Recent Posts

2651

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« Last post by rjbull on February 12, 2007, 03:55 AM »

one could -stupidly- argue that it's OCR performed by the user as opposed to the computer

-murple (February 08, 2007, 06:58 PM)

I thought that was traditionally known as "reading"   

I would love to have a program which would allow me to select part of my screen, perform OCR on it and copy the recognized text to the clipboard.

That's exactly what Kleptomania does.

I'd like to conjure up a tiny application which allows you to "write directly to the clipboard" in the easiest, fastest most intuitive and least intrusive way. I'd call it ClipWrite.

Good luck with that, but, you could always keep a small fast editor like TED Notepad running in the background?

2652

Living Room / Re: Pocket PCs etc. Which do you personally recommend, having used it yourself?

« Last post by rjbull on February 12, 2007, 03:38 AM »

• I can run it from AAA batteries available at any corner store

-cranioscopical (February 11, 2007, 05:55 PM)

That's a real plus point, but, does it have non-volatile memory?  If your battery goes flat, do you lose everything?

2653

General Software Discussion / Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software

« Last post by rjbull on February 07, 2007, 08:56 AM »

what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)

-cranioscopical (January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM)

cranioscopical,

That seems to be what Evernote Plus ($39.95) claims to do...

2654

General Software Discussion / Re: Stickies 6.0a released

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

I thought you could stick stickies to a particular webpage?  The recognition is based off the window title.

[...]

I just did it with this page.

-kfitting (February 04, 2007, 04:18 PM)

That's a great feature! Thanks for pointing it out 

But Stickies has been crashing on me again for no obvious reason - maybe my system is too old 

2655

General Software Discussion / Re: Stickies 6.0a released

« Last post by rjbull on February 04, 2007, 02:41 PM »

Stickies author is great and the program has some indispensable features.

-Nighted (January 29, 2007, 07:52 PM)

He certainly is.  I tried running Stickies 6.0 on a Win98 laptop, only to get a series of error messages.  They related to only having an old version of the JET database engine, and I couldn't find the update recommended in the Stickies help file, only a newer one.  The author said he hadn't tested that, but asked if I'd like a copy of the one he had tested, and when I said yes please, sent it immediately.  Seems to work fine now   

I'll be interested to try the feature that lets you stick notes to particular programs, though really I'd like that extended so I could stick notes to particular Web pages.  I'll also be interested to see how Stickies operates.  The sticky notes program I use at present, Magic Notes (cheap shareware), makes each note a hidden window, which I don't much like.  If I have to search for other hidden windows, those get in the way.  If Stickies works from a database and the notes are hidden, I'd prefer that.   On the other hand, the alarm settings in Magic Notes are more obvious / easier to set, though neither program seems to have alarms quite as powerful as I'd like.

2656

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« Last post by rjbull on February 04, 2007, 11:10 AM »

Problem is Kleptomania (and every other software I saw to do this type of thing) cannot OCR a picture displayed on screen.  This would be an awesome feature... though no doubt harder.

-kfitting (September 07, 2005, 07:05 PM)

kfitting,

I just noticed that the beta of the full (payware) version of EverNote 2.0 claims to be able to do this:

AIR-search in images: Search photos and graphics stored in your notes to find embedded typed or handwritten text. Use it for snapshots of whiteboards, product labels, in-store packaging and pricing, business cards, trade show badges, and more.

2657

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: Can we make a single key show hot keys?

« Last post by rjbull on February 02, 2007, 09:15 AM »

You see, there's no way to detect the keyboard shortcuts that each program uses. So, this would have to be configured by someone on a per-program basis.

-jgpaiva (February 02, 2007, 06:08 AM)

Too true.  For system hotkeys, though, there are programs to help, e.g.  ShortCutsMan (freeware) by Nir Sofer.  It lists shortcuts and their hotkeys, where they exist.

Another approach might be worth trying zridling's former favourite HotKeyz, but there's the same problem, it can't control hotkeys that programs define for themselves.

2658

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

« Last post by rjbull on February 02, 2007, 05:46 AM »

believe it or not, i think i'm going to give EverNote a try.

-nudone (February 01, 2007, 06:30 AM)

Has anyone noticed the beta of EverNote Portable?  Saves its data as XML files in its own directory.  It would be nice if more of these programs used such an open format to permit a degree of interchange of data. Also sounds like the main version of EverNote is too dependent on the Windows Registry for my taste.

