Recent Posts

2426

General Software Discussion / Re: roboform2go or sticky password?

« Last post by rjbull on November 14, 2007, 09:21 AM »

Yes, you must activate it over the web with the RoboForm server.  I remember being worried about this initially (like what if the company went away)....but I've since forgotton about that.  I view that as a necessary evil in order for a software company to protect their intellectual property.

-johnfdeluca (November 14, 2007, 08:36 AM)

Well, other companies are concerned about their intellectual property, but don't make you jump through so many hoops.  If they are going to take that approach, it would be nice if they had some kind of escrow system in case they do go under; not likely in their case, but a good principle.  Is there any kind of Web service anywhere that does that?

@Josh: turns out I own two fixed licenses and one portable (DC discount) and never activated any of them   

2427

General Software Discussion / Re: roboform2go or sticky password?

« Last post by rjbull on November 14, 2007, 03:59 AM »

I've used RoboForm (RF) for years....it is the first thing i install on any new laptop.  Well worth the price.  The key features I use RF are:

• Password Manager:  Pretty obvious here.  The key drawback to this is that it only works with websites so other apps I use can't have their PW autofilled by RF. 

-johnfdeluca (November 13, 2007, 10:20 PM)

KeePass is good at that.  It has a "cmd://" construct so you can call a program with the same Ctrl-U hotkey you would normally use to launch a browser with the URL.

• Bookmarks:  Rather than using the Bookmarks in IE or Firefox, I use the feature in RF.  Since I always have RF, I always have my bookmarks.

I use the excellent bookmark manager LinkStash.  LinkStash keeps secure passwords, so I've put most of the important KeePass ones into it as well.  The very new LinkStash 2 doesn't seem to work on my old Win98 laptop, though, at least not yet, so I've gone back to 1.7.3 for now.  Not missing anything critical.

• Safe:  I use this to store software keys, etc. 
  

I sometimes do that with KeePass, but I'm tending now to put them into an encrypted MemPad file.  Then I can keep all the relevant information together, copies of e-mails, and successive generations of keys if they change on upgrading, etc.

I didn't like what I heard of RoboForm's business model, with online activation on specific computers (correct me if I'm wrong.)  And, I make out Web forms so seldom that it didn't seem worth making the effort to adopt it, especially if the program doesn't have good import/export features, thereby keeping you locked in.

2428

Living Room / Re: Coders' Watches

« Last post by rjbull on November 08, 2007, 10:39 AM »

Kevin Kelly of the Cool Tools Blog recommends the Swatch Original; clear, accurate, light, cheap, waterproof...

If you're into landscape photography, and want a watch that tells you when sun/moon rise/set are, and the phases of the moon, check out this Luminous Landscape article on The YES Watch which does all that and more.  The same author wrote an article on how to make a camera buying decision by using a watch purchase as an analogy

No limits to geekiness? 

2429

General Software Discussion / Re: split PDF files - context menu program?

« Last post by rjbull on November 06, 2007, 09:07 AM »

pdftk - PDF toolkit can split PDFs into separate files for each page, and there's a pdftk Builder Windows GUI shell, but I don't know of any context-menu integration.  However, I seem to remember seeing various forums and Web sites devoted to PDF tools,maybe they'd be the place to search.

2430

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a small dockable, auto-hide notepad

« Last post by rjbull on November 06, 2007, 03:28 AM »

@Armando:  thanks - wouldn't it be nice if Evernote stated clearly what features were and weren't available...  And the resource usage looks a bit heavy for me 

@elvisbrown:  I heard once that ShirusuPad too was a resource hog, but that was several years ago.  Any comments?

@mnemonic:  For a small, fast program, you can't really beat Mempad 

2431

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a small dockable, auto-hide notepad

« Last post by rjbull on November 05, 2007, 10:39 AM »

The fact that Keynote doesn't have even a modest implementation of Boolean searching is the big minus for me.  Nor, sadly, do any of the other free ones, as far as I know.

-rjbull (November 02, 2007, 08:58 AM)

EverNote does have basic boolean search.

-Armando (November 02, 2007, 11:48 AM)

Thanks, Armando; is that true even of the free version, not just the payware one?

Ideally I'd have liked something a little smaller, too 

2432

General Software Discussion / Re: PalmOS Software Development/IDE

« Last post by rjbull on November 05, 2007, 06:28 AM »

CASL

http://www.caslsoft.com/

CASL is a technology leader in the field of compilers and RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools for PDA's.  The CASLide was first released in 1996, making CASL one of the earliest supporters of the Palm OS. The proto-type for CASL was IZL, CASLsoft's development tool for the GEOS based PDA's (OmniGo and Zoomer), which was released in 1993.

