Messages

1101

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« on: July 23, 2007, 10:22 AM »

So if I open FARR and then just close it again, I'd want my clipboard contents prior to starting FARR to be intact.

this was one of the reasons i totally redid the hotkey system.  now it works exactly as you say -- you can configure a specific hotkey (ctrl+break by default) to copy selected text to clipboard when launching farr.  other hotkeys (break or whatever), wont do this.

-mouser (July 22, 2007, 02:23 PM)

Ok, just so that I understand things, is this how FARR v2 will work:

- One variable, $c, will always have the clipboard contents.
- If FARR is started with a special hotkey (CTRL+BREAK by default) then the clipboard (and so $c) will be filled with whatever was selected in the last active window.
- No matter if such a special hotkey is used or not, FARR will always put last active window name, exe name, pid (process id) and whatever was selected in that window in other variables.

Some other thoughts:

Is support for selecting multiple results items (similar to selecting multiple files in Explorer) planned?

When selecting a result, and dragging it outside FARR a "copy-here-plus-mouse-pointer" is displayed. In Explorer, pressing right click while dragging cancels the copy action (and a regular pointer without the plus reappears). Not so in FARR. ESC cancels the drag action in FARR just like in Explorer though.

Regarding "+sall": two natural hotkeys for adding/removing that phrase from the textbox could be CTRL+PAGEDOWN/PAGEUP (if there's no other planned use for them that is)

1102

Find And Run Robot / Re: Alias sharing

« on: July 23, 2007, 10:19 AM »

Metacritic.com, general keyword search:
1000>>>metacritic>->metacritic - $$1 | http://www.metacriti...termType=all&ts=$$1&ty=0>+>metacri(?:|t|ti|tic) (.*)

1103

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« on: July 20, 2007, 08:34 PM »

thanks!
edit:

The second part, "selected" is the variable for the selected text.

This is *supposed* to work already when you type $c but it doesnt seem to be working.. fixing now.

-mouser (July 20, 2007, 08:15 PM)

When starting FARR with CTRL+BREAK then "addnote $c" works for me. I want FARR to always keep track of the previously selected text, but I'm not sure if I want it to always put that text on the clipboard. I want it on the clipboard only when I trigger some command in FARR and FARR needs to put stuff on the clipboard to carry out that command. So if I open FARR and then just close it again, I'd want my clipboard contents prior to starting FARR to be intact.

1104

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« on: July 20, 2007, 08:07 PM »

farr actually does track the program that was active before it was triggered, and i will be adding variables for accessing window name, exe name, pid (process id), so that you could do the things you are talking about with pkill example.

-mouser (July 20, 2007, 07:44 PM)

My notepad example was unclear. What I meant is perhaps clearer here:
User selects the text "football is a really great sport - I just love it" in some window. Starts FARR, types "addnote selected" and thus adds the whole selected text to the notefile. The first part, "addnote", is an already existing alias. The second part, "selected" is the variable for the selected text. End result: the notefile associated with addnote gets appended with "football is a really great sport - I just love it"

Another question (probably an old newbie question but I didnt find an answer on a quick search): sometimes a search gets 10-30 matches. If I have set FARR max entries to display to 10, can I still jump to results 10-20, 20-30 ... somehow? For example, can I redo the same search but this time around (temporarily, for this search only) ignore the previous 10 matches?

1105

Find And Run Robot / Re: A long shot: anyone up for creating a fake satire hype video for FARR v2?

« on: July 20, 2007, 07:44 PM »

mouser, yes I meant it only as a friendly poke towards Dash of course. Dramatic classical music is widespread in the whole genre of demo videos so it would be more of a general parody really.

I have no video making experience and will be vacationing in the coming weeks and so can't contribute much. But I hope someone makes this happen -- it could create positive buzz for FARR.

app103: FARR vs. that MS dog is a good idea! I can really picture it.

As for FARR vs the start menu: how about a custom created start menu with A LOT of messy folders and subfolders covering the whole screen basically. When navigating, let the folders have regular names in the beginning but more and more weird the deeper the narrator navigates...

example: program > games > some games > more games > simon sorcerer II > simon sorcerer I > Pong > Q how many more folders > A many more > and more > ahhhgr!!! enough already

And at that stage in the folder tree the narrator gives up on the start menu and pulls up FARR, types a few characters, find and launches the game. That last sequence is then repeated, now in slowmotion with a millisecond counter running and to the sound of racing cars. The text "world record" flashes at the end.

