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Messages - Nod5 [ switch to compact view ]

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176
Mouser, I tried 2.238.01 beta portable in Virtualbox Win10 again now.
I confirm that this works:
- variables %FARRWINLEFT% %FARRWINTOP% %FARRWINWIDTH% %FARRWINHEIGHT% in results
- adding ICON="web.ico" or /ICON=web.ico to show a custom icon
I ran into issues with the quotes in filepaths and parameters. Will post details and tests in the specific forum post about that issue

177
Quickly tried 2.238.01 beta portable in Virtualbox Win10 but couldn't get FARR to launch anything. Probably something wrong in my VM. Will get back at it tomorrow.

178
Find And Run Robot / Re: Broken icons for 64bit programs
« on: December 29, 2019, 05:02 AM »
Faziri, it might help mouser if you explicitly say if the beta version fixes the original problem with .lnk shortcut to 64bit also on your PC.

I just noticed another broken icon, but it seems to be a diffferent problem.
I can't reproduce that. On my Win 10 PC .lnk files in
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\
or its subfolders show correctly in FARR.

Is the new icon issue you describe only happening to "Spek.lnk" ? Or for all .lnk shortcut files in that folder?

179
Find And Run Robot / Re: naming an alias
« on: December 28, 2019, 07:54 AM »
Glad to help.

Question to Mouser concerning this:
Is the issue with quotes around the file path in Results a bug regression? Compare to
https://www.donation...?version_history.htm
Version 2.224.01 Beta - May 6, 2015
[BugFix] Fixed issue where double quotes in alias results were causing failure to launch result and bad icons.

Example alias to showcase the issue
Alias Name
testing
RegEx
^(te|tes|test)$

Results
test1 | C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
test2 | "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
test3 | C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe https://donationcoder.com
test4 | "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" https://donationcoder.com

In FARR v2.234 and Windows 10 I see these effects
- Test1-3 launches Firefox, in the case of test3 the site is opened correctly. Test4 does nothing.
- Test1 and 3 show the Firefox icon, 2 and 4 shows no icon (I tested in both small and big icon mode).

1.png

180
Find And Run Robot / Re: naming an alias
« on: December 28, 2019, 04:20 AM »
Does it work if you remove the quote marks around the path to brave.exe ?
Messages | C:\Program Files (x86)\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe --app=https://messages.google.com/web/conversations /ICON=C:\Program Files (x86)\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed\Core_Aliases\icons\Messages Android 32.ico

181
Find And Run Robot / Re: Broken icons for 64bit programs
« on: December 28, 2019, 04:01 AM »
Can you try the beta?
Did a very quick test of the portable beta. Working icon for .lnk shortcut to 64bit (C:\Program Files\ ...) applications in Win 10.  :up:

182
Find And Run Robot / Re: Broken icons for 64bit programs
« on: December 27, 2019, 11:24 AM »
Short on time, but just a quick confirmation that in Windows 10 .lnk files to 64bit applications show incorrect icons in FARR v 2.24. Aliases with results that include a path a to 64bit .exe show the correct icon.

183
I am wary of trying to add stuff to the alias configuration dialog to support this.. it feels like an awkward match.
How so? The feature would condition when an alias is triggered and what results it triggers. Seems like alias configuration to me.

It seems to me a cleaner approach might be an easier and more flexible system for writing short script-like plugins..  That would let you more easily write a mini script to do what you want.
Not sure if I follow this. How would we go about that in these use cases: The alias "cs" could be used to immediately (using the special FARR string "dolaunch") run a cheat sheet file for the active application/process. Alias "help" could show help resources relevant to the active application. Would I write one script-like plugin per such active window context dependent alias string that I want. That is, one for "cs", one for "help" and so on?


More thoughts on this kind of feature
Two use cases where different implementations would be the best fit, I now reckon.

Case1 We want to make a single alias string, or single regex pattern, to trigger different results depending on the active window (or other conditions...) and we might have many such windows. Example: "help" shows help resources relevant to the active application.
Here ability to add #If declaratives on lines in the results list in the alias configuration would be handy and easy to overview. Mockup:
#If win_process = "Firefox.exe"
dolaunch a.exe
#If win_process = "Chrome.exe"
dolaunch b.exe
and so on for 10 other windows.

(For my own use I currently achieve this effect through an alias that runs an AutoHotkey script with %LASTHWND% as parameter, and then the script looks up that window and takes conditional action. But my thinking is that FARR users might be interested in the basics of that without having to resort to external scripts. A minor difference is that with this external script approach we can't make FARR not trigger a regex alias if none of the target windows are active. That is we can't make FARR do a regular search for files with "help" if the active window is not one of those we have special actions for in the script.)

