Recent Posts

2976

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« Last post by rjbull on March 15, 2006, 04:26 AM »

AllChars, F&RR, WinWarden, AHK, CLCL (clipboard manager), Windows Security Alert (i'd like to get rid of this, but can't...), KatMouse,

-lanux128 (March 14, 2006, 08:50 PM)

I was interested to see both AllChars and AHK.  I'd have thought that AHK would have removed the need for AllChars?

What's KatMouse?

2977

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 15, 2006, 04:17 AM »

Zoot:

PS (what's with the 16-bit look?  and that price tag?  eesh!)

-superboyac (March 14, 2006, 05:01 PM)

I seem to remember hearing that Zoot looks 16-bit because it is 16-bit, and this is one of the issues even long-term users have with it.  That is, it's still waiting to be updated to 32-bit.  I agree it's expensive, but it's competing in the same kind of commercial class as things like AskSam, InfoSelect and UltraRecall.

More on Zoot, AskSam and InfoSelect on John Buckman's outliners page (sadly out of date, but still the best summary I've seen)

2978

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 15, 2006, 04:07 AM »

EverNote not only tags all past notes you ever created with that keyword; it also tags any future notes with that keyword you might create.

-EverMike (March 14, 2006, 01:03 PM)

Thanks!  I still wish the download wasn't so enormous, but it sounds worth looking at.

2979

General Software Discussion / Re: Tame - a program for those running DOS applications

« Last post by rjbull on March 14, 2006, 08:16 AM »

I've run Tame 4.5d for quite some time, but have to confess I've never looked hard at it.  I find that using old PKZIP 2.04g for DOS seems extremely slow, despite using Tame.  But, I suppose I should really look into it and do some tweaking.

<later>  Hmmm...  my version is rather old, I see it's now 5.0...

2980

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 14, 2006, 03:34 AM »

if that keyword is anywhere in the note, that note will automatically be placed in that category.

-superboyac (March 13, 2006, 10:54 AM)

OK, thanks; I think I see and that could be quite useful.  But, do you have to know in advance what your keywords are going to be?  Or can you decide at some later date that you need new/different ones and have EverNote build new categories?

2981

General Software Discussion / Re: E-mail clients review

« Last post by rjbull on March 14, 2006, 03:27 AM »

Do you really want to put all your eggs in the Google basket?

2982

General Software Discussion / E-mail clients review

« Last post by rjbull on March 13, 2006, 09:24 AM »

The May 2006 edition of the UK magazine Computer Shopper has a review of e-mail clients.  They scored them as follows:

Microsoft Outlook 2003                  - 2
Microsoft Outlook Express 6            - 2
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5                   - 4
Qualcomm Eudora Sponsored Edition - 3
Opera 8.51                                   - 3
Ritlabs The Bat! 3.65 Home Edition    - 5
Pegasus Mail 4.31                          - 3

So DC are not the only place that favours The Bat! 

2983

General Software Discussion / Re: Auto click windows dialog

« Last post by rjbull on March 13, 2006, 09:14 AM »

I am looking for a freeware which can automatically kill/close/push a button on a windows dialog

-zeemar (March 13, 2006, 09:04 AM)

I use the last free version of Press that Freakin' Button (PTFB)
http://www.priceless...TOP.php#ButtonPusher
Later versions have turned into a shareware macro program.

There's also (not tried by me) ClickOff, also freeware
http://www.johannesh...com/en/clickoff.html

I believe you can also do this with the freeware macro programs AutoHotKey (very popular on DonationCoder), AutoIt, and PowerPro.  All can do lots of other things as well, but if automatic button-pressing is all you want, PTFB is effective and easy to use.

2984

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 13, 2006, 03:57 AM »

whether or not a note contains specific keywords.

-EverMike (March 11, 2006, 05:17 PM)

EverMike,

Do you really mean "keywords," i.e. specially assigned words, or do you mean searching full text for particular words?

2985

Living Room / Re: Planet Earth starts tonight

« Last post by rjbull on March 13, 2006, 03:35 AM »

The photography is AWESOME.  Snow leopards, even!  Only thing I didn't like was the background music, which I found obtrusive, like where the beats get faster as the hunting dogs close in for the kill.  That's emotionally manipulative.  But the rest is  terrific.

2986

General Software Discussion / Re: Free (and opensource) Hotkey Tool - Tip!