In November 2003, we added the ability to extend CASL applications to both PalmOS and PocketPC devices using the same CASL source code.  This addition officially made CASL a true multi-platform RAD environment for PDA developers.  At the same time, supporting the capability to run CASL applications in CASLWin (Windows) for debugging and deployment.

In July of 2006, CASL 4.3 was released and added better support for the latest available hardware.  This includes support for the Palm Tungsten T|X, Treo 700p, Windows Mobile 5 and many more devices.

PalmOS and PPC!

A programmer contact noted, though, that the problem with "non-standard" languages is lack of libraries.

2433

Finished Programs / Re: AltTab Fingertips

« Last post by rjbull on November 02, 2007, 09:18 AM »

Found the INI now, thanks.

Essentially, yes, portable would be nice...

2434

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a small dockable, auto-hide notepad

« Last post by rjbull on November 02, 2007, 08:58 AM »

The fact that keynote is no longer developped is a big minus IMO.

-Armando (November 02, 2007, 02:18 AM)

The fact that Keynote doesn't have even a modest implementation of Boolean searching is the big minus for me.  Nor, sadly, do any of the other free ones, as far as I know.

2435

Finished Programs / Re: AltTab Fingertips

« Last post by rjbull on November 02, 2007, 06:23 AM »

justice,

Where does it keep its Preferences?  In the Registry? Could they be kept in an INI file in AltTab Fingertips' own directory, please?

2436

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by rjbull on October 31, 2007, 04:52 AM »

The problem is that Outlook doesn't seem to do any sort of consistency check at all on opening the file or on closing it. It strikes me that the design of the file structure is the cause for the problems as it is so slow to check validity and a major worry about data security and integrity. Email archives are some of the most important data files on my system and I worry that one day I will try to open an archive only for me to experience the problems frequently described on the MS usenet groups.

-Carol Haynes (October 31, 2007, 04:01 AM)

I know you went through the excercise of looking at other e-mail clients, only to come back to Outlook.  But if you're ultimately worried about Outlook's long-term integrity, is is worth reconsidering?

2437

General Software Discussion / Re: A Simple Database Program? (Or is that an Oxymoron itself?!)

« Last post by rjbull on October 29, 2007, 06:44 AM »

Some of the PIMs seem more like databases than notetakers; you might take a quick look at Treeline or NeoMem.  Don't know if they'd be good enough, though...

2438

Living Room / Re: Postcards from DC members

« Last post by rjbull on October 29, 2007, 06:40 AM »

You could used to buy sticky labels printed like the backs of postcards from photography suppliers.  You stuck your photo on the front and got an instant postcard.  Haven't seen them for a while, though, probably overtaken by e-mail attachments 

2439

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by rjbull on October 29, 2007, 06:32 AM »

I first started with Desktop search progs with Alta Vista (can't remember what they called it)

-Dormouse (October 28, 2007, 07:40 PM)

AltaVista Discovery?  Here's a blog post on it.

2440

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.21.01 - Aug 15, 2007

« Last post by rjbull on October 25, 2007, 04:24 AM »

You can add them to the The Form Letter Machine forum.

-Josh (October 24, 2007, 11:10 PM)

Josh,

Typo alert? Shouldn't that be DCUpdater forum?

2441

General Software Discussion / Re: hard: find a word on a window, highlight it

« Last post by rjbull on October 24, 2007, 03:41 AM »

thanks rjbull, I don't know how I forgot Hilitext! Great product.
I re-installed it, and surprisingly this time (v. 1.5) hilitext failed systematically on every single application I test it on!

-urlwolf (October 23, 2007, 01:34 PM)

Works for me on most things, including Word 2003 on a brief test (I try not to use Word), but not (again on a brief test) in Acrobat Reader.  PDFs seem problematical anyway.  Kleptomania can't always read them correctly - can't always read Crystal Reports either, usually because the fonts are too small.

I'm having a problem with Hilitext 1.5.1 myself.  It doesn't seem to be honouring its "Highlight a Text in a File" feature.  I e-mailed Fanix support yesterday.

SysExporter: Very efficient, it goes down to each window component.
   Freeware
   Gets plenty of stuff, even drop-down boxes!

But if you've got a lot of windows on screen, and they contain a lot of boxes, it takes a lot of hawk-eyed scrolling to find the right one.  I've thought of suggesting it should present them in an Explorer-style tree and/or have a draggable crosshair like WinScraper and ShoWin do, to home in on your target more quickly.

