Messages

301

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 27, 2011, 08:25 PM »

...and I'll see about making MaxLinesPerItem take effect immediately. As I said before, this requires rewriting the database, so there would be some disk crunching + delay after clicking OK in the Preferences dialog.

It may not make 1.0, but it should probably be done eventually.

302

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 27, 2011, 05:38 PM »

Thanks, MaxLinesPerItem was what I was looking for. But I can't set it higher than 10?

-johnk (September 27, 2011, 05:23 PM)

I'll remove this restriction in the next release. The practical limit is the vertical screen resolution, because items taller than the screen would be quite inconvenient to view.

303

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 27, 2011, 01:50 PM »

One thing I'm unclear about -- no matter how much I increase MaxDispTextSize, the display of each item is limited to 5 lines, even if FixedItemHeight is false. To view more of the item I need to adjust the width of the window. Even then I never seem to see the full item, unless I use the editor. Is there another setting I need to adjust?

-johnk (September 27, 2011, 10:51 AM)

MaxDispTextSize applies only to clips that will be captured after you've changed the setting.

Another setting controls how many lines of each item can be displayed: Preferences -> Display -> MaxLinesPerItem. This one will be applied immediately, but the displayed text of each item will still  be limited to MaxDispTextSize.

304

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 26, 2011, 06:54 AM »

I've had several PDAs that used a stylus, and I could still use my fingers with them. Having both options would be nice... You could do it 15 years ago... Seems like we're regressing there.

-Renegade (September 25, 2011, 09:21 PM)

I used to have a Palm, one of those early jobs with monochrome screens. Wasn't too much you could do with it, but the stylus was great. You had to learn their shorthand script for entering characters, but that was fun and with a more advanced touch-screen tech it could well be faster than pecking at those tiny on-screen keys of today. Although the script they designed worked only for Latin A-Z characters, so no accents or diacritics, and no localized software, either.

Unfortunately I didn't have much use for it other than reminders and quick notes away from home.  But my subjective satisfaction was definitely better than my current HTC's "flagship product" gives me.

(Yeah, I *am* picky. I held off buying a smartphone for two years until I found one that looked good, on paper at least. I fully expected short battery life etc., but who knew call quality was going to be worse than with any non-smart Nokia I'd owned before, or that the thing would be dropping GSM connection in the middle of a busy city where regular phones get four bars and grow a fifth if they didn't originally have it! Not the reviewers, that's for sure :-)

305

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 25, 2011, 09:13 PM »

I wish that phones would allow the use of a stylus. That would solve my problem better.

-Renegade (September 25, 2011, 08:20 PM)

OTOH, if I had to whip out a stylus to answer the phone, I'd throw it against the nearest wall. I'm close enough to doing that as it is

This is really a separate topic, but in the three months I've had my first smartphone I've learned to truly hate it. (HTC Sensation, BAD choice, don't buy it, ask me why if interested). Some of the issues are specific to this model, but in general, the whole input concept sucks for me.

One, Renegade's problem applies to all adult human fingers, they're all too fat (unless maybe a famished 8-year old). Two, I need how many hands to operate a phone? It's hard enough to answer a call with one hand, and downright impossible to make a call or do anything else. You'd have to use your thumb for touching, the fattest and least nimble finger of all. Third, if I'm reading something and want to flick a speck of dust off the screen, I have to lock the screen first (thus make it go blank), do the thing, then unlock it. Otherwise it's going to scroll or flip the page or activate something. Four, and this is partly due to my HTC's build, I can't put it face up on the table without accidentally triggering some function or other, usually the search softkey, with the inside of my palm. I've had to learn to lock the screen before I put down the phone.

This is not smart, and this is not a good UI. I don't even want to imagine what it's going to be like using it outdoor in winter's freezing temperatures.

The only good thing about it is that the ubiquitous net connection keeps me entertained during long waits at train stations, airports etc. Until the battery runs out, which is oh, about 2 hours.

<end rant (and I didn't even mention the bugs! The thing has more bugs than a pet cemetery!)>

306

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 24, 2011, 05:15 PM »

Still people assume that metro is forced on them. Do remember that windows classic interface (98ish) is still possible in win 7. Why do you think they'll dump their user friendliness and lose the market ?

-mahesh2k (September 21, 2011, 09:04 PM)

I guess they won't, but the situation is not similar at all to the residual "classic Start menu"  in XP and later. There, the new interfaces are supposed to be better, are preferred and default. You are expected to use them and they are perfectly usable. Choosing the "classic" interfaces is  merely a matter of preference.