This thread has 408 posts so far - and no definitive conclusion <sigh>

2659

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

« Last post by rjbull on January 26, 2007, 08:57 AM »

mentioned in thread here:

and a couple of posts later Carol says:

No - it doesn't mention dates - but it does nice things like open RegEdit

-tomos (January 26, 2007, 08:46 AM)

Thanks, tomos...  Might not be much use to me on the machine I use at work, as IT Dept. lock us out of RegEdit for "security reasons."

2660

General Software Discussion / Re: Your experiences with disc catalogers and most wanted/used features

« Last post by rjbull on January 26, 2007, 08:48 AM »

Crush,

I am a registered user of CatDisk for DOS by Rick Hillier of The Software Connection.  Back in the 90s, I used it to catalogue a collection of floppies (remember those?) full of shareware and freeware.  I never bothered to update, but here's a Windows version, CatDisk 2003.

The DOS version is/was a good product, probably the leading one of its day.  I particularly liked the ability to import text files like FILES.BBS and modified FILE_ID.DIZ so you could add descriptions.  Nowadays I suppose you'd have to add PAD files.  A disk cataloguer that doesn't allow comments/descriptions would not interest me.  CatDisk for DOS came with some additional command-line tools, so you could do some kinds of searches/reports from batch files etc.

2661

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

« Last post by rjbull on January 26, 2007, 08:32 AM »

just uses the app.'s own uninstaller.

-urlwolf (January 26, 2007, 07:46 AM)

In that case, please, what advantages does it have over the app's own uninstaller or over Total Uninstall, or one of the other small uninstallers like MyUninstaller by Nir Sofer?

2662

Official Announcements / Re: What changes would you like to see on DonationCoder.com in 2007?

« Last post by rjbull on January 22, 2007, 10:47 AM »

Do you know if the Proxomitron ingests A,W & K?

-Farmsteader (January 22, 2007, 05:42 AM)

Sorry, can't help you further.  I've never used Proxomitron.

I've found it irritatating that regexps are entered rather differently on the command line than they are in an AWK script, wrapped up in colons instead of forward-slashes, or whatever.  That's probably a hangover from conversion from Unix, with differences in the way the shell handles awkward characters.  As an aside, WebSite-Watcher has a nice wizard that takes much of the donkeywork out of assembling regexps.

2663

Official Announcements / Re: What changes would you like to see on DonationCoder.com in 2007?

« Last post by rjbull on January 22, 2007, 05:39 AM »

snag due to my lack of experience using regex.

-Farmsteader (January 22, 2007, 04:18 AM)

Basic tutorial on Regular Expressions here

I'm pretty sure there's an O'Reilly book on just that topic.  Otherwise, the Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger book "The AWK Programming Language" has a good section on regular expressions.

2664

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by rjbull on January 16, 2007, 03:56 AM »

Then it's time for you to discover win32pad!

-brotherS (January 15, 2007, 04:59 AM)

If you must have a Windows Notepad-style editor instead of a proper WordStar-style one, don't overlook
TED Notepad

Small, fast, freeware, no-install version if preferred, many more features than Microsoft Notepad.

2665

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Text Editor just for text (stay with me)

« Last post by rjbull on January 16, 2007, 03:50 AM »

writer Robert Sawyer's manifesto of WordStar as the True Way for writers

[...]


For a WinGUI WordStar-style editor, take a look at WSedit  http://www.writeands...m/english/indxf.html

-rjbull (January 31, 2006, 04:14 AM)

I am using this tool.  I don't call it a "text editor" I call it a "writer's tool."  That's what it's designed for and that is where it shines.

-Farmsteader (January 15, 2007, 04:19 PM)

That's not a bad distinction, especially given that Dr. Vieregg designed it as an add-on for his HTML/CHM compiler, which are as much "writing" tasks as "editing" ones.  And I'm glad to see other folk still following the True Way of WordStar 

Here are a couple of keyboard  remappers:
OkayKeybees
Dev-Labs' Keyboard Remapper for Windows

Disclaimer: I haven't tried these.

2666

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: OCR & paste

« Last post by rjbull on January 11, 2007, 04:17 AM »

would just pop-up a transparent, non-intrusive inputbox, allow you to type into it and when you hit enter it disappears and copies the text to the clipboard.

