Recent Posts

2826

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Keepass Password Safe mini-review

« Last post by rjbull on June 18, 2006, 03:25 PM »

Nice review, which, especially with WR975's comments, told me useful things I didn't know about KeePass.

Two things not mentioned:
1) anyone grimly hanging onto Win98 (e.g. me) should use an older version of KeePass, 1.03.  Later versions don't Auto-Type.  I don't see a huge amount of difference between versions and they're file-compatible anyway.
2) One of the nicest things about KeePass' Auto-Type is its cooperation, or should that be non-cooperation, with the clipboard.  That is, when you Auto-Type something (Ctrl-V or Alt-E, T), KeePass sends the information in a way that circumvents common clipboard enhancers.  I don't know how broad the spectrum this covers, but data sent this way by KeePass doesn't show up in the free version of ClipCache that I run.  Clipboard caching software would be a potential security hazard otherwise.  Also, if you use Ctrl-B = Copy User Name to Clipboard or Ctrl-C = Copy Password to Clipboard, KeePass clears the clipboard after 10 seconds.  This will be caught by a clipboard enhancer, but it's a useful help where a computer isn't running one.

2827

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Doing an append to the clipboard

« Last post by rjbull on June 18, 2006, 03:09 PM »

you wouldn't have to open up the chs window to operate it.

-mouser (June 18, 2006, 02:58 PM)

FWIW, The free version of ClipCache allows you to right-click on its tray icon, which pops up a little menu.  There you can change from Capture Clips = each clip is separate to Append text captures which accumulates everything in one clip until turned off.

2828

General Software Discussion / Re: programmes that use little system resources.

« Last post by rjbull on June 12, 2006, 03:53 AM »

I forgot to ask about an email client??!!

-tomos (June 09, 2006, 06:08 AM)

GeminiSoft Pimmy?  See DC thread here

2829

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 11, 2006, 11:07 AM »

When writing big scripts, say 40,000 words upwards, I'd recommend using WordStar.  Version 4 is the best, imho.  5 and 6 are more trouble than they're worth, 2000 doesn't use the same Cntrl sequences, and WordStar for Windows is a version of Wordstar in name only.

-SAE140 (June 10, 2006, 06:14 AM)

Ah... an enlightened follower of the True Faith 

If you're interested in a free WordStar-style and compatible editor, take a look at VDE at http://home.att.net/...rt.stop/page_one.htm  It understands LFNs and thanks to an ingenious macro by John Woodruff, that runs Horst Schaeffer's Cliptext  http://home.mnet-onl...ne.de/horst.muc/win/  it can communicate with the Windows clipboard too.

For a WinGUI WordStar-style editor, take a look at WSedit  http://www.writeands...m/english/indxf.html
but be sure to read the caveats.


@lanux128: suggest you take a look at TED Notepad, which has to be one of the best "small" free Windows editors.  Designed partly to be an improvement on Metapad.  http://www.jsimlo.sk/notepad/

2830

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 11, 2006, 10:53 AM »

Dr. FF is a Surfulater fan and uses it himself. See: http://www.tucows.com/article/848 and

-nevf (June 09, 2006, 05:00 PM)

That's the trouble; he's enthusiastic about more or less everything he mentions.  Doesn't much help anyone looking for a comparison.  For the same reason I don't take much notice of "awards."  Nearly every program that isn't a complete disaster seem to end up with a load of awards.   

2831

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 08, 2006, 10:52 AM »

Black Hole Organizer:

I tried this software just now, and it's ok.  It's really nothing special.  There were some reviews on the web that give it really good ratings.

-superboyac (June 08, 2006, 10:19 AM)

It might just have reached the public consciousness earlier than the competition.  Being a Dr. File Finder pick probably gave it a boost.  Interestingly, some of Dr File Finder's Web pages say "Web Design and all graphics courtesy of Lincoln Beach Software!", and it's Lincoln Beach that sell Black Hole Organizer.

for the average user it's a good mix of simplicity and nice power features.

I find it a bit slow, especially compared to, say, Treepad Lite.  It doesn't really have good enough Boolean searching for me, either, though search power is slightly better than some.

There was something very interesting about it, and that is that it is laid out very similarly to Zoot!  [...]  Unfortunately, it doesn't have all the powerful features of Zoot like auto-categorizing and filtering and stuff.

It's cheaper than Zoot, though 

2832

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for a tool o resize/downsize JPEG photos for e-mail

« Last post by rjbull on June 07, 2006, 05:46 AM »

You might try Resize, freeware by Peter Bone

Resize allows you to resize images. Reduction is done by pixel averaging, which gives much better quality than sub-sampling. The program allows you to resize a batch of images and also convert to JPEG. This is useful for creating thumbnails for web pages or resizing the frames for animated gifs.

The resizing algorithm produces high quality images because it uses all available information from the source image. Most other image resizing software only use a small amount of information from the source image.

