Recent Posts

1151

Find And Run Robot / Re: Can a search in progress be aborted ?

« Last post by phitsc on August 10, 2008, 02:34 AM »

Perhaps this is an issue for individual plug-ins.

When I type a command in FARR, using a plug-in,
that generates a large list, FARR goes 'non-responsive'
until the list is completed.

Recently I was using FARR and mru, and I 'accidentally'
typed: mrua instead of mrul

This (mrua) took a few minutes (seemed longer) to
complete but there was no way (that I found) to
interrupt it, or edit the command.

Kevin

-sosimple (August 09, 2008, 08:24 PM)

Hi Kevin

Your are right, this is plugin related. FARR MRU currently collects the results synchronously, although FARR would offer plugins the possibility to do that asynchronously. I didn't do that yet because doing it synchronously is just more straight forward (for implementing, I mean).

I understand your problem though, as I've had it myself. I'm storing all my files on a NAS, which makes everything file related kind of slow. I've tried to cover this problem with FARR MRU's settings, specifically the settings that allow disabling certain file checks for network files. Making the search asynchronous would not speed up anything it would just give the possibility to make the search abortable, which I agree would be very desirable. So I guess I'll think about changing that.

Happy to hear that you're using FARR MRU though (or at least try using it).

Philipp

1152

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.5.1

« Last post by phitsc on August 02, 2008, 05:13 PM »

0.5.1 is now available. This release is mainly to keep the forum alive, seems like everyone's gone on summer holidays

I've added the stuff from the last two posts and made modifier entries in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user override identical ones in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config. This can be used for example if you choose to install an application in a location other than the default (e.g. not in the default 'Program Files' folder). Just duplicate the respective section in your FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user and change the icon path.

1153

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature - Folder Search

« Last post by phitsc on July 28, 2008, 03:07 AM »

this is coming, and soon.

-mouser (October 07, 2005, 08:49 PM)

And we now also know what you mean when you say something is coming soon, hahaha. Just teasing, it's cool to have this feature. Still hoping that it won't take three years for you to release the new SDK though (ok, I'll stop asking for it now, it's not actually urgent for me)

1154

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.5.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 25, 2008, 02:34 AM »

• TED Notepad: %programfiles%\TedNPad.exe
• WinRAR: %programfiles%\WinRAR.exe
• WinUAE: %programfiles%\winuae.exe

-Lashiec (July 24, 2008, 05:08 PM)

They're all installed directly into the Program Files folder by default?

1155

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.5.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 24, 2008, 02:29 PM »

TucknDar, you can try with SoftMaker Office suite if you want, it should work. The entry would be like:
INI_FILE\PathToIni.ini|tmw History|HistoryFile

If you find it working please tell me so I can add it to the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file.

-phitsc (July 24, 2008, 12:34 PM)

Unfortunately I can't get it working... I've tried putting it in the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file as well, just to check, but no. The FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user file didn't work for me with the previous version either, actually, sorry for not reporting this

-TucknDar (July 24, 2008, 02:21 PM)

Well, thanks for trying anyway. If you want you can send me the respective ini file and also the full path to that ini file and I'll check it out.

Another thing: Concerning the application icons, how will you approach the fact that we could have someting like Notepad++ installed in different locations? Not everyone uses the %PROGRAMFILES% and if we change this in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config, won't that get overwritten with each new release?

-TucknDar (July 24, 2008, 02:21 PM)

To be honest, I was aware of that fact but just ignored it for now. One way I could handle it would be to let users duplicate an entry in their respective FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user file and let that have precedence over the .config file. But then the .user file would have to actually work

1156

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.5.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 24, 2008, 12:34 PM »

0.5.0 is now available. This release adds support for .ini files. There's one provided as an example (see IcoFX in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config).

TucknDar, you can try with SoftMaker Office suite if you want, it should work. The entry would be like:
INI_FILE\PathToIni.ini|tmw History|HistoryFile

If you find it working please tell me so I can add it to the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file.