1106

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« on: July 20, 2007, 07:33 PM »

the ctrl+break hotkey is very useful!  In general, making FARR aware of what application had focus before FARR, what text was selected in it and so on is great.

One idea: FARR could create some special aliases/variables each time it is called up (regardless of the hotkey pressed). One for the application that had focus before FARR, one for the the selected text in that application (if any) or the selected file(s) (in the case of an Explorer like application).

example: User uses notepad.exe with the text "football is a really great sport - I just love it" selected. Starts FARR, types "addnote selected" and thus adds the whole selected text to the notefile.

example2: user uses Firefox. Starts FARR, types "pkill active" and thus kills Firefox.

With such variables, the user can stick to one single hotkey and still tie the functionality in FARR to the context FARR was started in.

1107

Find And Run Robot / Re: A long shot: anyone up for creating a fake satire hype video for FARR v2?

« on: July 20, 2007, 08:15 AM »

What a good idea! 
A parody on that flashy Dash video would be to also start by launching some VERY bombastic and loud classic music -- think the climax of Strauss "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" as used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. But then quickly intersect the angry voice of a ficticious mother/father figure that tells the narrator to turn the volume down. The narrator then launches some FARR command to lower the volume.

And some more extravagant PR-lingo: "Other launchers are the start menu 2.0. FARR is other launchers 2.0. In fact, FARR is 2.0 2.0!"

1108

Find And Run Robot / Re: Custom Font Settings for FARR

« on: July 20, 2007, 07:53 AM »

Mouser, the large font for the input box is very useful! 

I'd prefer separating the option for large/small icons and the option to have multiple columns on one row vs. multiple rows for each result. For example, I'd prefer small icons and two rows with text fields for each result (filename+path).

The filename is the only text field for results that is displayed in bold. To further increase the contrast between filename and the other text fields it would be good to have an option to change color for the other text fields (path, score and so on), for example to some shade of grey. Also, maybe two display modes could be set for the other text fields: in the default mode the other texts fields are invisible or light grey, in the second mode (activated when holding CTRL or CTRL+SHIFT or something like that) they become visible in black or dark grey.

1109

Find And Run Robot / Re: An idea for FARR "with this file do.." type actions

« on: July 20, 2007, 07:26 AM »

| is hard to enter on some keyboard layouts (AltGr + < on mine) so I agree with jgpaiva that TAB would be better. The current TAB functionality (display path) could then be demoted to CTRL+TAB perhaps? Another key that is consistently easy to press across keyboard layouts: the UP key. And it seems to have no current use in FARR when the input field has focus.

Another issue is what to do if user types | and there is more than 1 result showing.  FARR needs to know the single file you are going to use..

Maybe when you type | far should pop up and ask you which item you wish to select to work with, OR allow like |2 to mean choose second item, or |5 for fifth, etc.  so if only one result then as soon as you type | it will switch to "with ... do.." mode, but if more than one it will wait for you to type a digit after the | before switching.

-mouser (July 06, 2007, 08:00 PM)

Sounds great but let plain | (or plain TAB) automatically work on the first result and let || (TAB TAB) trigger FARR to somehow ask the user about what result(s) to work on.

edit: Also, navigating down to a result (say number 2) in the list and then pressing | (or TAB) could be made equivalent to typing |2 (or TAB 2)

1110

General Software Discussion / Re: Which MP3 player/management software do you use?

« on: July 18, 2007, 04:00 PM »

I hope it's ok with masu that I jump in on this thread. I'd also like to find an "easy to use mp3 management software".

I've tried some organizers (Winamp for a long time) but they've had too many windows and special features. The root problem is that many of them seem to aspire to be an all-in-one player/organizer/tagger/ripper/browser package.

I currently use Xmplay for playing and for the current playlist and I plan to stick with that. But the built in library in Xmplay is very limited so I've given up on using that.

As library/manager/organizer for files, folders and playlist files I just use Windows Explorer and reasonably well-ordered collection of artist-album folders which I sort alphabethically. I've set the view mode for the root folder to "thumbnails" and have a "folder.jpg" image in many of the folders which makes browsing pretty easy.

Now, I'd love to find some lightweight music organizer that enhances what I currently get from Explorer but without trying to replace Xmplay.