2833

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Instant Text V Pro - more than the usual features of a text expander

« Last post by rjbull on June 06, 2006, 08:20 AM »

Here's another expander:  Phrase Express  Freeware for personal use, otherwise $19.95.  The Web site talks about "auto complete" and "correct typos," but it looks to me to be just a macro expander, by imtrobin's definition above.

2834

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by rjbull on June 06, 2006, 05:12 AM »

I purchased Cyberarticle.  Use it less than I intended.  Very powerful but not particularly user friendly.  I think it is now $US25.

-JeffK (September 26, 2005, 06:08 AM)

JeffK,

How do you rate Cyberarticle against NetSnippets, Surfulator and the others?

I just checked - you're right, it is now $25.

2835

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 06, 2006, 05:02 AM »

Actually, rjbull, I meant that Evernote is NOT primarily a web-capture application (sorry! ).  Evernote is notetaking application that can capture webpages.

-superboyac (June 05, 2006, 12:37 PM)

superboyac, thanks for the clarification 

JeffK mentioned Cyberarticle in this DC post  It's positioned as a Web archiving tool, but I see that it can import arbitrary files, and offers full-text searching.  Those are good features for a notekeeping application, though I'm not sure if the rest of it is ideally suited.

2836

Living Room / Re: Thinking outside the box: very cool simple idea from epson

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 11:04 AM »

good question - i wonder if any site has done a review of printer drivers..

-mouser (June 04, 2006, 06:14 AM)

Don't know about printers.  But the UK magazine Amateur Photographer has more than once mentioned Hamrick Software's VueScan driver for film scanners, and found it superior to those supplied as standard; it does a better job, has more features, and it's faster.

2837

General Software Discussion / Re: Living without AutoHotkey - possible?

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 10:49 AM »

should I forgot one that I didn't use in weeks I just hit my shortcut that brings up the AHK script where I can search for it Would I use some Treepad-clone I wouldn't be able to access that info so quickly.

-brotherS (June 05, 2006, 09:49 AM)

I should have thought of using a hotkey to bring it up    presumably in whatever editor you're using.

Type Pilot from Two Pilots stores its abbreviations in a tree structure, which should work well for large numbers of phrases.  But you seem indissolubly wedded to AHK    After all, it does a lot of other things, too.

And using triggers that contain names or parts of names really help too.
For example, ".pdo" expands to "D:\Downloads", the "p" means "path" and "do" makes it easy to remember it's for the "Downloads" folder.

Jon Knowles' ABCZ rule for making abbreviations - found by following one of Harrie's text expander posts - is a very useful way of systematising abbreviations/shorthands for normal text, but needs modifying for things like paths and whatnot.  You system looks sensible, as long as one sticks to it 

2838

Living Room / Re: PDAs - any use?

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 08:42 AM »

I bought handbase from http://www.ddhsoftwa...m_software.html?UID=

-tsaint (June 05, 2006, 06:29 AM)

Thanks.

Of course you have to wade through a lot of junk to find stuff that suits

Ah, yes.  Again...

2839

Living Room / Re: PDAs - any use?

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 04:37 AM »

tsaint,

I purchased a database

-tsaint (May 30, 2006, 05:04 AM)

Were you looking for a "widgets" dBase-type database, or something like Bonsai or ListPro?

search - never-ending - for freeware which met my needs. Have found a lot which Ive been happy with.

Do you have links for specially useful sites?

Thanks in advance...

2840

Living Room / Re: PDAs - any use?

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 04:31 AM »

I never really understood why one would buy a PDA over, say a laptop. The only good use I can think of is to run GPS software,...

-Gothi[c] (May 27, 2006, 04:09 PM)

Looks like the Next Big Thing is decreed to be the "ultra-mobile computer," UMPC (formerly codenamed "Origami").  You can read a review of one such, the Samsung Q1, here

Appears to be a modest-sized (about 9 x 10 inches) tablet PC which includes ideas from PDAs and smartphones.

2841

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by rjbull on June 05, 2006, 04:16 AM »

I'm still not sure - I like both.

-Carol Haynes (June 04, 2006, 04:22 PM)

Net Snippets Pro feels like a more user friendly interface but Surfulater has a lot of stuff that I have barely scratched.

You probably know there's a lot about Surfulator in the very long General brainstorming for Note-taking software thread.

Both have demo versions (Snippets has a free version too IIRC) so best thing is to try them and see which works best for you.

NetSnippets still has a free version, and supports Firefox 0.9 and above as well as Netscape and versions of IE and IE-based browsers.

Thanks!

2842

What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by rjbull on June 04, 2006, 03:56 PM »

I see that CompuServe use ClamAV, which is Unix-based GPL software.  Windows ports are coming, more details at http://www.clamav.ne...inary.html#pagestart

2843

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 04, 2006, 03:48 PM »

rjbull, when I'm talking about web-capturing in this thread, I mean web-capturing capabilities of notetaking programs, not dedicated web-capturing programs.  In this context, I think Evernote does it the best.