With Metro, it is not a matter of preference, because Metro is entirely unusable on a desktop system. Whenever an app is open on the desktop (i.e., always), you have no access to the Metro controls. You cannot choose it, you will never choose it on a desktop machine, because you won't be able to work that way. Unless you accept that you have to minimize everything before you can open or access anything else.

On a desktop system, that's way beyond ridiculous, way beyond insane. Why would anyone make it part of a desktop OS? It would only make sense if Win 8 was designed ONLY for mobile devices.

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 24, 2011, 05:04 PM »

You do realize the whole point of this demo was to showcase the tablet UI features, right?

-Josh (September 21, 2011, 08:29 PM)

I hope it is, because it is entirely unusable, seeing as you need the entire desktop uncovered to do anything. You'd have to minimize all apps before opening another one.

308

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 24, 2011, 05:00 PM »

Android has an app for DNS(dragon naturally speaking) so it is taking off already.

-mahesh2k (September 24, 2011, 05:25 AM)

Haven't used Dragon, but the stock voice recognition on Android phones is useless. English is my second language, and my accent is not exactly native (UK or US), but I can get close when I try. Android doesn't understand a single word I say in English, and believe me, I don't have any speech impediments. When I switch to Polish (my native tongue), it understands every third word or so. My wife has a better diction than me, and when she speaks in Polish to the phone, it can't recognize a single word.

Then there are passwords. Are we going to be speaking them aloud too? Good going!

Then there are professions and places where silence (or near silence) is pretty much a requirement for doing any useful work. Any profession and any workplace where thinking is an important component of what you do. (Stockbrokers need not apply!)

I used to have an elderly neighbor, living in an apartment below mine, who would complain every so often because my keyboard clicking was keeping him awake (I was sitting on my ass, typing in complete silence). Forget about voice!

Forget about neighbors, too. It's midnight here,  my wife's asleep, while I'll be sitting here a few more hours. She's in the next room, but if I spoke commands, I'd wake her. And you don't want to be near my wife when her sleep is disturbed

309

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 24, 2011, 07:33 AM »

I can make give it the regular "on top" flag

-tranglos (September 21, 2011, 09:18 AM)

I expected it to be easy, since all my earlier apps written in Delphi 3 had that feature. Turns out, nothing is easy anymore, especially under Vista/7. I'm having major problems getting the "always on top" thing to work. The whole sordid story is here, unsolved.

310

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« on: September 22, 2011, 11:23 AM »

You wouldn't happen to have any old network mappings in My Computer that are offline, would you? I've not had the occasion to see this in Win7, but I've seen in Windows XP where the file dialogs take forever to come up for that reason.

-daddydave (September 22, 2011, 10:41 AM)

No, no stale mappings that I can find.

I do have a mapped network drive and another external drive on FireWire, and often it takes a few seconds before the system can access them, but that's not it. I've also replaced my old ADSL modem + router with a single combo device (Fritz!Box, unlikely name, but the thing is genuinely made in Germany, runs Linux and it rocks!), but the freezing started occurring well after that change.

It's true though that when I changed the routers, Windows created a new LAN and appended '2' to the name. But the old network name isn't shown anywhere I could delete it from. Still, any issues should only slow down the opening, not the closing of the dialogs. I never get a freeze on opening them.

311

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: New program: ActiveHotkeys (freeware)

« on: September 22, 2011, 08:47 AM »

I guess it's not meant to be left running in the background, but if I use it to check Shift and Alphabetical keys:
the combination of Shift + any alphabetical key has no effect when typing.

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 08:16 AM)

It should cause no problems running in the background, because it only does anything during the short moment after you press the Test button. Other than that, it just sits there doing nothing. But I've never tried it on 64-bit windows. Are you running 64-bit?

Windows does not have a method that would list registered hotkeys. The only way to check if a hotkey is in use is to attempt to register it. If the attempt fails, the hotkey is in use. This is what ActiveHotkeys does. When it registers a hotkey successfully (i.e, the hotkey was available), it immediately de-registers it.

If for whatever reason the de-registration failed, there would be trouble, because the hotkey would remain registered and hence unusable in other applications, until you quit ActiveHotkeys. I know of no reason why registration should succeed but de-registration should fail. I've never seen it fail, and MSDN does not list any 64-bit specific issues (or any potential gotchas at all). In any case, quitting ActiveHotkeys should restore all keys to normal behavior.