This release also adds a new alias (mrul) that gives a list of installed (and supported) applications as suggested by jgpaiva. In the .config file it's now possible to specify a file path to the respective applications icon (usually the executable file). This icon is then displayed in FARR when the list is displayed. Since I don't have all these applications installed, I wasn't able to fill them all in. If anyone could provide me with the paths to the following application's icons (executables), that would be cool:
- Microsoft Office 2003
- KMPlayer
- SnagIt
- SQL Server
- TED Notepad
- WinRAR
- WinUAE
- Dreamweaver CS3

Philipp

1157

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 23, 2008, 12:54 PM »

7

i apologize for not putting up an updated sdk sooner, i will try to do so tonight.

-mouser (July 23, 2008, 12:34 PM)

Yeah, don't worry

7 works!

1158

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 23, 2008, 12:32 PM »

try returning E_EntryType_ALIASFILE

-mouser (July 23, 2008, 12:14 PM)

That doesn't exist in my version of the SDK. What value would that have?

1159

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 23, 2008, 11:45 AM »

i may have misspoken.. is mru handling this case manually in an unusual way?
s.newwave and i will have to talk about why this is happening since it doesnt happen with normal aliases.

-mouser (July 23, 2008, 02:39 AM)

Hmm, don't know really if what I'm doing is unusual. In EFuncName_Request_ItemResultByIndex I set
- *entrytypep to E_EntryType_ALIAS
- destbuf_caption to e.g. "List only 'My Recent Documents'"
- destbuf_path to e.g. "restartsearch mrum"
- destbuf_groupname to e.g. "Alias mrum"
- destbuf_iconfilename to respective icon path
and that's it. Well, it is unusual in that respect as no one yet did that programatically instead of using an .alias file to do this, if I understood you correctly. I could change the menu to an .alias file but I have the same problem now with the 5th menu item that will list all supported and installed applications (also as a menu to further aliases), which gives the same problem. Implementing and testing this is why I actually noticed the described behaviour.

1160

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 23, 2008, 02:36 AM »

I noticed that when you type mru to bring up the MRU menu and then select one of the items by moving down in the list with the arrow key and hitting enter everything works as expected. If I use one of the # keys however (e.g. keypad 2) the FARR input edit box text is just replaced by 'restartsearch mrup '. Anyone knows why this is?

1161

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR v2 PLUGIN CREATOR (SDK/API) INFO THREAD

« Last post by phitsc on July 21, 2008, 03:07 PM »

The latest FARR release (2.04.02) has added some new functions for plugins writers that have not been used yet in currently downloadable examples.  As soon as I finish adding a few more functions for the new htmlview in conjunction with plugin writers i will update the sdk documentation and examples.

-mouser (June 09, 2008, 12:25 AM)

Any news on updating the SDK samples / documentation?

1162

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 21, 2008, 05:36 AM »

Hi Kevin

I can't seem to make it work but I don't know it well enough yet to tell if my results are expected so I will play with it some more until I can reasonably tell what's not working ... right now I assume the error is probably BCK (between chair and keyboard).

-sosimple (July 20, 2008, 01:44 PM)

There really isn't much you could be doing wrong. Typing mrum should give you a list of documents recently accessed. If you open Windows Start Menu and then open the My Recent Documents menu and that menu isn't empty, then typing mrum in FARR should give you some results. Also typing mrup should give you some results, if you have used any of MS Paint, MS Office, Open Office, MS Visual Studio, Acrobat Reader, etc. recently. Do you actually get an empty list, or do you just not get the list you'd expect?

I do have a question ...

Does anyone know where the MRU list of Open Windows Explorer Folders is kept. This is the list used by Windows Explorer: ->Tools->Folder Options->View->Advanced Settings (List)->Restore Previous Folder Windows At Logon. I've looked and done some searches but I can't find where it's stored.

-sosimple (July 20, 2008, 01:44 PM)

I don't know to be honest. I think Windows stores recent explorer window settings under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
somehow, but I don't know in what form.

Philipp

1163

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 11, 2008, 11:22 AM »

phitsc: Looking at the config file, I found there were quite a few entries there. Maybe you could add one option in the plugin's main menu, that'd list all of those and would allow you to select it to see it's list?

-jgpaiva (July 11, 2008, 11:15 AM)

Yes, a good idea as well. Listing the ones of applications actually installed would maybe be enough. It would mean hamradio would have to make me another icon though

1164

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 11, 2008, 11:08 AM »

Great work, very useful plugin. I hope it's possible to keep a balance between poweruse and the easyness / amount of characters entered because you don't want to end up using a 50 character combo of keywords (i guess this goes for Farr in general) but I think i'll find a good use for this.