-superboyac (June 02, 2006, 10:13 AM)

I take that to mean, you see Evernote as primarily a Web capture program, and best of its type (sorry to be obtuse).  Thanks.

I'm not sticking this thread into a notetaking app or something like that, if that was what you meant.

I did rather have visions of you putting each message into a separate node as a way of keeping and manipulating it offline!

2844

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by rjbull on June 04, 2006, 03:28 PM »

I do have NetSnippets and Surfulator (don't really know why I bought both as they do similar jobs).

-Carol Haynes (June 02, 2006, 09:44 AM)

Which begs the question, which do you prefer?

MHT files are compiled webpages produced by Internet Explorer. [...]but as far as I know only Internet Explorer can open it.

Thanks.  Pity it's so Microsoft-specific...

2845

General Software Discussion / Re: Living without AutoHotkey - possible?

« Last post by rjbull on June 04, 2006, 03:23 PM »

brotherS,

• to help newbies in several IRC channels with a variety of FAQ triggers

-brotherS (October 10, 2005, 08:58 AM)

I've been mildly puzzled by this one, because I assumed that the quantity of information you keep would be fairly large.  In that case, I'd have expected you to use something more like a Treepad-clone, for better organisation?

In fact, you have such a wide and varied use for AHK that I'd have thought you needed a GUI interface to help keep track of it all; hard to remember the less commonly-used items.

2846

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by rjbull on June 02, 2006, 09:40 AM »

I like NetSnippets a lot and have splashed out

-Carol Haynes (September 26, 2005, 06:14 AM)

CarolHaynes,

Did you also look at Evernote?  I'd be interested in the comparison.  I see that NetSnippets runs on Win9x, which Evernote doesn't, and currently that's helpful to me.   Even the free version of NetSnippets appears to give some degree of organisational possibilities, as well as allowing you to "compile" the results into an MHT file.  I don't understand exactly MHT files are, but if it means combining everything into a single file when you want to send it to someone, that would be useful.

2847

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

« Last post by rjbull on June 02, 2006, 05:40 AM »

superboyac,

Personally, as far as working with web content, EverNote does it the best of all the programs I've tried, by far.

-superboyac (May 31, 2006, 04:10 PM)

I belatedly remembered NetSnippets.  Have you compared with Evernote for Web capture, which is its focus?  It found favour with the formidable CarolHaynes

I saw your comment about this thread being primarily about notekeeping; should it be forked for Web capture?  I'd also be interested in what software you use to summarise all the posts 

edit:
Hmph.  No need to fork, just add to the IDEA - Web page archiving thread

2848

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: get all images, tables from a pdf and save them as pdfName-fig-number.

« Last post by rjbull on June 02, 2006, 05:22 AM »

Sounds like you might like to try XPDF (freeware), specifically this component of it

DESCRIPTION
       Pdfimages saves images from  a  Portable  Document  Format
       (PDF)  file  as  Portable  Pixmap  (PPM),  Portable Bitmap
       (PBM), or JPEG files.

       Pdfimages reads the PDF file, scans  one  or  more  pages,
       PDF-file,  and  writes one PPM, PBM, or JPEG file for each
       image, image-root-nnn.xxx, where nnn is the  image  number
       and xxx is the image type (.ppm, .pbm, .jpg).

2849

Developer's Corner / Re: AutoHotKey SUCKS! --- Or at least I can't make it work

« Last post by rjbull on June 01, 2006, 06:05 AM »

I'd say AWK has been superseeded by perl.

-urlwolf (June 01, 2006, 05:34 AM)

I know that Perl is now much more trendy, but, as I see it, AWK is simpler, and as long as it does what you need, it's easier to learn and quicker to be productive with.

I agree that debugging AHK is difficult.

Thompson Automation's AWK comes with a debugger - written in Thomson Automation AWK   

Considering how we get info (e.g., windows spy), and how inconsistent windows applications are (e.g., naming windows, responding to actions, etc), it is almost a miracle that AHK exists.

I don't disagree, but the remarkable thing is just how many (vaguely) similar macro-type automation programs there are for Windows.  AutoIt, AHK, Macro Express, PowerPro, Macro Tools Works, the new version of PTFB, AceMacro, Keytext... the list goes on and on.

But for your task, I'd take perl. You are basically doing system calls to other processes and pasting their output together by reading particular parts of files. That's what perl was created for.

AWK seems really designed for serial input, one line equals one record.  You can use getline calls to read other files, but if you need to access several files at one time, maybe Perl is better.

2850

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Beta new version of TrID file identifier - now with batch scanning & renamin

« Last post by rjbull on June 01, 2006, 05:25 AM »

Mark0,

you might want to take a quick look at
Eric Phelps' UnCHK, which has a brief discussion of CHK files.  TrID will be a lot more powerful, though; it has so many more file types as standard.

[edit: link fixed, sorry]