Here's a more detailed list of wanted (+) and not wanted (-) features:
+ as fast as Explorer, or faster
+ something similar to the combo thumbnails view mode and folder.jpg files in Explorer, only more slimmed. For example, Explorer forces a lot of unneccesary horizontal and vertical space between folders.
+ Minimalistic GUI. Top toolbars like a classic explorer window: one small row with an adress box, some menu items, some buttons (back, forward, up ...), search box. And then one big folder view area below that -- not multiple rows and columns of subwindows like in winamp. Ideally, the "normal" width of the whole application should only be 20 to 25% of the total screen width (I'm thinking 2, 3 or 4 album thumbnails per row).
+ tabbed interface for different folders. 5 or so tabs would be enough. Also, an option to display some tabs with some folders in some order each time the program is started (maybe through a /tabs.ini command line switch or something similar)
+ live search toolbar (not sidebar a la Explorer)
+ live filter toolbar (ideally a combined search/filter toolbar. For example, CTRL+"sometext" can trigger filtering, "sometext" trigger searching)
+ some advanced search tools like wildcards, searching one tab/all tabs, filter in/out, tab based searching/filtering, incremental searching/filtering (that is, limiting later searches to previous search results)
+ customizable hotkey & mouse-combo actions (either built in or possible to add through autohotkey). For example, middle-mouse click on a folder thumbnail could trigger playing the folders music files in Xmplay, ctrl+middle click could play it in Winamp.

- history/statistics tools
- player
- tagging tools
- browser
- audio editor
- ripper
- lyrics tool

I've so far ruled out melomania, godfather, musikCube, MediaMonkeys, Winamp and music IP after browsing their sites and in some cases testdriving. But maybe I've judged prematurely here so feel free to show me wrong.

1111

Post New Requests Here / Re: Display Properties/Settings shortcut function

« on: July 18, 2007, 03:19 PM »

And if you have an ATI card, the Control Center and third party tools like the free ATI tray tools, http://www.guru3d.co...le/atitraytools/189/ , lets you create profiles and hotkeys to launch those profiles. It's then possible to make an autohotkey script that when run switches back and forth between two such profiles (by sending the hotkeys).

1112

General Software Discussion / Re: Detecting RootKits

« on: July 10, 2007, 07:03 AM »

Curt,
Security tools like these always tend to be a bit hard to grasp I would say. I've only tried RootkitRevealer and it was a while ago. But as far as I remember, one quick way to sort out the results was to google on each match (and if needed restrict the search to sysinternals forum). I remember that that showed all my results to be false positives.

For example, your match containing "ControlSet001\Services\sptd\Cfg" is Daemon Tools:
http://www.google.co...ervices%5Csptd%5CCfg

1113

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: OnScreen Display for Mute Status

« on: July 08, 2007, 03:47 PM »

app103,
Ok I missed that earlier but I see now that's what you wrote. 

lanux128,
a suggestion: the scripts flickers briefly due to the repeated "gui, destroy" & "gui, show". Add these lines (in red) to only destroy+rebuild the mute OSD text only if its not already present.

------------------
If CheckMute = On
If osd_is_on != 1
  {
  osd_is_on = 1
  Gui, Destroy ;
  Gui, Color, EEAA99
  Gui +AlwaysOnTop +ToolWindow -Caption +Lastfound
  WinSet, TransColor, EEAA99 105  ;105 - level of translucency (range: 0-255)
  Gui, Font, s30 Bold cYellow, Tahoma
  Gui, Add, Text,x3 y3 w175 h45 Center c000000 BackgroundTrans, Mute %CheckMute%
  Gui, Add,Text,x0 y0 w175 h45 Center cFFD300 BackgroundTrans, Mute %CheckMute%
  Gui,Show, NoActivate x70 y600 w175 h45 ; some crude positioning co-ordinates
  IfExist, %A_WinDir%\System32\sndvol32.exe
    Menu, tray, Icon, %A_WinDir%\System32\sndvol32.exe, 4 ; Mute icon
  Sleep 3000
  }
If CheckMute = Off
  {
  osd_is_on =
------------------
(is there some way to combine code block format with text coloring in forum posts?)

1114

General Software Discussion / Re: Making the Switch-05: Ten Great Ideas of GNU/Linux

« on: July 08, 2007, 08:10 AM »

anything like dopus for linux?
ahk?
onenote?