312

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 22, 2011, 07:31 AM »

I could try your app to show all shortcuts taken to see if something else is using them (what's it called again?!)

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 07:12 AM)

ActiveHotkeys: http://ethervane.com...es/activehotkeys.zip

It does look as if some other process could be swallowing some combinations.

313

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« on: September 22, 2011, 07:20 AM »

Just out of curiosity, do you have any open/save dialog addons that it could be having a problem with? Its shenanigans are always purposful-ly directed at something specific ... From what I've seen.

-Stoic Joker (September 22, 2011, 07:03 AM)

I've been wrecking my brains trying to recall something I may have installed or find what specific thing could be prodding it. I don't run anything that modifies the dialogs, nothing at all.

I dropped out of the homegroup, because my wife's computer is off more than it is on, so I thought maybe Windows was looking for it, but that didn't help, and in any case the delay should then be at opening the dialog, not at closing it.

I checked Actual Window Manager, which is great but does unspeakable things to all windows. It doesn't touch the open/save dialogs, but it sure detects them and thinks about them when they pop up before it decides what to do. In the end, shutting AWM down didn't change a thing.

314

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 22, 2011, 06:50 AM »

[1] Is there a pattern to where the window shows on the screen - it always seems to come up directly behind the Filehamster comment window (just right of centre-bottom of screen), but if I escape and call it again, it shows mid left of screen.

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 05:13 AM)

I'm seeing the same behavior on my system, but I don't know what's causing it. In default configuration Echo tries to detect where the text caret is and shows next to the caret (a little to the right and below if possible, but position is adjusted to make sure the whole window fits on screen). Caret position is obtained from Windows. Still, sometimes Echo shows not only far from the caret, but in my case on another monitor which doesn't even contain an active window.

Either Windows is lying to me or my code doesn't cover all bases. As you've noticed, sometimes you press the hotkey, then ESC, then the hotkey again, and each time Echo shows at a different location. The only way I can explain it is that each time Echo gets different caret coordinates from Windows, even though the caret has not moved. I'll look into it.

(On edit: All this works, when it works, only if the active window actually has a blinking text caret. If it does not, then caret does not exist and Echo shows up at its most recent location. This will often happen with web browsers, image viewers, any app without an active text editing field. But then, you don't / can't paste clips there, anyway.)


If this gets too annoying, there are a few other options in Tools -> Preferences -> Display -> PopupPosition:

ppLast : always show at the last remembered position (like most apps)
ppAtMouseCursor : show near the mouse cursor
ppActiveMonitorCenter : show in the middle of the monitor that contains the active window

[2] How do I change the shortcut - I tried Shift & F12 - typing in F12 but that didnt work (or does it need a restart? - no that no help)
Ctrl+Alt+v doesnt work either.
Win+v works - I'll stick with that**
(BTW what does the MK mean on the qualifier keys in options?)

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 05:13 AM)

Restart is not needed. The modifier is indeed optional, although it's usually not a good idea to use e.g. F12 by itself. The reason it's confusing is the same as why the whole Preferences dialog is confusing The hotkey is controlled by two settings:

In "ActivationHotkeyKey" type the name of the key itself, without modifiers, e.g. 'Ins', 'a' or 'F12'.

In "ActivationHotkeyModifier" click the + symbol at left to expand the list, and there'll be four separate modifier keys listed. Set to True for the modifiers you want, keep the rest False.



As soon as you click OK or Apply, the new hotkey should be active.

315

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« on: September 21, 2011, 09:04 PM »

If it don't start behaving soon, its gonna get executed permanently.

-Stoic Joker (September 21, 2011, 09:00 PM)

Ah, interesting. I'm not actually seeing any CPU spikes, during the freezes or otherwise. But I've burned through most AVs on the market, and they only go from bad to worse. Not much left to try anymore. MSSE used to be a pretty friendly neighbor before this.

316

General Software Discussion / Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« on: September 21, 2011, 08:44 PM »

About two weeks ago my Win7 (32-bit) system developed a hugely annoying behavior. When the standard, new "Save as" or "Open" dialog box pops up and closes, the application which opened it freezes for 8-10 seconds, and the open or save operation that the dialog is used for is only completed after the app comes out of the freeze.

Strangely enough, the freeze happens even if the dialog box is canceled, so it seems to be related to the internals of the dialog itself, not to whatever the application does with it.