-murple (January 10, 2007, 05:55 PM)

Murple,

Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't look like OCR... if you just want to put text into the clipboard, there's lots of ways of doing it.  E.g. using Mouser's own Clipboard Help + Spell, you call up the main window, Edit, Insert New Clip.  ClipCache has similar.  Or, from a command line, try Horst Schaeffer's ClipText.

2667

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodness! Is there NO Win utility to do "DIR /S/B C:\ZZZ\*.JPG > RESULT.TXT"

« Last post by rjbull on January 10, 2007, 09:39 AM »

rjbull: unless the tool is very ugly and reads the disk directly (which I doubt), it should work under NT, and on NTFS as well. "This option will only work under an operating system which provides the long-name API." - this sounds a lot like it will work

-f0dder (January 08, 2007, 09:23 AM)

f0dder,

It works fine under Win2K, and the macros mean you can make batch files on the fly, or directly execute commands on the found files, with or without asking permission each time.  Either Locate's macros or use of Horst Schaeffer's LMOD allows easy automated pre-pending/appending of text to lists, so tasks can be automated easily.

Once upon a time, I even wondered if some kind person might make a WinGUI shell for it 

2668

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodness! Is there NO Win utility to do "DIR /S/B C:\ZZZ\*.JPG > RESULT.TXT"

« Last post by rjbull on January 08, 2007, 08:56 AM »

In this case, I won't want to go back DOS unless I have no choice!

-tslim (January 07, 2007, 09:15 AM)

Ordinary DOS can't see NTFS drive (yes I am aware of NTFSdos, which allow so), does not handle long file name (again I am aware of DOS way to make it does), can't see drive bigger than 2 Gig and so on and so....

Even though DOS is still better (than Windows) way to go when you want to do something "task orientated" rather than "object orientated"

I don't know about NTFS.  Here's part of the help file for Charles Dye's file finder LOCATE:

/L      Display Windows 95 Long filenames.  This option will only work under
        an operating system which provides the long-name API.  It will work
   in a DOS box under Windows 95, but not in Win95 DOS mode (MS-DOS 7.x.)
   It will work with DR-DOS only if you have Caldera's long-filename TSR
   installed.

   This option only affects the display!  Locate still searches for files
   using the 8.3 DOS filenames.  If you want to search for a specific long
   filename, I recommend that you type only the first five letters, followed
   by an asterisk:  LOCATE BLUER* /L to find a file named "Blue Rivets.bmp".
   (This file probably has a short filename of BLUERI~1.BMP, so BLUER* will
   match it.)  To find all the short "aliases" which refer to non-8.3
   filenames, try LOCATE *~*


/O:"format"    Macro Output.  For each item found, Locate will print out the
               string between quotes exactly as typed, except that certain
   macros beginning with an ampersand (&) will be replaced.

   macro  what it displays           width  example

   &F     fully qualified filename      -   C:\DOS\DISKCOPY.COM
   &D     directory name, canonical     -   C:\DOS
   &P     directory name with \         -   C:\DOS\
   &N     filename                      -   DISKCOPY.COM
   &R     filename without extension    -   DISKCOPY
   &X     extension only                -   COM
   &S     filespec without drive        -   \DOS\DISKCOPY.COM
   &L     drive letter                  -   C:
   &G     copy target, no drive         -   \DOS
   &J     right-padded with spaces     13   win.com     
   &A     attributes, as for ATTRIB    11   +A -S -H -R
   &B     attribute bits                5   A....
   &W     Windows 95 long filename      -   "C:\Directory\Long Filename.html"
   &Z     long filename only, no path   -   "Long Filename.html"
   &Y     long directory name with \    -   "C:\Directory\"
   &V     long filename base            -   Long Filename
   &K     long filename extension       -   html
   &1     date stamp, local format     11   May 31 1994
   &2     time stamp, local format      9    6:22:00a
   &3     file size                    10   13335
   &4     day of the week               3   Tue
   &5     pretty file size             13   13,335
   &6     file size in KB or MB         9   13.02 K
   &7     date stamp, ISO format       10   1994-05-31
   &8     time stamp, 24-hour format    8   06:22:00
   &U     show summary info at end      -

   &T  terminate line    &&  ampersand     &E  escape    &Q  quote mark
   &I  five-space tab    &C  conditional   &H  header    &# or &@  index

I could maybe wish Charles had updated LOCATE a little more for Windows, but it's an extremely useful tool as it is (and freeware).