-urlwolf (June 23, 2007, 02:39 PM)

As for OneNote alternatives, I recently found this list of Ubuntu software tips http://www.littleubuntu.com/blog/?p=3 . It includes BasKet Note Pad, http://basket.kde.org/ . After testdriving it for a few minutes my impression is that it's a kind of OneNote light. It has free form notes, tagging, filtering, special objects like to-do-lists. I'm not sure if it allows wiki style internal links from one Basket page to another. These screenshots shows many of these and other features:
http://basket.kde.org/screenshots.php

1115

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: OnScreen Display for Mute Status

« on: July 08, 2007, 07:08 AM »

app103 & lanux128,
You can set some tray icons to always be shown (never autohidden). Right click Start > Taskbar tab > customize.. . Alternatively, Right click Start > Taskbar tab > untick Hide inactive icons for a more general solution.
But I agree with you that this neat script makes it much easier to see when mute is on.

1116

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: copy MP3-tags on keypress to clipboard

« on: July 06, 2007, 06:13 AM »

hi there megomaster,
here is an autohotkey script that together with the freeware command-line tool Tag might do what you want done (if I understand you correctly that is).

To set it up you need to:

1. get and install http://www.autohotkey.com/download/ (free)
2. copy the script source below into a textfile and save it as "batch copy to artist_album folder structure.ahk"
3. compile that file into "batch copy to artist_album folder structure.exe" (to compile, right click it and choose "compile script" -- this requires that autohotkey is installed)
4. get and unzip Tag http://synthetic-soul.co.uk/tag/ (free)

To run it you need to:

1. put "tag.exe" and "batch copy to artist_album folder structure.exe" in the same folder
2. drag and drop any mp3 onto "batch copy to artist_album folder structure.exe"

What it does:

The script looks up the album and artist ID3 tags and (if both are found) copies the file according to this format:

scriptfolder\artist\album\file.mp3

You can drop multiple files and folders with files onto the script and it will check and copy them one by one.
(I haven't tested it very much so you are advised to testdrive it a bit before dropping a thousand files onto it at once or something like that)

[Select]

;batch copy to artistname\albumname\file.mp3 folder structure
xtemp = %A_Temp%\%A_now%.txt
Loop, %0%      ; For each dropped file
{
xx := %A_Index%
xvar =
xartist1 =
xalbum1 =
runwait  %comspec% /c "tag "%xx%" --simple --tofilen "%xtemp%"",%A_ScriptDir%,min ;get ID3 tags with Tag.exe
FileRead, xvar, %xtemp%
RegExMatch(xvar, "Artist=(.*)",xartist)
RegExMatch(xvar, "Album=(.*)",xalbum)

; remove characters that are illegal in windows folder/file names:  \ / : * ? " < > |
xartist1 := RegExReplace(xartist1,"(?:\\|/|:|\*|\?|""|<|>|\|)","")
xalbum1 := RegExReplace(xalbum1,"(?:\\|/|:|\*|\?|""|<|>|\|)","")

if xartist1
 if xalbum1
  {
  FileCreateDir, %A_ScriptDir%\%xartist1%\%xalbum1%
  ifExist, %A_ScriptDir%\%xartist1%\%xalbum1%
    FileCopy, %xx%, %A_ScriptDir%\%xartist1%\%xalbum1%
  else
  {
  sleep, 500
  ifExist, %A_ScriptDir%\%xartist1%\%xalbum1%
   FileCopy, %xx%, %A_ScriptDir%\%xartist1%\%xalbum1%
  }
 }
FileDelete, %xtemp%
}
exitapp

If you have use for the script feel free to donate some small amount to support this great site: https://www.donation...om/Donate/index.html

1117

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: OnScreen Display for Mute Status

« on: July 05, 2007, 01:50 PM »

Great script lanux128.

This can also be done without a script. Go to Sound and Audio Devices Properties > Volume > Device Volume: Place volume icon in the taskbar. The tray icon automatically changes when mute is on/off. For this to work the tray icon must be visible all the time so the script is more sophisticated.

1118

General Software Discussion / Re: Delete protected index.dat files in Win XP with IE6 without reboot

« on: July 05, 2007, 04:53 AM »

Cleanup is free, I thought the others were also.
Could be mistaken.

-cmpm (July 01, 2007, 01:33 PM)

No my mistake, will try out Cleanup now. Thanks for the help.

Curt,
Thanks for the feedback. Returnil sounds a bit like Sandboxie.