It doesn't always happen, but often enough to be a big nuisance. Maybe 30-50% of the time, but seemingly at random. Let's say I have 10 tabs opened in Firefox. I go from one tab to another and press Ctrl+S in each to save the HTML document. The freeze will happen for about half of the tabs, but sometimes for all of them. Each time the file gets saved only after Firefox unfreezes.

At first I thought it was a Firefox problem, but no, the freeze occurs in any app that uses the modern Save/Open dialogs in Win7. MS Office apps have their own dialogs, and they're immune. Some old apps stick to the Windows 95-style dialogs, and they're immune too. Only apps that use the latest incarnation of the dialogs get frozen.

I removed everything I have installed recently, removed my machine from the homegroup, tried Autoruns and friends, everything I could think of. I was this close to restoring the system image from a month ago.

Finally I tried disabling the real-time protection in MSSE, and it seems to have helped. I've been running a whole day without a single freeze, so I'm pretty convinced MSSE is responsible, though I can't see how it could be (what in MSSE could freeze the app after the dialog has been CANCELED and no files were accessed at all?).

It seems to have started under two weeks ago, but I can't pinpoint it any better. I did install SP1 more or less at that time, so there's another suspect, although that wouldn't account for why the problem goes away if I disable a part of MSSE, and I think I would have noticed if the freezes started occurring immediately after installing SP1. Has anyone else seen anything similar?  

317

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 21, 2011, 09:18 AM »

thanks tranglos

I ran into a problem with FileHamster (FHm) comment window - I have FHm set to show comment window when making a revision (when I save a file). This comment window is always on top.
If I then call Echo, it is below the comment window, so is not very usable - do you think could it be made more assertively (!) "on top" ?

-tomos (September 21, 2011, 08:50 AM)

Under Vista and later, I don't think so. I can make give it the regular "on top" flag, but it won't be any more "on top" than any other window that claimed on-topness for itself.

318

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 21, 2011, 08:13 AM »

I want to edit clips within the app but keep the original version - sort of like save as  is this possible? (I couldnt find a way)

It's easy for me to do this in a text editor, so, just wondering if possible here

-tomos (September 21, 2011, 07:36 AM)

Not yet, but it's on my todo list (in the external editor, a button such as "Save as New").

Right now the best you can do is:

1) Open a clip in external editor (Shift+F2)
2) Modify it there.
3) Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C to copy the whole edited clip.
4) Cancel the editor (ESC), since you don't want to replace the existing clip.
5) Press Ctrl+M to manually capture the new clip. (It was not captured in step 3, because Echo suspends capturing when the editor is active. This is another todo item :-)

319

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« on: September 20, 2011, 02:06 PM »

First of all I must say that this has quickly become my favorite clipboard manager.
Since I was using Ditto before and read your intro I downloaded the program, and replaced Ditto with it the same day.

-kurtyer (September 20, 2011, 01:46 PM)

Thank you! And welcome to DC!

There seems to be some kind of problem with the search though.
Using this clip for example.
The clip was copied in its entirety, but searching for hello gave no results...

-kurtyer (September 20, 2011, 01:46 PM)

I can tell this is going to be a FAQ

The word 'hello' in your clip is preceded by about 600 other characters. By default, Echo only searches the first 512 characters of any clip. This is important for performance reasons, since clips are not kept in memory, but in the database on disk. My justification for that decision is that a great majority of clips are not very large chunks of text, so that, um, 512 bytes should be enough for everybody

There is another reason: it is going to be very inconvenient (and slow) to browse really long pieces of text in the list of clips. So clips must be truncated for display.

Given these two practical limits, Echo uses the same setting to control two things: the max length of a clip that is displayed, and the max length of a clip that is searched.

You can find and increase the setting under Tools -> Preferences -> Database -> MaxDispTextSize.

Initially it is set to 512. You can increase it, but the larger the value, the slower your searches will be, if you do keep a lot of long clips. It's a trade-off, and you can experiment to find a good compromise.

Note also that changing this value only affects clips captured after the change. Clips already stored in the database will still be limited to the previous max value. This can be fixed (so that the change affects already stored clips as well), at a cost of re-writing the database, which may be a long operation (a few seconds to a minute or more, depending on your db size and hard disk speed).

(I should stress that the limit does not mean that clips are cut off at that length. Echo always stores and pastes back the complete clip, exactly as it was originally captured. The limit only determines how big a part of the clip is searched and displayed.

