Possible new facility: runas for aliases

« on: November 18, 2019, 09:27 AM »

I occasionally use a Microsoft gadget called Active Directory Users and Computers. (Catchy, I know. I'd call it ADUC but Cody might get nasty.)

Anyway, I set up a FARR alias (AD) for it but I need to run it as a different user to get the appropriate level of access. I can right-click and get run as Admin but the trick I use on the desktop (shift-right-click adds "run as different user" to the context menu) doesn't work in FARR.

So a couple of suggestions: one, add shift-right-click support to programs in the FARR list. Two, allow a tweak for an alias that will always ask for userid and password for that particular thing.

I appreciate that usually, anything that can be described in a couple of sentences is probably horrifically complicated to implement ...

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Android Apps / Re: Other app ideas based on WhenLast code

« on: September 29, 2019, 07:30 PM »

Can I see a show of hands for anyone using the dropbox multi-device sync functionality in my android apps?

-mouser (September 28, 2019, 10:42 PM)

I have it enabled and running but the only thing I ever used it for was to move a setup from one phone to another. There are other ways to do that - I can live without it.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Non automated time trackers

« on: August 12, 2019, 08:43 AM »

Been using Anuran successfully for this for a while, now: I have a CHS popup menu defined with several cookie-cutter text items that I use for uncomplicated stuff, but I've noticed a couple of things. I've lost the Anuvu filter box and I can't work out where it went or how to get it back... and when the "save note" options are set to save on Enter, you get the Enter as well as the save, so if you also use the "show previous entry" option the previous entry grows by a newline every time. But that's a minor gripe.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: August 01, 2019, 06:17 AM »

Hiya :>

I'm using this -- in a very, very basic way -- to track my movements. Brilliant.

So I have it set to pop up every 30 minutes and I use a little Clipboard-Help-And-Spell set of possibilities to paste in my current location from a list. And I have Anuran set to store the entry when I hit Enter, and to remember the previous entry.

So a couple of things I've noticed:

I'd kinda like Anuran to popup when it starts, and then every 30 minutes afterwards. Have I missed a setting?

The save and close thing with <Enter> adds the <enter> as well as closing the popup (which isn't what I'd expect.) So, with the previous entry being remembered, each one gets a new <enter> and consequently gets longer over time unless I do something else to stop it.

A corollary to that last bit: the new popup appears with the existing text selected, so to avoid blanking it I have to hit cursor down to clear the selection before hitting <Enter> or I've deleted the text I wanted to keep. I think I can think of situations where that might be preferred behaviour, but as previous entry data doesn't get kept if I've shut my laptop down, gone somewhere else and started it up again, I'm not sure it would ever be important. To me. So, should that (the selection of the text from the previous entry in the current entry, that is) be optional?

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: June 22, 2019, 08:28 AM »

Just a note for anyone following this topic : Bits du Jour have this on offer again right now.

I've found some recent uses for GS-Base that have reawakened my enthusiasm. A bit niche, I grant, but one of the systems I support can only output report data as .csv. GS-Base imports it perfectly, has an option to convert textual dates to date fields at import, handles all sorts of helpful search and filtering options and spits data out in various portable formats too.

The formulae it supports remain very Excel-like and my brain isn't but it's not GS-Base's fault that the syntax my brain is happiest with is different to its style!)

I bought a lifetime license though, so the upgrade policy is no longer an issue for me. I understand the concerns expressed above but still feel that the bang you're getting for your buck is pretty much unmatched

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General Software Discussion / Re: Non automated time trackers

« on: June 18, 2019, 10:38 AM »

So my idea for the moment is to combine Anuran with a set of stored text items in Clipboard Help And Spell, moved into a group to keep them together. Not entirely what I'd envisaged but I think it will do the job. Thanks for the directional shove!