2669

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodness! Is there NO Win utility to do "DIR /S/B C:\ZZZ\*.JPG > RESULT.TXT"

« Last post by rjbull on January 07, 2007, 06:40 AM »

How nice if LS lets user add a phase at the beginning or append a phase to end of every item it outputs.

-tslim (January 07, 2007, 12:27 AM)

I think you're asking for more than a directory lister there.  I'd go back to DOS, and use Horst Schaeffer's LMOD to pre-pend/append text:

[Select]

LMOD 1.3 Filter (c) 2002 Horst Schaeffer
Syntax: LMOD options string_with_tokens
Options:
        /Ln[-m] line [range] to select (default: first non blank line)
        /L[n]*  all lines [starting n]
        /E      include empty input lines (default: no output)
        /S..    delimiters for word extraction, instead of default (,;=)
        /B..    as /S, but excluding blank space as delimiter
        /Nn     starting line number (for token [#]), default: /N001
Insert from source line (expression in square brackets):
 [p,l $n U|L Rn]  default []: complete line
        p,l     from position p, length l (default rest of line)
        $n      word number n ("!" for last word); optionally ±offset
        $n:m    range of words by number (blank space will be inserted)
        U|L     convert to upper|lower case
        Rn      right aligned in output field of size n
Other tokens:
        [+]     insert CR+LF
        [-]     omit CR+LF at end of output
        [#]     line number (digits acc. to option, default:3)
        [=n]    tab to position n in output line
        [~n]    ASCII code n (decimal)
        [".."]  quoted char/string (use for redirection symbols)

I believe there could be a TC plugin for what I want to do, but isn't it a main feature that should be IN the TC program itself rather than an optional plugin?

You could always ask Christian for the feature...


@Mouser: I found LS from PriceLessWare, if I remember correctly.

2670

ProcessTamer / Is there an equivalent of Process Tamer for Win98?

« Last post by rjbull on January 06, 2007, 02:55 PM »

Does anyone know of an equivalent of Process Tamer for Win98, please?

TIA...

2671

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodness! Is there NO Win utility to do "DIR /S/B C:\ZZZ\*.JPG > RESULT.TXT"

« Last post by rjbull on January 06, 2007, 02:46 PM »

What I want is just the "search result" on a folder-tree for certain type of files be printed (path+file or full filespec) to a text file! That simple!

-tslim (January 05, 2007, 12:03 AM)

You might like LS - File List Generator (for Windows)

WinXP's search can't be printed; I try (but never study in depth) and find that Total commander, xPlorer2 and D.Opus all just can't do exactly what I want????

You need to look at Total Commander's addons.  Check DiskDir from the unofficial addons site http://www.totalcmd.net/

I have to do it the DOS way, ah! ha! ha! ha!

That's the way REAL MEN do it, isn't it?   

2672

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Fineprint (Virtual Printer)

« Last post by rjbull on December 31, 2006, 01:36 PM »

Plus it includes automatic duplex, automatic 4-up booklet printing (which is really neat), mulitple page reduction to a single sheet

-Carol Haynes (December 16, 2006, 05:35 AM)

Doesn't the fact that those features are built into the printer reduce the value of Fineprint?

2673

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Fineprint (Virtual Printer)

« Last post by rjbull on December 29, 2006, 02:44 PM »

My Canon ip5000 has a cartidge tray feed but it also also a straight through feed - it is great to have the choice. Plus it includes automatic duplex, automatic 4-up booklet printing (which is really neat), mulitple page reduction to a single sheet and CD/DVD printing and produces really great photos.

-Carol Haynes (December 16, 2006, 05:35 AM)

Doesn't the fact that those features are built into hardware render FinePrint rather pointless?

2674

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Hide current window / restore any hidden window

« Last post by rjbull on December 21, 2006, 10:11 AM »

Hello, Fedorov; welcome to DC's roster of members who post   

Not sure this should be in the "Post New Requests" section, but I'll leave that to the moderators 

I use HoeKey for this task.  It doesn't have the popup menu in the sense you mean, but successive presses of the assigned "hide" hotkey puts windows on a stack, and pressing the "unhide" key pops them off again.  HoeKey is a general-purpose hotkey application, and it's tiny, only about a 25K download.  Lots of other nice features, like "kill current process," "editify" current window (gets window details as text), etc.

2675

Find And Run Robot / Re: Text recognition in any application for FARR

« Last post by rjbull on December 20, 2006, 05:51 AM »

Why not use AHK?