Same thing with windowscrapper and showin. Not much text captured here, only window ID, window coordinates,etc. Very much in like with autoIT spy.

ShoWin can send those data to the clipboard - I never figured an easy way to do that with AutoIT Spy - and WinScraper will sometimes get data from windows that SysExp won't, so I keep them all around.

But I agree, it isn't a sufficiently happy hunting ground   

2442

General Software Discussion / Re: hard: find a word on a window, highlight it

« Last post by rjbull on October 23, 2007, 10:34 AM »

I'm probably missing something, but FWIW:

If you just want to highlight a word, try Fanix Software's Hilitext.

If you want to extract the highlit text, Structurise's Kleptomania.  Freeware solutions that get some of the information include Nir Sofer's SysExp, Peter Boulton's WinScraper with alternate direct download link http://www.dataper.d.../WinScraperSetup.exe, and Robin Keir's ShoWin, now owned by Foundstone (link from Robin Keir's page).  Of these, WinScraper and ShoWin both behave rather like AutoIt's WindowSpy or PowerPro's WindowInfo, but rather nicer to use, and can send text to the clipboard.  You can get a lot of information by using SysExp and WinScraper in tandem; what one won't get, the other sometimes will.

2443

Developer's Corner / Re: Auto-show on-screen-keyboard for touchscreen application?

« Last post by rjbull on October 23, 2007, 04:14 AM »

I was wondering if there is any on-screen-keyboard solution that automatically pops up the moment an edit control gets focus.
Any recommendations?

-gjehle (October 23, 2007, 02:33 AM)

This probably won't help, but KeePass has an optional extra screen keyboard - here's part of the readme file:

The on-screen keyboard for KeePass is based on Randy More's
on-screen keyboard implementation for pen computing and touchscreens.
You can find his original sources and article here:
http://www.codeproje...onscreenkeyboard.asp

2444

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.21.01 - Aug 15, 2007

« Last post by rjbull on October 22, 2007, 08:50 AM »

At work, we use .pac files for configuring our proxies, and I haven't found a workaround for that yet.

-steeladept (August 18, 2007, 10:05 PM)

steeladept,

Not knowing of your post, I duplicated it in this thread Proxy, and Martin Aignesberger recommended wininet technology.

2445

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Timer based on real time

« Last post by rjbull on October 12, 2007, 10:02 AM »

I don't have a use for this at present, but...

Suggestion: if there will only be four boxes, one for each quarter of an hour, could you make them each a different colour, so you can see from a distance which quarter you're in?  Or at least make the background of the text a different colour?  And maybe make them so they tile, in case you're away from the computer a long time and more than one alarm goes off?

2446

General Software Discussion / Re: Autoreplace in clipboard

« Last post by rjbull on October 11, 2007, 03:14 AM »

what if i add running a tool to the choices of things you can do normally in a formatting preset.

-mouser (October 10, 2007, 10:47 AM)

Not sure I fully understand you, but to the extent that I do, yes, that sounds good.  Thanks! 

2447

General Software Discussion / Re: Autoreplace in clipboard

« Last post by rjbull on October 10, 2007, 10:25 AM »

That is: is there a freeware app that would replace the text in the clipboard with something else? It would be nice if it did just that, I am not in need of a bloated clipboard manager. Ease of adding of new entries and flexibility (regexp?) would be an added benefit...

-Jabberwock (October 07, 2007, 02:50 PM)

Jabberwock,

I just confected a possible solution - but you may not like it, and some assembly required.

• Download ClipText from Horst Schaeffer's Web site, from the 32-bit Windows command-line tools section.
• Install this batch file somewhere on your system:
  @echo off
  for %%a in (1 2) do if exist c:\temp\cliptext.%%a del c:\temp\cliptext.%%a > nul
  c:\dos\utils\cliptext.exe to c:\temp\cliptext.1
  c:\dos\utils\sed-359.exe -f c:\pcw\spellchk\chs.sed < c:\temp\cliptext.1 > c:\temp\cliptext.2
  c:\dos\utils\cliptext.exe from c:\temp\cliptext.2
  for %%a in (1 2) do if exist c:\temp\cliptext.%%a del c:\temp\cliptext.%%a > nul
• Adjust paths as necessary.  Make a shortcut to it, and assign a hotkey.  I couldn't get this to work by assigning a shortcut in Windows itself, so I used PowerPro instead, which gives a wider choice of hotkeys, and allows you to set things to run hidden.  You may have your own favourite hotkey program.
• Clip your text, press hotkey, press Ctrl-V...