« Last post by rjbull on March 09, 2006, 11:02 AM »

I love the concept of assigning Hotkeys to the [win]+X Button.

-crono (March 09, 2006, 08:21 AM)

None of the keyboards I use even has a Win key 

2987

General Software Discussion / Re: Filenotes for Downloading Amnesiacs

« Last post by rjbull on March 09, 2006, 10:55 AM »

I'm also wondering if anyone knows of another way to annotate files with filenotes easliy

-patteo (March 09, 2006, 08:54 AM)

Total Commander.  Ctrl-Z gives you a box to type in that's compatible with 4DOS-style DESCRIPT.ION files ( I suspect that's where your 257 character limit comes from, but could be wrong).  I try to remember to capture a short-form description from the file's Web site to use.  If you enable it in Options, TC will copy the description when it copies the file to anothr location.  Pressing Shift-Control-F2 on a directory listing shows you file name and comment. 

An old DOS program, DEDIT, part of the INKUTILS, INK153.EXE available from the Free Software for DOS Web site is another non-4DOS way of maintaining DESCRIPT.IONs.

2988

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 09, 2006, 04:16 AM »

I don't understand what Dialog does...I'm on their page right now.

-superboyac (March 08, 2006, 09:58 AM)

Superboyac,

Dialog is a large collection of large databases, mostly of peer-reviewed journals and the like.  It includes, for example, about 16 databases on patents alone; plus equivalent and generally large classes of journal databases on chemistry, pharmaceuticals, financial, business intelligence, marketing, general news, agriculture, products, brands and trademarks, aerospace, and I could go on.  For quality of information, it knocks the Internet into a cocked hat, but depending on what you want it can be very expensive.  The company I work for spends about $7,000 per year on Dialog, the great majority of it on patent searches.

One of the good things about Dialog  is a command language that gives you precise searching.  You can build up the search bit by bit, e.g. something like this:

s1  (toner? or developer?)
s2  (acrylic or acrylated or acrylate)(2n)bead?
s3  s1 and s2     #  combine first two searches
s4  s3/eng         # limit to English language only

So that's where I'm coming from, and perhaps you can see why I'm interested in powerful database systems rather than hierarchical trees.  There are few such systems available at low cost.  The only one I can think of is the DOS program Inmagic, which was declared freeware when Inmagic Corp. launched their Windows version, DB/TextWorks.  And if you have to ask the price of that, you can't afford it...

Inmagic links:
Third-party view of Inmagic  for DOS
Inmagic Corp. DB/TextWorks

2989

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 09, 2006, 03:47 AM »

And, rjbull, as far as fully indexed searching, well...YES!  Why?  Because fully indexed searching will allow the program to have the search-as-you-type filter

-superboyac (March 08, 2006, 09:47 AM)

It's the key to FAST and PRECISE text retrieval, including Boolean searches.  It should help with things like proximity searches too, e.g. ACRYL?(2N)BEAD? = find the stem "acryl" (acrylic, acrylate, acrylated etc.) within two words of the stem "bead."

2990

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 09, 2006, 03:42 AM »

Another product in this category is AskSam.

-dajo (March 08, 2006, 09:33 AM)

Back in the DOS days, I had a demo disk of the DOS version of AskSam.  There were no instructions.  It was one of the few programs I couldn't even get started with    So I've been wary every since.  But, I heard it was used to organise and search the texts used in the Watergate hearings, so it must be powerful.

2991

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: abbreviations importer

« Last post by rjbull on March 08, 2006, 09:17 AM »

You're getting me interested in all sorts of things now!  Speaking of PowerPro, I believe I had tried that.  It's a program I didn't give enough time to.  I found it difficult.

-Harrie (March 08, 2006, 08:28 AM)

Harrie,

It's not just you.  PowerPro is amazingly powerful, but so hard that it seems like nearly everybody gives up on it.

Abstracting journals - that sounds very interesting.

Depends on the journal 

It's called TextSTAT and it's free.

Downloaded, yet to be tried.  Thanks!

Gotta check out ColorPilot.  Another good expander is Shorthand for Windows.

You personally need the best and can justify the cost of Instant Text, and I doubt you'd now find anything "less" appealing.  However, it would be nice to find the "best at an affordable price" for the rest of us.

AHK:

I've seen reviews that say it is "easy."  To me, it isn't easy to learn to program in AHK.

