Messages

476

Living Room / Re: Win 7 XP mode

« on: March 08, 2011, 02:10 AM »

I don't think I expected quite this much help! 

Thanks, everyone!

The "need" is a BigFish game they already have a license for -- Luxor 2, I think -- and there's a long and mostly frustrated thread on the BigFish site that pretty much flattens any idea of getting it to work in Win7 native.

I don't want to flirt with anything illegal or risky -- the in-laws do NOT have any computer skills worthy of note and I've pretty much got their computer running without me having to go and interfere with it too often -- and I also don't want to do anything too obvious or needing of complicated stuff to make it happen.

The first go at this will therefore be borrowing their PC at the weekend while they're away and not needing it and setting up the MS solution, with a view to making the game run it seamlessly (which I gather is possible.)

If performance really sucks, I'll try one of the other virtualisation options -- I can always use the XP license from their old, dead PC.

477

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: March 06, 2011, 12:33 PM »

I have posted a new beta in the release thread here:
https://www.donation...index.php?topic=1514

Lots of new stuff.

-mouser (March 06, 2011, 11:07 AM)

Brilliant! Thanks for all the work you've put into this. I'll give it a proper workout tomorrow!

-- bests, Tim

478

Living Room / Win 7 XP mode

« on: March 05, 2011, 11:20 AM »

Hi...

I have a problem.

My mother-in-law has a Win 7 64-bit desktop PC, that they bought when their XP box died.

My father-in-law's favourite computer game won't run on Win 7.

Microsoft's virtual XP/compatibility mode thing is a 500Mb download. It'll fix their problem.

They live in the middle of nowhere and their home broadband connection is Miserably Slow. It also suffers dropouts and general unreliability.

So... I want to download the relevant installation package for them. I have a nice quick broadband connection and a 500Mb download probably won't take much longer than the last time I downloaded a linux distro.

Thing is, if I try to download from Microsoft, it wants me to do a WGA thing. And I can't run the download on a machine that has an acceptable version of WIndows 7, as my netbook is Starter edition (dual-booting with Ubuntu!) and my desktop is Vista.

There must be a way to download it some way that doesn't require the download to happen on the machine it's to be installed on, but I can't find anything useful out. Anyone got any helpful suggestions? (I expect I've missed something obvious somewhere, but hey, I'm old and grumpy and entitled to make the occasional small mistake!) 

479

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: March 04, 2011, 02:11 AM »

Depending on your OS, maybe you had a Clipboard Chain Break?  Both ArsClip and CHS have ways of detecting that.  E.g., ArsClip Web Help:

Automatic clipboard chain break detection

-rjbull (March 03, 2011, 04:19 PM)

Maybe, is as far as I'll go. In my experience, ArsClip reports breaks as well as attempting to deal with them when they occur -- and what was happening was that it was failing to work out where to paste clips, and telling me so.

I'm getting used to CHS's way of doing things, though, and Mouser's ideas about providing ordering facilities I think will bear useful fruit.

People want something that can knit, bake a good rice pudding and cycle up the curtains as well as put words on paper, it seems.

Souns like you're British    If you're old enough to remember Fidonet, the standing joke about Terminate was the forthcoming dishwasher interface...

I AM British. Don't hold it against me.

As far as Terminate's concerned, I remember it, I even used it, but I preferred Telix for comms. Fidonet -- well, I was 2:25/108 up until about 2003, when the computer it ran on suffered a fatal hard disk failure, resulting in the last known in-the-wild copy of DESQview breathing its last. (My BBS was called "Oblivion and You" and the "Oblivion" bit follows me around as it's generally the basis of my username on various fora around the place. Like here. 

(1989 might have been my first DTP package. That makes me feel suddenly very old.)

So you are old enough    Remember GEM? 

That's what it ran under. I've got close a couple of times, but I've never actually had to use a Mac in anger, which was the only other option for DTP, back then. (I saw a Mac for the first time in about 1984. I called it an executive toy. For many years, I stood by that description!)

Welcome to the Moderately Honourable Brotherhood of Beta Testers, Suggestion Makers and Software Pesterers 

Thanks -- although I think it's worth concentrating on the "moderately" in its title. 

Humph.  Going too far off topic    Apologies, mouser.

Agreed. Perhaps we should take our reminiscences somewhere more general?

--bests, Tim

480

Living Room / Re: Donation Coder Fever

« on: March 02, 2011, 07:09 AM »

Gizmo at TSA accidentally published an entry for tomorrow publicising this. See:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/during-march-new-free-utility-or-other-goodie-every-day.htm

 

481

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« on: March 01, 2011, 03:25 PM »

YAY!!

-mouser (March 01, 2011, 07:17 AM)

Apparently, I have to do this.

Being English, I'm not very good at these displays of advanced emotion and that sort of thing, and I shall probably blush.

<ahem>

Hoorah!

 

482

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 27, 2011, 12:29 PM »

Strange.  Just for you    I updated my USB stick(s) from Jarte 3.4 portable to 4.3 portable.  ArsClip worked fine with both versions, at least with plain text, I haven't tried again with RTF.  I'm using the latest ArsClip Beta, 3.1.5 build 4031, which is on Joe's Web site as acv315-t9.zip.  OS is Vista Home Premium.