Case2 We want to make a lot of different alias strings to trigger only if some window is active (or other conditions...)
For example we want aliases for the strings "help", "cs", "close" and so on that only trigger if the active window is InkScape.

Here it would make more sense to be able add the condition to a set of lines in the list of aliases in an alias file in FARR Options. (Under the hood: the condition would exist as a parent tag with a number of <AliasEntry> items as children in the FARR myaliases.alias XML file)

Or, perhaps more feasible, one condition per alias file. So in the example we'd make inkscape.alias and have all aliases in it trigger only if the active window condition is met. Users could be exposed to that through an edit field or a button to show an editfield in the section above the list of aliases in FARR options.
1.png

Under the hood: store condition in a tag in inkscape.alias XML file. Mockup:
<FarrAliasFile>
    <FileFormatVersion>1</FileFormatVersion>
    <AliasSetCondition>win_process = InkScape.exe</AliasSetCondition>
    <AliasSetDescription>Custom User Alias File</AliasSetDescription>

Edit: Or, to change as little as possible in the current FARR options UI, let users add alias condition strings to the alias file description box (AliasSetDescription XML tag)! FARR would detect if the string in that box starts with a declarative like "#if" and then treat the rest of the string as conditions.

184
Normally you could get that with a windows call, but i guess if the FARR window disappears before the tool is launched it's too late..
Exactly

I could certainly make the size+position available as variables that can be passed to a launched app/script, or retrievable from a plugin call, that would be easy..
That's the feature I'm requesting. Me parsing FindAndRunRobot.ini was only a quick workaround in lieu of that.

Use case: launching a simple AutoHotkey or other script that shows something in a GUI. For example a script that grabs some data from a website and display it with a custom format. We'd use the FARR position parameters to position the GUI where FARR was, to not throw the users visual attention all over the screen, and to make the experience more like when showing something with a native FARR plugin.

185
I've been too short on time for this, will continue later.

x16wda: Very kind of you! I'll keep on just testing the UE trial for now though, but I might take you up on it down the line.

NigelH: Neat! I hadn't heard of it. I've no experience even with vi/emacs so that kind of editor will take some getting used to. But I can see the power in those features. Will have a go. Cheers for the fun video also - I did notice that all the names in it are from Garbage Pail Kids cards ;D

186
UltraEdit is nice and capable. Sublime too. But so are VS Code and Atom, and they're both free. So I'd only switch over to UE/Sublime if it does something I need much better than Code/Atom. Will have to see how my testing with the line hide feature goes.

Digression: I love that there are so many user friendly and feature filled code editors to pick from - luxury! VS Code seem to pull ahead of all the others when it comes to user base, at least if this is a good indicator of that
https://insights.sta...lopment-environments

187
The feature is available in commercial UltraEdit https://www.ultraedit.com/

Thanks. I'm trying it now in the UE trial. This comes closest to my OP wishlist so far. The hide lines feature for any type of textfile must first be enabled in the settings. After that we doubletap control+F to get "Find and Replace". Click filter checkbox, type a string and hit Enter. Not too slow. Line hiding looks like regular code folding. We can filter in or out and regex filter.

Two drawbacks:
- Filtering/unfiltering could be quicker and fewer steps. I see no direct hotkey to toggle unhide for all the previously hidden lines. But it can be done in two steps: Control+A to select all and then unhide through hotkey or command palette. The filtering command also shares UI with the find and replace. This means that we have to check/uncheck the filter checkbox in Find and Replace window when switching from filtering mode to find and replace mode. If would be quicker if they were separate popup windows.
- UE can split view the text. But any line filtering is synced when the second view is focused. So we can't shift back and forth between views and keep only one of them filtered.

But maybe there are workarounds to these issues through settings or scripts. I'll play some more with it.

Screenshot from UE's Find and Replace window
2.png

Screenshot of UE with split view after line filtering. Notice that both views are filtered.
3.png

but since you are interested in free one, this will not do.
Free isn't required. But as a first step I mostly just want to test drive this kind of feature for a while, to figure out if and when it is most useful compared to regular find and replace and other methods.

My hunch is that the feature would be most useful, and that I'd find more use for it, if the filter/unfilter action is very quick. Ideally a keyboard shortcut for a small searchbox (not with a lot of checkboxes and other functionality) and then filter lines as you type. Similarly one step shortcuts to unfilter all lines, unfilter this line, and so on.