I used SED 3.59 because it too is a 32-bit command-line tool, and being a version of SED, uses regular expressions.  You can get a copy from Eric Pement's SED page

I admit "ease of adding new entries" is not so seamless, but suggest you assign your search-replace file, CHS.SED in the example above, as a favourite file in your editor.  I mostly use TED Notepad for this kind of thing (I prefer my old WordStar-style DOS editor, VDE, for text-bashing, but that's another story).

2448

General Software Discussion / Re: Autoreplace in clipboard

« Last post by rjbull on October 10, 2007, 09:25 AM »

i should add some extra search and replace slots shouldn't i? i'll put it on my todo list.

-mouser (October 09, 2007, 10:17 AM)

Thanks!   

are you saying the external tools configuration is still not working for you,

The external tools configuration is working for me - once I picked the right tool     Maybe I'm not good enough to get MTR (32-bit version of MiniTrue) to work here, or maybe its LFN handling is too restricted.

or you are wanting to do something else besides what the current system is designed to do?

In a way, yes.  I'd like to be able to add external tools to the Formatting Presets menu on the pop-up, which doesn't seem to be currently possible.

Are you aware of the following:

• It seems impossible to delete a formatting preset.
• CHS has two rather different uses of the word "Preset" - one in the sense used here, and another from the main menu, where it means the appearance of the main window.

2449

General Software Discussion / Re: Autoreplace in clipboard

« Last post by rjbull on October 09, 2007, 05:36 AM »

• CHS doesn't have a way to auto-apply formatting every time you copy something to clipboard per se, BUT you can do it all in one step!  Just select the text in question and then trigger the text formatting preset (rather than copy first) -- see more detailed instructions below.
• But what it will do is let you create+configure a whole bunch of different custom search+replace/reformat/etc presets and show them on a quick pop-up menu for you to apply to text you have just captured while you paste it.
• It comes with some of these text formatting presets that do things like convert the case of the text just copied.

-mouser (October 08, 2007, 08:46 AM)

Mouser,

CHS comes with a rich set of features for twiddling text, especially if you want to clean up e-mails etc.  But it only has a single search-and-replace slot, so you can only change one string per preset, and you can't add external user-defined tools to a preset, as far as I can see.  Is that right?  That's what I was after in this thread: Configuring CHS user tools

At that time I was trying to use A. Pipkin's "Ministry of Truth" utility (developed on Linux, I suspect), and couldn't get it to work because it doesn't understand Windows LFNs properly - pity, because it's powerful and otherwise works well:
MiniTrue home page
MiniTrue enthusiast: Eric Pement's SED page - scroll down to Console/command-line apps
On no account overlook Eric Pement's supplementary tricks and traps page

Unable to make MiniTrue work properly, I changed to a SED script... but it would be much more useful if it could be incorporated into a CHS preset.  Currently, I've just put the same SED script into TED Notepad as a user-defined text filter.

2450

Best Dialog Extender / Re: Enhanced File Dialog

« Last post by rjbull on October 08, 2007, 10:05 AM »

I knew you can have favourite folders because I have a version of them...

-rjbull (October 07, 2007, 05:17 PM)

so...
what's with the favourite folders then 

But is there a way of changing whats on the list on the left of open/save box ?????
or
to paraphrase
what/how favourite folders? 

-tomos (October 08, 2007, 02:23 AM)

are they from win explorer?

EDIT: "I knew you can have favourite folders because I have a version of them" or
did you just mean you have the standard version..(i.e My Comp, My Docs, etc)

-tomos (October 08, 2007, 05:02 AM)

PowerPro has lots of ways of adding and tracking favourite folders; it's an infinitely configurable program.  I've only got a simple version because I don't understand the complex ones.  Quoting from Powerpro's Help:

Favorite folders lists for
file open/save dialogs

PowerPro can help you maintain and use lists of favorite folders for standard open/save dialogs. You can manually maintain a list of favorite folders; you can have PowerPro capture folders as you use them in open/save dialogs; and you can combine these two approaches to have an integrated list of both manually set favorite folders and recently used folders.
You can display favorite folders in a menu or a bar (or both); see bottom of this help topic for more on bars.
MS Office does not use standard open/save dialogs. PowerPro can recognize these dialogs and send favorite folders to them for your favorite list, but it cannot capture the folder used from these dialogs.

In my case, when an Opoen files dialog box appears, PowerPro automatically pops up a short list of very frequently used folders.  Pressing a hotkey gives me a second, larger list of less frequently accessed folders.

Does that explain anything...  or were you just having a silly five minutes?