I think that's true of all the macro programs I've seen, with the possible exception of one-purpose wonders like the free version of Press That Freakin' Button (PTFB).  Even programs like Macro Express that watch and save your keystrokes and mouse movements, and let you edit them afterwards, are still far from trivial.

Maybe one day I'll talk about ActiveWords!

I'll look forward to the review 

freeware site, I think it's called Pricelessware, and I think it offers up a lot of older programs, unless I'm mistaking it for another site.

That's the place where the usenet group alt.comp.freeware post details of their favourite freeware applications.  From memory, they mention AHK, PTFB. and AllChars in this category.

2992

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 08, 2006, 08:48 AM »

someone who doesn't think they need such an application -- I guess I'm just a stickler for improving my typing speed

-allen (March 05, 2006, 10:04 PM)

Allen,

It's not just typing speed, it's the monotony of typing the same thing over and over, and in my case at least, a means of entering things in a standard format. That even includes words I'm apt to routinely misspell...  And, don't forget that most of these programs aren't limited to expanding just single words.  A short-form trigger can expand to whole paragraphs.  If you need those sort of features, a shorthand expander can be invaluable.

2993

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 08, 2006, 08:41 AM »

instant text sounds quite good, but at $189 (ouch!!)

this may be a ripe category for a freeware/donationware alternative..

-mouser (March 05, 2006, 09:50 PM)

Mouser, it occurred to me that FARR's interface is part-way there, but I'm not sure this class of program is popular enough to justify a lot of effort.  The more so as a number of free or cheap alternatives already exist, some of them listed in the abbreviations importer thread

2994

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

« Last post by rjbull on March 08, 2006, 03:54 AM »

it automatically looks for relationships between notes based on keywords and content

-tonyp (March 07, 2006, 09:59 AM)

This thread has been veering somewhat closer to the idea of a database that stores full text, and indexes every word of it.  That's more or less what you get in the mighty commercial system Dialog that I access at work, but desktop-size versions are rare and expensive.

Dialog "Providing more than 15 terabytes of content from the world's most authoritative publishers, and the tools to search every bit of it with speed and precision."


Nobody seems to have mentioned UltraRecall yet; this is yet another tree-type notetaker, but I seem to remember hearing that it's fully indexed.

2995

General Software Discussion / Re: Auto-synchronize FTP folders with HD folders?

« Last post by rjbull on March 07, 2006, 09:54 AM »

I use SyncBack.

-NewKreation (March 06, 2006, 03:12 PM)

brotherS,

SyncBack is recommended in MarkTAW's favorite smallwares

He has related articles, featuring SyncBack, on Automated Hands Free Backup and Recovering from Catastrophic Failure

2996

General Software Discussion / Re: Clipboard manager

« Last post by rjbull on March 06, 2006, 05:58 AM »

A heads-up from alt.comp.freeware  (TalkAboutShareware):

ClipMagic has now gone freeware  http://www.clipmagic.com/

    What is ClipMagic ?
   
    ClipMagic is a powerful Clipboard Extender and Information
    Manager for storing Images and Text, either automatically or
    manually in a categorised format, with details of the URL if the
    text is from an Internet site.
   
    To save something simply copy it to the Windows Clipboard by
    pressing CTRL-C or right click on the mouse and select Copy.
    ClipMagic then automatically stores it and if you have set up
    Rules & Filters the clip will be moved into a particular
    category.
   
    Clips can easily be retrieved either by copying from ClipMagic
    and pasting into your application or by using HotKeys or using
    the new PastePicker.

Notice the automatic assigment to categories by rules and filters.

2997

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: abbreviations importer

« Last post by rjbull on March 06, 2006, 04:26 AM »

I'll definitely make a separate post about Instant Text, and ask you some questions I have.  Usually, I find non-MTs have no interest in this, not really, so I'm happily surprised!

-Harrie (March 03, 2006, 07:34 AM)

Harrie,

I have to abstract lots of journals, hence I find this kind of tool useful.  Apart from PC-Write's built-in feature, the only one I've tried myself is AHK, apart from a very quick dabble with PowerPro.  That is an impenetrable program, except that text snippets are the easiest part of it.  They're attached to buttons rather than hotstrings (I daresay you can have those too, but I never got that far).