188
How about LogViewer http://www.uvviewsoft.com/logviewer/
I tried it. Interesting tool but not a match here because it seems to not hide lines, only hide/replace text on lines.

Screenshots from Notepad++ to illustrate roughly the kind of line hiding I'm after.

Before hiding
1.png

After hiding
2.png

189
I distinctly remember using Notepad++ to apply a filter to a text file, for the purpose of hiding away 80% of it's content and doing manual changes on the content that still was shown.
Thanks. I see the "Hide Lines" (alt+H) command in Notepad++ menu View. But no "unhide" keyboard shortcut, though clicking the green hidden lines markers in the linenumber column works. Will try the TextFX Viz next.

I'm also tinkering on a small AutoHotkey test script with two views where one is filterable. The two only sync on save yet, I'll try sync as you type next.

Some thoughts from playing with it so far. To be most useful I think this kind of linefilter/accordion tool will need a few extra features:
- Linenumbers is a must
- shortcuts to unhide +1 lines line above or below current position (and +5, and +N)
- smart ways to toggle between edits in the filtered view affecting only visible lines vs all content. E.g. if line 2 is hidden and we select from line 1 to 3, should Delete also remove line 2? Or only 1 and 3?; Ditto find and replace.
- negative filter syntax (e.g. toggle all code comment lines off)
- filtering lines could be very handy together with multi caret editing. You want to rename a variable name everywhere in a long code document. First filter lines with the current variable name. Then hit shortcut to start multi caret editing at the start of the filter string on each visible line. Same end result as find and replace on the filtered view lines, but different visual response and easier to backtrack and adjust the new name while typing it.

190
Find And Run Robot / Re: Possible new facility: runas for aliases
« on: November 26, 2019, 03:42 PM »
the trick I use on the desktop (shift-right-click adds "run as different user" to the context menu) doesn't work in FARR.
Indeed, I didn't know that. The FARR context menu does have the item "Shell context menu" which shows the same context menu you see for the file in Explorer I think, but holding Shift in FARR doesn't have the effect on that menu that it has in Explorer.

A possible second best: you can make a small AutoHotkey script that uses RunAs to run from another user account based on credentials you type in a small GUI popup each time. No credentials permanently stored in plaintext then. But I guess that GUI isn't as secure against other running applications as the the login window from Windows. Depends on how much you trust the computer and programs running on it I suppose.

Another alternative could be a FARR alias that starts a powershell script that asks for user account password and then start the application. Search for "credentials" in this PowerShell manual page.

191
Minor request: Add FARR variables for the FARR window's position (x y), width and height at the moment right before a result was triggered.

This lets us make results that can run a script with FARR position/size as parameters. The script can then position its window based on where the FARR window was.

edit: I forgot that we can make the script parse those values from these FindAndRunRobot.ini lines
[Windows]
MainLeft=1001
MainTop=53
MainWidth=340
MainHeight=70
But built in variables that can be used as parameters would be handy.

192
I searched a bit for Sublime extensions but the closest thing I found was
sublime-filterlines, https://github.com/d.../sublime-filterlines (related SuperUser page).
But it seems to only work similarly to the VS Code extension Text Power Tools above.

Both either replaces the original text (with undo as the only way back, it seems) with the filtered lines or exports the filtered lines into a new document. The only way back from the replace alternative is undo, it seems. So not good for this three step sequence: filter lines, make a few quick manual changes, and expand all lines again. They also can't display the same document in two synced views (one filtered, one unfiltered).

193
Thanks for the suggestions, appreciated.

Eclipse has some of the features you describe
Do you know if it has these two features
3 The second view displays only filtered lines from the full text.
4 An inputfield for typing a string/regex that updates the filtered lines immediately.

I would look at Sublime text.
Thanks, it was years since I last checked out Sublime so worth another look now. Finding an extension for VS Code, Atom or Sublime that can do what I want here is probably the best bet. I'd guess all of them can in *principle* be made to do this, the question is if there is already some such extension out there already that has done it.

I first merely want to testdrive the feature a bit, since it is hard to know in advance if it will be super useful or not. Coding my own editor extension would be a steep learning curve, but I might instead try coding a small prototype in AutoHotkey or Javascript to get a first feel for the feature.

Brainstorming outside of my OP request now: Another use case I thought of for this kind of quick line filtering feature is in web browsers. Imagine going to a very long Wikipedia page. You search for a string and get 23 matches scattered on the page. You can visit each, jump by jump. But here too it seems useful to be able to quickly filter out everything on the page except the lines that match the search/filter phrase (maybe with one extra line above/below each match, for extra context). That way many matches can be overviewed at the same time.