1119

General Software Discussion / Re: free, small, fast uninstaller replacement

« on: July 05, 2007, 04:41 AM »

Great finds. 

I agree a "date of install" column would be good to have.

Does any of these tools allow "keyboard sorting". That is, start typing and it jumps to the matching entry. So typing "ner" might jump you to Nero.
edit: yes, Safarp does that. It has live search too! 

Another free, quick uninstaller is built into the anti-spyware tool HiJackThis (in the section "Misc Tools"). But I can't find a way to start that section directly without going through the menus, so that's a drawback (still faster than waiting for windows default installer though  )

1120

General Software Discussion / Re: Delete protected index.dat files in Win XP with IE6 without reboot

« on: July 01, 2007, 01:22 PM »

cmpm,
those links point to tools/strategies that either require manual input every time (reboot into safe mode..., Index Dat Spy) or are non-free (PC Mesh; CleanUp!), right? I don't want extra manual work. And it's only these around ten small files that I want to delete repeatedly and they are no big problem so I'll never buy a program for 35$ just to it. I'm more looking for some small, free set-it-and-forget-it solution. Like some way to execute something similar to an autohotkey script or a .bat file at startup, before window has loaded fully and before the other processes have locked the index.dat files. The autostart folder executes after window has loaded so I think that's to late.

I could also just download and install IE7 but last time I checked there was some trouble with it and Maxthon Browser that I use. Probably sorted now though. But I'd still like to know in general how to best execute some sort of customizable script at each reboot without manually going into safe mode.

f0dder,
Writing about cleansing surfing logs can sound a bit suspicious I suppose (on a related note, *cough* fSekrit *cough* We're talking strong encryption! Very fishy indeed!! Probably filled to the brim with explicit ASCII-art!!! ) But inappropriate stuff is really not the case or issue at all. I just try in general to leave as few logs, usage histories and so on as possible on any computer. It's just a good general privacy habit to adopt I would say. Especially if you have also have a laptop that get's carried around a lot. Besides, it annoys me that microsoft wants to decide over what personal information a user should keep or not keep. That should be up to the user, as always. I think someone said that personal data is becoming the new toxic waste: it leaks and accumulates rapidly everywhere and we don't have the proper systems in place for cleaning it up yet.

I've never liked previous-URL autocompletion in browsers actually (I like live search in many other applications though). I use a plain local start page with a lot of links instead. That covers about 80% of my internet usage and I think it is about as quick as using autocompletion extensively.

1121

General Software Discussion / Delete protected index.dat files in Win XP with IE6 without reboot

« on: July 01, 2007, 07:57 AM »

I just learned how to delete protected index.dat files in Win XP with IE6 installed without reboot and thought I might as well post the instruction here in case someone else is interested.

note: IE7 seems to have a built in solution for this already: http://blogs.msdn.co...06/01/12/512232.aspx  Does it work as advertised?

Until recently I thought ccleaner regularly cleared the index.dat files (I have that option ticked in ccleaner) but apparently not on my system at least. Tools like ClearAllHistory ($20) claim to be able to delete index.dat on each window startup (I haven't tried it). If anyone knows of some easy and free way to mimic that feature of ClearAllHistory without IE7 then please inform me.

Instruction below condensed and modified from http://www.arstdesig...icles/index.dat.html

-----------------------------
INFO ABOUT INDEX.DAT FILES:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index.dat
- index.dat are files related to cache, visited URLs, history, cookies that are hard to remove
- 3 types of index.dat: cache, cookies, history
- each user account contains all three
- index.dat might be loaded/locked by multiple processes at win start
- therefore index.dat files can't be deleted the regular way

---> 3 * num of accounts * num of processes to kill (but many are the same process)
---> 3 * num of accounts index.dat files to delete

To see for yourself, do a search for "index.dat" in path "C:\Documents and Settings"  (might require enabling viewing of hidden files in Explorer settings first). Browse found index.dat files with Index Dat Spy , http://www.stevengou...datspy/download.html . Alternatively, just check the size and creation date for the index.dat files. If a file is old it probably contains track records of internet usage.

NOTE: I've only tried this on index.dat in the "C:\Documents and Settings" path Windows puts index.dat files at other places too. For example:
C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\OfflineCache\index.dat
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Cookies\index.dat
But those files seem different and deleting them might create problems (from what I've read - I haven't tried it). Also, at least on my system, those files can either not be read by Index Dat Spy or can be read but contain no internet usage related information.