I would expect the typical use to be: enter either of mrum or mrup or mruu (if configured) together with a substring search (or even without, if you just want a list of the files you used recently). For mrup maybe add one of the application filters. I don't think I'd typically type mrup and then enter many of the application filters even though it's possible. Or then at least make it a 'dosearch' alias. But I understand what you mean.

Got one to share to add in:
+dwcs3|Dreamweaver CS3
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Recent File List

Thanks, I'll add that one to the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file.

Does the plugin check if the registry key exists periodically? It could then hide items of programs that are not installed, in case you don't use DwCs3 then you have no need for my code.

If you mean hide in the Options dialog's user defined result list. Yes, that would maybe be a good idea. For the actual search it doesn't matter, e.g. typing mrup +dwcs3 without Dreamweaver CS3 installed will just give you an empty result list.

Thanks for your feedback!

1165

Developer's Corner / Re: A plugin based information bar in Windows

« Last post by phitsc on July 11, 2008, 08:22 AM »

Yes, this looks very useful. If you want better feedback you might consider making an alpha release available for preview. I guess your idea is that you'd publish the plugin API once it's stable, so that others can implement plugins for this application as well?

1166

DcUpdater / Feature request: add 'real' description

« Last post by phitsc on July 10, 2008, 04:10 AM »

DcUpdater's Description column currently displays more like a name than a description. Especially for the packages available for installation a short description, probably displayed in the yellowish window currently used for the advanced controls on selection of a package, would be very useful. Currently one has to visit a package's website to find out what it does (depending on how descriptive its name is).

Well, I guess it's quite an obvious request and might have been asked for before. Sorry if it has and I didn't see it.

1167

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.4.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 09, 2008, 04:27 PM »

0.4.0 is now available. I've added hamradio's icons (thanks!) and added support for the most requested (by me ) applications storing their MRUs in a file: Notepad++ and OpenOffice 2. Both of these store their MRUs in an xml file. While OpenOffice's is not trivial, Notepad++ stores its MRUs 'the other way round', i.e. from oldest to newest. They are therefore both hard-coded, although I think they could probably both be handled in a descriptive form with xpath and an xpath capable parser. I'll leave that for later though . I've also added support for Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 which stores its MRUs in the registry, but in a bit an ugly form. Nevertheless, it can be quite easily described and is now implemented in a generic way in FARR MRU. This means:
besides MRUs of the form:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SomeApplication\Recent File List with Values
with values of the form Item 1 = Path_to_some_file in the Recent File List key

FARR MRU can now also handle MRUs of the form:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SomeApplication\Recent Files Key with Subkeys|Value name
with subkeys of the form Item 1 in the key Recent Files Key with Subkeys which store the respective file path in the value Value name under Item 1

Not sure if that is explained well enough now. Well, just ask if you find an MRU in the registry which you're not sure if FARR MRU can handle it.

It would also be cool if someone could confirm that Adobe Acrobat Reader files are working, as I don't have it installed myself (although I somewhat tested it in a virtual machine).

I also did not hear back from Lashiec yet. Anyone else experiencing the problem he describes (i.e. typing mrua gives an empty results list)?

1168

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.3.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 08, 2008, 02:27 PM »

I've uploaded a version which outputs some debug information now. If you'd like to help me find out why you're not getting any results, please first download version 0.3.1 here (Update: version 0.4.0 up understands the debug modifiers)  :

http://farrmru.objec...tRecentlyUsed031.zip

then download Sysinternals Debug Output Viewer here:

http://download.sysi.../Files/DebugView.zip

Then start Dbgview.exe and bring up FARR and type:

mru +debug1!

to enable debug level 1.

Then type mrum or mrup and see what the MRU plugin finds.

You should see the directory where it fetches your My Recent Documents files (if you typed mrum). How many it found there. Then how many items are left after the 3 filtering stages.

Then please post the results here or send me by private message.

If you enable debug level 2 (+debug2!), you'll get a list of each and every file as it's in the item list after every filtering stage.

I doubt I can already solve your problem with this information, but at least it gives me and idea where to start looking.

1169

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.3.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 08, 2008, 09:34 AM »

The new version does not show any item

-Lashiec (July 08, 2008, 09:30 AM)

Do you mean you type mrum, mrup or mrua and the result list is empty?