There is another setting that tells Echo to ignore (not even capture) clips that are larger than a certain length. This one is at Tools -> Preferences -> Capturing clips -> MaxTextSize, and it is initially set to 1 MB. The size refers to the length of plain text contained in the clip.)

Check out the "Limitations" and "Troubleshooting" topics in the help file as well. This issue is explained there, but perhaps not as clearly as it could be. ("Cannot find a clip, but you know it exists in the database", item 2 under Troubleshooting.)

320

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 04:46 PM »

So...I'm guessing this coder's first language was Perl and his second was php? 

-40hz (September 19, 2011, 04:00 PM)

Love that! 

321

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 02:53 PM »

Ah, a new challenger appears! Only 10 levels of priority granularity? Outrageous!

-Lashiec (September 19, 2011, 02:42 PM)

Hey, it's as pretty as a rainbow But it's an upside-down rainbow, too! To pick the highest priority, you've go to look down...

322

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 02:34 PM »

There are several standard file manipulation entries that are scattered all over creation.  They should be grouped.  There are several macro related entries all over- they should be grouped.  Exit should be the last in the menu, and if you need a more, then your menu is too big!  ALT+F4 by convention exits the app.  It's been re-tasked here for no good reason.  Save File As, and Save All Now, but no Save?  If you don't need a Save (i.e. you always save all now) then why not use save instead of save all?  Very confusing...

-wraith808 (September 19, 2011, 01:52 PM)

That earns you just about the max score, Wraith

I've been looking at several macro apps, and I really did a double take when I saw this menu. The syntax of the macro language invented for Quick Macros seems similarly opaque. Example: a single leading space marks a comment line, but a tab indent defines a block like in Python.


But I'm not out to rag on QM here. I've made a hobby of collecting stuff like this. Here's a quick one - priority list from the popular freeware ToDo List app. It always gives me a chuckle:

323

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 01:06 PM »

What's in the other menus if this one is so... overcrowded to be nice?

-wraith808 (September 19, 2011, 12:52 PM)

Yeah, the other menus are simpler, but they also have their moments. Like "Show Help (F1)" under the Edit menu, even though the expected Help menu is right there too.

324

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 01:06 PM »

OK, here's my list. But post your own before you look!

Don't look yet!

This is a "File" menu, so you would expect it manages files that contain macros. But not quite. You have the expected "File Properties" command, but also a "Properties" command in the same menu. Whose properties does the latter command edit?

Does the Delete command delete the currently open file, since it is located under the File menu? (No, it doesn't!)

Windows has some really well established keyboard idioms. Alt+F4 exits an application. Ctrl+F4 closes the current window, if the application supports multiple windows. This program however decided to be adventurous: to exit, you press Alt+F3. To close the window, press Alt+F4. So the keyboard shortcut you'd expect to exit, doesn't.

There is a "Close" command. How does it differ from "Close Window"? And how about "middle click" as the keyboard shortcut for this command? (Many wheel mice are incapable of middle clicking).

There is a "New" command, but no "Open". Isn't that weird? Well, you can deduce that, even though the command sits on the "File" menu, it does not create a new file at all. It creates a new macro in the file.

To open a file, use the "Open / New file" command. Interesting way to merge two totally different operations (and potentially very dangerous, because performing New instead of Open could overwrite an existing file with a blank one).

In 99% of application menus, "Exit" is the last command at the bottom of the File menu. But that's just boring! It's more fun to add a "More" submenu just underneath it, where you least expect it. And to put important commands such as Save in the submenu, which takes more careful clicks to open and navigate.

OK, so now that we know some commands here operate on files and others on macros, find all the commands related to creating, opening, saving and closing of FILES. It would be just gauche to keep them all together, wouldn't it?

Mmm, Cut and Paste commands on the File menu! What do they cut and what do they paste? And where's Copy? This intrigues me. (The Cut, Copy and Paste commands also exist under the Edit menu, which you can't see in the screenshot. I'd guess maybe they cut and paste different things, but their keyboard shortcuts are the same, so they apparently perform the same function. Go figure.)

325

Living Room / UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« on: September 19, 2011, 12:48 PM »

...and if we're lucky, maybe even constructive and useful to present and future programmers who care about their users' sanity.

The image below shows part of the main menu of a macro program named "Quick Macros". Just by looking at the screenshot, how many things that are utterly, horribly wrong with this menu can you name? How many are "just wrong" or "really poor usability decisions"? Would you consider using an application that welcomes you with this menu?



Laugh, cringe or cry?