-rjbull (February 27, 2011, 10:42 AM)

Oh dear. Same here, thoughout. That means the Gremlins are doing it. I HATE that.

...hang on, Jarte does clipboard monitoring. I wonder if it's that that's interfering... but then, it'd probably cause CHS to have problems, and it doesn't.

Mouser? There's a CHS option called Window Watching that defaults to on and that I thought might be the reason CHS worked and ArsClip didn't. Is it doing anything hugely clever that other, similar, programs might not?

I am now Proper Mystified. (I hate that too!)

It's going to turn out to be something stupid I've done, I expect. (And I especially hate that!)

Good for you!  I don't use word processors much, mostly editors.  But on the face of it, it's hard to see why it's worth paying more for an RTF WP.

-rjbull (February 27, 2011, 10:42 AM)

People want something that can knit, bake a good rice pudding and cycle up the curtains as well as put words on paper, it seems.

I can see the justification for DTP for some people, some of the time -- but then, I've been using DTP software for outputting documents where I wanted much more precise control of things than most WPs can provide for many, many years. (1989 might have been my first DTP package. That makes me feel suddenly very old.) But you're right -- most people who want WP think Word instantly, and there's absolutely no good reason for it except Microsoft's marketing machine, most of the time.

All those I mentioned have portable versions 

-rjbull (February 27, 2011, 10:42 AM)

That told me 

Okay, okay, I'll try again. But I still want to make CHS work better for me, because I'm arrogant enough to believe that if it works better for me, it'll work better for everyone else too. Nonsense, of course, but I haven't been a techie for all this time without having come to the conclusion that I'm right about everything most of the time. 

-- bests, Tim

483

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 27, 2011, 02:42 AM »

What doesn't work with ArsClip?  It's always worked OK for me on editors.  Just had a very quick check with an older version of Jarte free; looks like plain text is pasted OK, but RTF might not be.  Had mixed results doing the same thing with Softmaker Textmaker, where font effects appeared to be preserved, but size wasn't.

-rjbull (February 26, 2011, 03:03 PM)

It complained, with everything I tried, that it couldn't work out where to paste the text. (Can't remember the exact error, but it offers to -- and does -- paste to the clipboard, it just can't find the window to paste into.

I assume this is an issue with later versions of Windows than XP, as an XP machine I've used ArsClip on for ages -- well, probably a couple of years, now -- has never given me a problem. The machine I was using for this is a Vista box, and I have a Netbook with Win7 Starter that has similar issues.

I think Jarte is an extended version that uses the WordPad engine, that is, more features, and more still in the payware version.

-rjbull (February 26, 2011, 03:03 PM)

That's the one. Small, lightweight, fast and effective.

I did my usual thing with this -- as with most free software I use -- although I didn't need (and don't use) the extra features, I bought the payware version anyway. Gotta keep the authors of good software in business, even if it's only in a small way!

If you're doing what I think you're doing, you might be better off with a dedicated text expander/completer/corrector.  I currently use Typing Assistant (payware).  The one most often recommended is Phrase Express, which has both free-for-personal-use and payware versions.  Here on DC, timns is developing Auspex, see the Timns Apps sub-board.  There are others too, mentioned in several DC threads.

-rjbull (February 26, 2011, 03:03 PM)

I tried Phraseexpress a couple of years back -- I either didn't get on with it or it didn't work in a way I found useful, can't recall now. Perhaps I should take another look.

But I have become a big fan of portable apps. Anything like that, I want my clipboard to be able to travel with me.

Another thought: if you have repetitive pasting of boilerplate clips to do, you might want to look at another of mouser's programs, The Form Letter Machine.

-rjbull (February 26, 2011, 03:03 PM)

I looked at that. Not the sort of thing I do -- but if it was, I'd be using it! It looks excellent.

Thanks for all the suggestions, anyway -- I shall do some more investigating (in between nagging mouser to keep improving CHS!)

--bests, Tim

484

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 25, 2011, 03:55 PM »

Sounds like a plan.

I've spent a few minutes trying to come up with a rationale that could make drag-and-drop work based on recalculation of a notional count in the database, but I think the only way to do it would be to add a count for each possible table, which would mean restructuring the database every time you wanted a new view onto it, which would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Your suggestion sounds like it'd work for me -- thanks!

-- bests, Tim

485

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 25, 2011, 02:43 PM »

A few comments, having used CHS in anger for most of this week...

My clipboard manager of choice has always been ArsClip. However, it won't play ball with the text editors I've tried to use for the work I've been doing -- Jarte primarily, but I'd have used OpenOffice or anything else that could do quick editing and basic formatting.

CHS has worked nicely with Jarte (if you haven't, try it -- it's a wrapper for WordPad, apparently, but is a very decent free rtf editor) but using it in the same way I'd have used ArsClip hasn't really worked.

I set a few favourites -- longish words I knew I was going to be typing repeatedly -- and set a shortcut up to bring up favourites to make them easier to get at quickly.