-----------------------------
NEEDED TOOLS:
sysinternals handle (command line freeware)
http://www.microsoft...dThreads/Handle.mspx
sysinternals pskill (command line freeware)
http://www.microsoft...tilities/pskill.mspx
autohotkey + compiled script DelIndexdat.exe (source below)
http://www.autohotkey.com/

-----------------------------
DO THIS:
0. get & prepare tools
0. Put delindexdat.exe , handle.exe , pskill.exe in some folder and open two cmd windows there.
1. Cmd-line: handle \index.dat
2. For each process using index.dat, do in 2nd cmd window: pskill pid   
(note: pid = the process id as listed by handle.exe. Do pskill on explorer.exe last)
(note: Antivirus tools might resist being killed. If so close/disable them manually and repeat 2.)
3. Cmd-line: delindexdat.exe
4. restart explorer (cmd-line: explorer)

-----------------------------
PREPARE TOOLS:
AUTOHOTKEY, save as DelIndexdat.ahk and compile to DelIndexdat.exe

[Select]

Loop, C:\Documents and Settings\index.dat,, 1
FileDelete, %A_LoopFileFullPath%

HANDLE needed syntax: handle index.dat
PSKILL needed syntax: pskill <process name | process id>
             example: pskill 1496   
             example: pskill explorer.exe


---------------------------------
note: http://www.arstdesig...icles/index.dat.html also suggests creating read-only dummy index.dat files to prevent windows from later recreating some of the index.dat files. I haven't tried that and don't know if it gives any problems.

1122

General Software Discussion / Re: How can I save a Quicktime Movie I watch on the internet to my computer

« on: June 22, 2007, 12:17 PM »

The Firefox add-on Greasemonkey ( https://addons.mozil...US/firefox/addon/748 ) can handle scripts for downloading stuff from specific sites. For example, I use the "Apple Trailer Download" script ( http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2484 ). It creates a handy download menu when browsing specific pages on http://www.apple.com/trailers . It lets you download the HD trailers too.


Two more general tools for sorting through your web traffic and finding URLs to source video files: http://www.ieinspector.com/httpanalyzer/ (for IE) and http://www.getfirebug.com/ (for FF).

In general, online video files are usually "two or three files away". That is, if you right click the video link on the homepage and save it, you only get a textfile. That file contains another URL (or a script that makes one). That second URL leads to the video source file (alternatively to another textfile which in turn has the video file direct URL).

Also, some time ago I hacked together a weird webapp of sorts that uses some http://yubnub.org/ commands to speed up the manual process of saving files from Apple Trailers without installing any apps or scripts. The same tools can be used to save almost any online video. Check it out here (the instructions in the first subwindow are very brief but should be possible to understand I think):

[edit: removed URL since no longer working /nod5]

1123

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: June 19, 2007, 07:41 AM »

This might be useable for pdf notetaking and archiving: Adobe Digital Editions. Will try it out later myself.
http://www.adobe.com...cts/digitaleditions/

http://www.adobe.com...digitaleditions/faq/
What is Adobe Digital Editions? Adobe Digital Editions is a new, exciting rich Internet application (RIA) built from the ground up for digital publishing. Digital Editions is a simplified, engaging way to acquire, manage, and consume eBooks and other kinds of digital publications.

Will a Linux version of Digital Editions be available? Yes, a desktop Linux is under development and a public Beta is expected later this year.

What file formats does Digital Editions support? PDF/A and an OPS (enhanced OEBPS, which is a profile of XHTML 1.1 with OCF packaging) are the two publication-level content types. SWF content and common image file types can be referenced within PDF and XHTML-based publications.

What are the Digital Editions annotations capabilities? Digital Editions 1.0 supports bookmarks, highlights, and text notes via its "bookmarks" panel. These annotations are stored in an open XML format separately from publications, in order to enable seamless annotating across PDF and XHTML-based (EPUB) publications, and to set the stage for future social networking features (e.g. sharing annotations within a community of readers).

1124

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: June 14, 2007, 03:33 PM »

urlwolf,

A possible solution would be to implement fingerprinting for pdf (like what musicIP does) [---] Now we only need someone to code/maintain a central repository of pdf metadata, and mappings fingerprints -> ids.