1170

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.3.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 07, 2008, 03:54 PM »

0.3.0 is now available. It hasn't gone through much testing yet, I hope you guys can help me out with this . 0.3.0 has gone through considerable rework though, and I hope it is much more usable now. At least it's a good basis to implement more applications (i.e. some which don't store their MRU in the registry).

Sorting and filtering is much more sophisticated now and items are now cached once one of the aliases has been detected so that resorting and filtering for application groups, file extensions and filename substrings should be much faster. See first post for a complete list of changes in this release.

Note that I added a separate config file for user specific stuff (as suggested by TucknDar), so if you have added anything else since the last release, make sure to backup the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file first and copy it into the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user file after upgrade.
Also note that I almost completely changed the options, so please either delete your FarrMostRecentlyUsed.ini file before updating or make sure to visit the options dialog after the update.

A request to the graphics-design-gifted amongst the FARR users: the FARR MRU plugin now shows a simple menu when you just type 'mru'. It basically looks like this:

- mrum : Shows files in your 'My Recent Documents'
- mrup : Shows files of configured programs
- mrua : Show a combined list of files out of mrum and mrup
- mruu : Show files from selected groups only (the u standing for user)

It would be really cool to have some nice (similar) icons to put before these entries and another one for the plugin itself. If anyone of you likes creating icons or knows some free ones you think would fit please let me know.

1171

Find And Run Robot / Re: New FARR Plugin Display Mode: UserWindowMode

« Last post by phitsc on July 06, 2008, 04:21 PM »

With all the new cool plugin features and ideas, don't forget to update the plugin SDK samples / API documentation . It's a bit hard to pick it all together from the different forum threads.

(refering to this thread: https://www.donation....msg115984#msg115984)

1172

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MultiMonitor (and center) 0.2.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 03, 2008, 02:22 PM »

I've added some hotkeys to the FARR MultiMonitor plugin. Note that they are currently hard-coded, so if you need these key combinations for something else, you'll have to disable them for the FARR MultiMonitor plugin (in the options dialog).

Hotkeys: move FARR window to next/last monitor or center it with hotkeys
  Win + Left : move FARR window to monitor on the left
  Win + Right : move FARR window to monitor on the right
  Win + Home : center FARR window

The centering is especially useful for FARR MultiMonitor users which are using two monitors with different resolutions (that would be me ). When directory browsing (or when using the 'not yet released' OpenWith plugin) it will usually resize to full height at first. Since FARR only knows about one monitor, and all this happening on the one with the smaller screen resolution, FARRs top will go off the screen, then, narrowing the search, it will shrink, with the top still off the screen.... hit Win + Home, and everything is back to normal

The hotkeys can be used by themselves, too. I.e. you could disable automatic centering when FARR appears and/or moving the FARR window to the active monitor, and just use the hotkeys to center the FARR window and move it around.

1173

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.2.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 03, 2008, 02:14 AM »

when providing upgrades, would it be possible to not overwrite custom config-file? Not that I had put a lot of stuff in there yet, but a bit annoying losing custom entries. I suggest two separate config files, one default, which shouldn't be touched and is updated along with the plugin and one custom for user specific stuff .

-TucknDar (July 03, 2008, 12:12 AM)

Yes, that is a good idea.

1174

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed 0.2.0

« Last post by phitsc on July 02, 2008, 05:10 PM »

0.2.0 is available. Only a small step, but I hope in the right direction. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get rid of the simple directory check for UNC paths. While I found a way to improve this for My Recent Documents, that improvement made MRUs for programs worse. So I just left it how it was for now, waiting for a better idea of how this could be improved.

I've mainly added file existence checking for local files. UNC paths are currently never checked, it just takes too long. I just noticed that Vista doesn't even seem to check local files for existence for the Recent Items list.

1175

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New plugin: FARR MostRecentlyUsed

« Last post by phitsc on July 02, 2008, 07:32 AM »

another idea:
if user types clear at end of search, it could clear the contents of the specified mru list.

e.g.:
mru clear
mru +office clear

just an idea -- not saying it's worth implementing.

-mouser (July 02, 2008, 07:28 AM)

Yes, I was thinking about this as well, although I think 'mru +clear!' would make it a bit safer (and allow searching for files containing clear).