I hadn't realised the quality of Instant Text when I first posted.  I see it costs $189, and if price is anything to go by, it should be good!  The ColorPilot one is only about $25 (from memory).  The author of the KeyNote organizer/outliner recommends IntelliComplete, which is about $50.  IntelliComplete is here http://flashpeak.com/icomp/

In his smallwares list, MarkTAW  http://www.marktaw.c...voriteSmallware.html
says he uses PC Magazine's RoboType for standardized text like signatures and bits of code.  You have to pay an low-cost annual subscription to access PC Magazine utilities, but subsequent use is free (i.e., I think, subscribe for a year, grab what you want, and use if forever without further payment).

Of course, the good thing about AHK is that's it's completely free (with donation possible) and hotstring files are simple plain text, which makes them very easy to share, though AHK hotstrings on their own don't have a point-and-shoot interface.  Also they won't work on Win9x, if anyone but me is still a dinosaur   


<later>  as well as the ColorPilot ones mentioned in an earlier post, here's another
SuperKeys  $10 *donationware* 

2998

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: an "importer" for abbreviations into AHK

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

Harrie,

The first program I ever learnt - I started in late 1988 - was a mid-period version of the best DOS shareware word processor, PC-Write.  I still use a later version today.  PC-Write has what it calls "shorthand expansion," which is very like AHK hotstrings, though naturally limited to the program.  It's easy to remember ones I use frequently, but not so the rare ones, and there were times when I wanted a point-and-shoot means of adding boilerplate text.  In my case, that's normally short phrases, words I often mis-spell, and bibliographic references so I get them in consistent format.  I never found a freeware or shareware one, and didn't discover commercial medical transcription text expanders until far too late.  In retrospect I could probably have used the DOS macro program Newkey in earlier days, but it doesn't work very well in a Windows DOS box.

Recently, I find that under Windows2000 at least, AHK hotstrings work even in a DOS box (which is now an emulation apparently, not "real" DOS).  It isn't perfect if you insist on using DOS programs, but it does mean I can port the relevant bits of my shorthand expansion file into AHK to make it available to other programs, both DOS and Windows.  This is a great convenience, or it will be when I get round to doing it, but I'd still like a point-and-press pop-up so I can access less frequently-used phrases.  Hence, I'd certainly be interested to hear about Instant Text, when you a moment.

As for the "language bit," it seemed a pity for jgpaiva to build a new tool when (with a small amount of augmentation) ones already exist to do the job, and might even be faster on big files.  However, as an old-tyme DOS hand, that's just the way I'm used to working.

2999

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: an "importer" for abbreviations into AHK

« Last post by rjbull on March 02, 2006, 10:33 AM »

**Error: Problem Found: AWK not found under "knowledge" database
But if you can do it, please do!

-jgpaiva (March 02, 2006, 10:16 AM)

A good place to start is Eric Pement's Web site  http://www.student.n...du/pemente/index.htm
Follow the AWK link (by the way, if you follow his SED link and keep paging down, you get to an excellent summary of text search-and-replace tools, though that's not relevant here)

Mr. Pement has a link to the AWK FAQ  http://www.faqs.org/...mputer-lang/awk/faq/

which has onward links for various places to get AWK.  There are implementations (usually interpreters) for just about every platform, most of them free.

3000

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: an "importer" for abbreviations into AHK

« Last post by rjbull on March 02, 2006, 10:00 AM »

I hope it doesn't have errors now

-jgpaiva (March 02, 2006, 09:11 AM)

jgpaiva,

Seems to be OK.  Many thanks!

Alternative suggestion for finding duplicate triggers: maybe something like a simple AWK script that takes the first "word," i.e. the trigger, up to but excluding the "=" sign.  Pass output through  SORT and some version of UNIQ/UNIQUE with -d option to show duplicate triggers?  Something like this;

trigger.awk
--------------
BEGIN {
  FS = "="
}
{ print $1 }
---------------

awk -f trigger.awk filetoread.txt | sort | uniq -d

if filetoread.txt is

afmq=aftermarket
avq=available
avq=availability
bawq=black-and-white

the only output you get is

avq


Leaving out the AWK script would show you completely duplicated lines.


Next suggestion - documentation 


Harrie;

How do you remember that many shorthand triggers?

Have you looked at freeware Speed Typing and shareware Type Pilot from Two Pilots http://www.colorpilot.com/typepilot.html  ?  In fact you would need the shareware version to import/export phrases, so you might be better off with AHK.