This is a great idea that completely bypasses the need for DOI extraction. One way I can see it happening would be if some popular application like Zotero implemented this as an opt in feature that works automatic in the background. That is, every time someone downloads both article metadata and a pdf through Zotero, Zotero silently uploads pdf fingerprint and matching metadata to some server. As the database grows, downloading just pdf files will be enough since the metadata is already available in the open archive. Zotero seems like the kind of tool that is innovative and community driven enough to be ready to pioneer something like that.

One problem might be related to protected metadata. Some journals require a login just to see the abstracts for instance. So I'm not sure about the legality of storing such abstracts in an alternative, open archive. One way around that would then be to match and archive only pdf fingerprints and DOI numbers and then let Zotero and so on implement some way to later automatically resolve the doi and grab metadata from the resolved article page (including abstract if the user is authenticated to have that displayed). Another advantage with such piggybacking on the DOI system is that that the archive then never risks having outdated article links. Another problem is if journal publishers change the pdf files from time to time. But perhaps that can be solved just by letting the archive match the multiple fingerprints to the same metadata.

edit: great post on Academic Productivity also

1125

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: June 14, 2007, 03:47 AM »

Darwin & others,
Adding an entire archive of PDFs to EndNote items manually must be extremely tiresome. Given the popularity of EndNote I bet many researchers are doing just that anyway (they probably curse a lot in the process  ).

So if there's no tool to programmatically add the PDFs then maybe smart folks at DonationCoder could look into how hard it would be to make one? If such a tool could be completed it could draw a lot of interest to DonationCoder. And hey, it might due to saved time speed up scientific progress a (very, very, very small) bit.

The main problem to solve would be how to match the pdf files and the bibliographic items. If journal articles contain their DOI id number as extractable metadata then that might be a solution. I opened a few journal articles in UltraEdit and browsed for doi numbers or something similar in the ascii text but couldn't find anything. Also, I exported metadata from some sample PDF files with the free tool PDFTK. Here's one example of what I got:

InfoKey: Author
InfoValue: x
InfoKey: GTS_PDFXVersion
InfoValue: PDF/X-1:2001
InfoKey: Producer
InfoValue: Acrobat Distiller 6.0.1 for Macintosh
InfoKey: Creator
InfoValue: InDesign: pictwpstops filter 1.0
InfoKey: ModDate
InfoValue: D:20070613112031+01'00'
InfoKey: GTS_PDFXConformance
InfoValue: PDF/X-1a:2001
InfoKey: Title
InfoValue: 14.6 News 758-759.indd NS new.indd
InfoKey: CreationDate
InfoValue: D:20070612095515+01'00'
PdfID0: cee3243181236aabefbac383315fda1f
PdfID1: 3ab8e10f7074409da8a4fc9d6eb3a2
NumberOfPages: 2
PageLabelNewIndex: 1
PageLabelStart: 758
PageLabelNumStyle: DecimalArabicNumerals

this row "InfoValue: 14.6 News 758-759.indd NS new.indd" is sort of an identification since the PDF is from Nature Volume 447 Number 7146 section News page 758. But it's not as good as a DOI. And other articles i tried did not even have that InfoValue. PdfID0 & PdfID1 are made by Acrobat Distiller I think, and does not relate to the article contents/DOI.

Embedding DOI numbers according to some standard seems like an obviously smart thing. If available it would not only allow adding a pdf to the corrent EndNote items but also the reverse. Start with a pdf, autoresolve its DOI online, then import all the resolved metadata into an EndNote item, rename the pdf according to some format and import/link it to the EndNote item.

But it wouldn't really surprise me if DOI is not embedded at all. The electronic journal systems still seems rather ineffective and user-unfriendly.  As this overview states (http://hublog.hubmed...archives/001306.html ):

While most of the larger publishers provided an acceptable method of authentication, the PDF files they produce are obviously not optimised for ease of use by the reader. It's almost impossible to build a tool to automatically fetch PDFs for papers [---] The implementation of all of these features could be automated with little change to the publishers' systems, but would be a major benefit to researchers struggling to deal with large amounts of literature.

(BTW, a comment on that page links to http://quosa.com/solutions.html , a tool for easy, massive article downloading and EndNote importing. No price is listed on the site (only this note on discounts http://www.quosa.org...docs/mac/pricing.htm ). So I suspect it is very expensive. )

Without DOI in the PDFs any programmatic matching of PDF and EndNote items would probably have to be more fuzzy.