194
I searched some more but no perfect match yet.

The Todo Tree extension for VS Code gives a nice list of tag locations to jump to in one or more plaintext files, but it's not quite what I looked for above
https://marketplace....runtfuggly.todo-tree

There are also extensions to get a view that lists all functions in the file and can jump to the function definition. For example
https://marketplace....emName=qrti.funclist

My OP searched for two views, one of which has filterable lines.

But I'm now thinking that even a single view code editor where lines can be filtered/restored quickly by typing could also be very handy.

Use case: A long code source file where some function is used in a lot of place. You're scrolled about midway in the document. You know you want to edit near some of the other function calls. How do you get there? One way: find/replace the function name and then jump up/down match by match until you find the spot to edit. Glancing at the minimap might guide you a bit too. Or just scroll around and hope you find the spot. But imagine instead doing this: type the function name in a filter box and see the text shrink, kind of like a musical accordion, to only lines that match. You get a nice, readable overview. Quickly cursor to the line you want, hit another shortcut and... all the lines around it expand again. Your cursor remains at the line your scrolled to, centered in the view. In the filtered view the lines would show their true/original linenumbers, just like for usual code folding in editors.

Bonus feature: storing some filters as favorites, to toggle with a shortcut. A bit like how some code editors let us temp bookmark lines and jump between them.

195
Does anyone know of a code editor or plaintext editor that has these features:

1 First view displays the full text (every editor has this!)
2 Second view of the same document side by side (many editors have this!)

3 The second view displays only filtered lines from the full text.
4 An inputfield for typing a string/regex that updates the filtered lines immediately.
5 Synced edits: edits in the full text view are synced to the filtered view, and vice versa.

bonus feature but not as important
6 Synced positions: caret position and scrolling is synced between both views.

This feature would be of use when renaming variables or repeatedly doing similar changes at various places in a document. Find/replace already exists of course, but filtering could be a useful complement and give a better overview. Another use case is to show all lines that has the string "todo" etc in them, which could give an overview of code locations you've tagged for working on later.


Some other viewing/navigating tools that, while useful, don't do the above.

Minimap, https://code.visuals...erinterface#_minimap
Instead of filtering this zooms out to show a map of the full text. The map highlights lines with matches when using find/replace, which is nice. But the minimap is too small to read the text on those lines and we can't edit inside the minimap.

Multiple views (and scroll and caret positions) for the same full (unfiltered) text. E.g. the "split editor" command in VS Code

Filtering tools that create and open a separate, non-synced file with filtered lines. E.g. Text Power Tools for VS Code, https://marketplace....qcz.text-power-tools

Markdown preview, https://code.visuals...-and-preview-locking
This syncs positions. Edits in the plaintext view immediately sync to the preview. But there is no filtering and no editing in the preview.

196
FARR aliases can already start actions that make use of the active window through the special FARR variable %LASTHWND%, which contains a window ID string. Example: use FARR to run a script with %LASTHWND% as command line parameter. The script can then condition what it does depending on what window was active. Close that window, or move it, or copy text from it, or whatever.

The new feature idea: Aliases conditional on active window
In the alias setup we would specify conditions on the active window that must also be met for FARR to trigger the alias. Conditions could be active window processname, window class and/or window title. Exact or regex matching.

In effect FARR would for each alias test two things:
- does the string typed by the user match the alias name/regex?
- does the active window match the alias conditionals set by the user?

If yes and yes then the alias is triggered.

For example an alias named "dl" (short for download) could show different results depending on if the active window is Firefox or Chrome or some other application. Or results depending on if the active Firefox window title contains " - YouTube" (one result action: a script to download the youtube video in the active tab) or " - DonationCoder.com" (two results: scripts to save the current tab as .html or .pdf).

Two different ways the feature could be exposed to users:
1 an extra box in the alias editing window, similar to the RegEx editbox.
2 a special prefix string at the start of each Results line.

With 1 the user would make multiple aliases for "dl".
With 2 the user would make one "dl" alias but then add more lines in the results box with the special prefix.
Mockup code for case 2:
#If(win_process = "Firefox.exe" and win_title = regex("^ - YouTube$") Save youtube video | C:\folder\script.ahk %LASTHWND%
Or alternatively put the conditional on a separate line and apply it to all results line below it until a new conditional line is encountered. Mockup:
#If win_process = "Firefox.exe" and win_title = regex("^ - YouTube$")

We can think of this feature a bit like how the context menu in Windows File Explorer shows different actions depending on what extension the selected file has. Or the #IfWinActive syntax for context-sensitive hotkeys in AutoHotkey.