To begin with, I had four. A few hours later, I added another few. And my favourites menu, which I'd pretty much learned (ctrl-alt-f then 3 for the word "pharmacist" every time, for instance) changed, so I had to relearn it.

So first, I'd like to be able to control the order in which favourites are listed, preferably by drag-and-drop, but the ability to sort the list in some way -- like maybe alphabetically -- would be a good second best.

Sorting things in the main CHS window doesn't always seem to work and, even when it does, doesn't seem to affect the order in the popup. I'd like it to.

Back to what I was doing... Once I'd created a chunk of text -- this is a series of reports I've been typing up for my wife -- I'd copy it all to the clipboard and paste it into my DTP program.

CHS naturally keeps all those too.

I'd like to be able to tell CHS that chunks of text above a certain size -- maybe 1k? -- should be instantly purged from the database. Maybe allow some to be "locked" so they're not deleted...?

If I go through the clipboard to remove all those -- they're obviously mixed in with a lot of single word entries -- the behaviour of the list is very odd. I'd like to be able to work through the list from the top to the bottom, and perhaps sort that list by date captured, or clip length, to make that management process easier. (I may be missing something here, but it appeared that the highlight was bouncing around the list at random, although I suppose it might have been following an order I couldn't see and therefore couldn't sort on.)

Having said all that, I sort of get the impression that a lot of people are using CHS as something more than what I am...?

486

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 16, 2011, 03:36 PM »

Better duplicate handling

i hope to have this done in a release in the next week or so.

-mouser (February 15, 2011, 02:30 PM)

A note from TSA:

So I've been using CHS for about an hour or so, and maybe I spoke too fast yesterday. Although it has many features I had been looking for a long time, it also has serious limitations.
I have this "{sendkeys}" bug when I try to format the text, for example.
It also doesn't seem to handle pictures and files and other non-text formats...
We'll see !

That looks like another vote for unicode and images. (Personally, I have no use for clipboard handling of multiple images -- but I might be in the minority!)

487

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« on: February 15, 2011, 02:21 PM »

Better duplicate handling, so the current list doesn't fill up with dupes (and perhaps the option to allow / disallow duplicate detection if the difference is only in the case of the word/s

Ability to assign hotkeys to individual clips

Ability to define menu key (like, for instance, p&assword uses a as the shortcut)

Less SQL :-)

Can the installer optionally auto-extract when the cancel button's hit, instead of making you open it with 7zip or similar (this because I just KNOW there's gonna be more newbies along!)

488

General Software Discussion / Rostering software

« on: January 12, 2011, 05:32 AM »

I don't know where to post this, but I have a concept for a program that's probably a bit more than a snack but probably less than a full program...

It's come about because my wife has picked up the job of coming up with a staff rota at her workplace.

What would be useful to her, I think, is a program that could help with managing this.

You'd need to be able to handle a list of people, each of whom would have a number of hours to work in a given day, but where a working day would extend for longer than any one person would work. You'd need cover for the whole day, too.

I envisage a program that could be told a person's working week in terms of the number of hours, and a visual week planner that would be able to switch on a person for a given day and drag a bar, representing their shift, left and right on screen, with customisable gaps for meal breaks and the like. You'd want to be able to see that you'd allocated everyone's time over a time period -- a week, 4 weeks, a month -- and you'd also want to be able to see at a glance that you'd covered the work that needed to be done, so no unstaffed gaps.

Sort of a combination of project and time management but with a heavy emphasis on the visual elements and none of the stuff that these types of program might worry about related to charging and the like.

Does anyone know of anything that might already exist? Or be able to suggest an approach using something spreadsheety, perhaps, but without requiring coding skills I don't have?

489

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser Update: ContactFX 0.0.2.0

« on: December 04, 2010, 02:28 AM »

I've been trying to find a good contacts program to replace the one in my Psion 5mx -- and, so far, haven't found anything I like.

Needs:

portability (yes, I know that's an intention!)

connectability: I'd like to be able to import and export data between other places I might have contacts info now. Google Contacts would be useful, for instance.

Search: a single search field that just matches anything, anywhere.

Links: click on an email address will start an email client, for instance.

Birthdays.

Localisation (eg UK dates and address formats)

If it can run under WINE, that's a bonus!

I will test anything with enthusiasm!

490

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for November 2nd, 2010 - "MegaLetter"

« on: November 04, 2010, 08:42 AM »

Perhaps one tiny complaint -- this was emailed out today but the freebie PIM offer expired at the end of October!

491

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TinyEV (Everything integration) - 0.9.5 - 12 June 2009 (updated)

« on: September 21, 2010, 05:25 PM »

Just a note: I had similar problems with FARR+TinyEV finding Everything under Vista, I've made them go away by launching FARR with Admin rights and, to avoid the UAC prompt, have used the same trick to start FARR that is used to start Everything, via Task Scheduler. (What? Test it? Look, unnecessary restarts are a pain in the neck and I'll only forget to come back and explain what I did. I'll  come back and delete this post only if it fails. Which it won't.)

Thanks to everyone who made this work so I could come along and pretend I did something clever.