Some more use cases: The alias "cs" could be used to immediately (using the special FARR string "dolaunch") run a cheat sheet file for the active application/process. Alias "help" could show help resources relevant to the active application.

197
General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive
« on: October 31, 2019, 04:40 AM »
I stopped using tagspaces.  Many times I have a blank screen; there's something in their electron application that fails at times- at least for me.  I even reinstalled and the problem was there.  I rebooted, tried again, and it worked for a bit, but stopped again after a short time.  I lost a lot of the work I'd done organizing with it when I had to switch, so that was a bummer.  Just something to watch out for.
Thanks. Good reminder also that a kind of system lock-in can happen even when all the data is plaintext and local.

The zettelkasten app alternatives superboyac mentioned

In my searches for windows software for zettel
[...] infoqube [...] connectedtext [...] sublime text editor [...] Sublimeless zettelkasten

also got me thinking... Question: Are there any attempts at standards specifically for (local, plaintext, spanning multiple files) notetaking? Something akin to https://commonmark.org/ for MarkDown but for zettelkasten note taking or some other note taking approach? With a standard users could start out with a Sublime editor plugin, later jump to a VS Code plugin and then on to some standalone tool. Teams working on notes together could use different software to read/write the same synced set of plaintext files.

(Picture in your mind the XKCD comic about standards. I don't need to link it, you all have it in memory  :P)

One thing a standard would settle is the identifier format. sublimeless_zk seem to use YYYMMDDhhmmss timestamps, which I like. But they have an issue tracker request for shorter format using other base systems for the identifier. Interesting idea!

A version of that would be to stick to YYYYMMDDhhmmss in plaintext but then have the decorator in the editor/plugin optionally display that as shortened via some above base-10 system. One could even go crazy short through some kind of "base-unicode" (is that a thing?) e.g. use all unicode characters (locked to some unicode version) as base. That way the first 100 000 or so identifiers would appear one character long.

198
General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive
« on: October 28, 2019, 01:25 PM »
- More fun things to do with file reader output : if you put a special character (not above the number key but like zz), after the "regular" part of the file name and before all your tag-y things, then you can import that directory output into Excel, and chop it up into sections and then your notes can reference the fragment of the file name.

The idea of using special characters to distinguish the tag section and individuate tags in filenames is used by the TagSpaces application, https://docs.tagspac...g-based-on-filenames . I remember trying it very long ago but might go and have another look at it now, as it seems to be actively developed.

199
General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive
« on: October 25, 2019, 06:56 PM »
All this said, the tools and approach I sketched above might not be for everybody. I suspect it is more appealing to someone who already uses code editors and writes scripts a lot anyway. But no harm in giving it a look, you might find some part of it that is a fit for you.

200
General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive
« on: October 25, 2019, 06:46 PM »
Isn't there a problem with filename tags in that links are broken every time you add or remove a tag?

2. make .txt plaintext "companion files" with tags in filename and notes inside next to non-plaintext files.
So, same name as companion except .txt ?

Would this be a way of tagging the companion?

Yeah, there is a trade-off between updating filename tags to reflect changes to file contents and risking breaking links/references elsewhere to that file.

I have no perfect fits-all-cases solution to that.

But here's an approach that works ok for me in many cases. Say we want to keep a photo of something or a screenshot of a webpage. First name the imagefile short but unique through timestamps. The camera likely does this by default and screenshots tools can be set to do that too. Keep that image filename unchanged going forward. Second, make a companion .txt file with additional tags in the filename, tags that can be updated over time.

C:\folder\20191022_181212.png
C:\folder\20191022_181212.png receipt raspberry pi 4.txt

We can then in other plaintext files reliably "quasi link" to the image with the short string 20191022_181212.png .

We can also find the image via Everything fairly quickly in any folder on any harddrive using only the search terms "raspberry receipt", since the .txt file will be among the matches for that search and its filename in turn contains the image filename. That search will work even if we later also add the tags "todo sell ebay" to the companion .txt

.txt companion files can also be created for other purposes, not just for tags that make the "parent" file easy to find with filename search tools. For example if we stick to a format for some companion files, like
C:\folder\20191022_181212.png -- slideshow.txt
for photos then we can make scripts that automatically use the image and that special companion file for some purpose, for example to show an image slideshow overlayed with notes (text in the image's companion).

This idea is a bit like how external .srt subtitle files for video files work in VLC. Place the files video.mp4 and video.mp4.srt next to each other and VLC will automatically load the .srt subtitle when playing the .mp4 video.

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