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301

General Software Discussion / Re: WikiWord Linking in MS Word

« Last post by Shades on May 08, 2020, 02:36 PM »

I can see why AsciiDoc might be simpler, but I'm not convinced either are that intuitive once get away from headings, italics etc. I remember trying to work out colours in markdown once: some worked easily but others didn't. I decided it was another case of precise learning required.

In the end, I think ubiquity will beat perfection and that gives it to markdown. I noticed that even Trello works in markdown. Haven't checked the flavour, but I've noticed the GitHub version mentioned a lot.

-Dormouse (May 08, 2020, 09:45 AM)

When asked for a documentation portal at the time, a Wiki was my answer. Markdown was my second answer. The response on my answer was AsciiDoc. It apparently integrates well with GitLab, which was the solution selected for version management of software. Why run 2 systems separately, when you can do it all in one.  Hard to argue with that logic, so AsciiDoc it will be then. Spending quite some time finding and testing out editors that support AsciiDoc was next. Once the description about the good/bad points was made, I had to convert a manual (Microsoft Word) with 15 years worth of script commands. That was where I got to appreciate what AsciiDoc does.

First I used a tool called PanDoc to do the conversion to AsciiDoc. And for "funsies" I also did a conversion to MarkDown. The resulting AsciiDoc was smaller and rendered closer to the original than the resulting MarkDown did. No conversion is ever perfect, so fixing was needed in both documents. AsciiDoc editors have a document structure check built-in and that made it easy to find and fix these. Some AsciiDoc editors also have software built-in that show you where and how you can make documents render better and faster.

I'm sure there are MarkDown editors that can do the same, but I never looked for them. In the end, the MarkDown/AsciiDoc story will be similar to the VHS/BetaMax story. BetaMax technically superior, but strict. VHS more cheaply available. On that we agree.

Ah well, it is what it is and if it isn't, it will be.     

302

General Software Discussion / Re: WikiWord Linking in MS Word

« Last post by Shades on May 04, 2020, 06:54 PM »

The reason why I mention AsciiDoc:
MarkDown vs AsciiDoc
Markdown vs Wiki vs structured-text vs AsciiDoc
The AsciiDoc syntax makes more sense to me. But I might be weird about that. 


Once you know the AsciiDoc or Markdown syntax more or less by heart, you can use any text editor to create/edit these files.

303

General Software Discussion / Re: WikiWord Linking in MS Word

« Last post by Shades on May 03, 2020, 05:46 AM »

I would suggest to take a look at MarkDown, or even better AsciiDoc.

Both have visually oriented editors available (freeware or open source), which enable you to edit and create new documentation in them. It is easy enough to pick up.

Now I think that the syntax and logic behind AsciiDoc are a vast improvement over MarkDown, but for the latter there are more editors available and a lot of websites support it nowadays.
After explaining my bias, for creation of AsciiDoc documentation I prefer the AsciiDocFX editor. For editing existing documents, VSCode is preferable when you work with documentation that is managed by Git or other version control systems.

With a bit of forethought about how you want to structure your files, images etc. you can then easily link to files, media, images etc. using relative paths (or absolute), but also to different documents or sections thereof. AsciiDocFX has a pretty descriptive cheat sheet built-in and most layout options are available as menu option, one or two mouse clicks away.

The main problem from AsciiDoc or MarkDown for that matter, none of the editors have a GUI interface that is as familiar as Word. But an AsciiDoc document is text-based, very human readable in raw format and can be easily converted into PDF, HTML5 or eBook formats. AsciiDocFX has these already built-in. The HTML output can be imported into Word without any problem. And then you can even store the imported document in the native Word format, if that is a solid requirement.

Because AsciiDoc and MarkDown are text-based formats, you can use almost any text editor to open these documents. This makes it also very easy to index such documentation by any type of search software on any operating system.

If the above is too much of a mindset deviation, there is another way. Though it does require you to have an online website/blog from a 3rd party. Then you could use a piece of software called: open livewriter
You have to hook it up to 1 or more of these 3rd party services during the installation procedure, but then you get a Wordpad-like editor that stores the documents you create with it directly onto the configured 3rd party service(s). Then you could consider to use the google search engine for searching your documentation.

Still, I would take the time to get acquainted with AsciiDoc, not the easiest option in the beginning, but once you "get" it I think it is the best option. After you made several documents using AsciiDoc, you could even use the Hugo web server software to generate static HTML pages from these documents and the Hugo results you can host (directly) on a local website or one you purchase from a 3rd party. Whatever tickles you.

AsciiDocFX has a spell-checker built-in. While not as extensive as the one from Word, it is pretty capable. And supports more than one language, right out of the box.

So, if you are not hell bent on a Word-like GUI or it's file format, AsciiDoc is much more future-proof, because it's syntax is less convoluted then MarkDown and text based, so it works the same on any edition/version of Windows in existence...or other operating systems like Linux, MacOS and/or BSD.

304

General Software Discussion / Re: HTML code seems to divide page into 2 columns; why and how to fix?

« Last post by Shades on May 01, 2020, 12:51 PM »

The HTML parser in any email client is not nearly as sophisticated as a standard browser is. Better use HTML 4 markup to create/generate messages with HTML styling.

Also, if you think that browsers can be incompatible, because of different HTML/CSS interpretations, you have never tried to send out a HTML newsletter that looks the same in any mail client and/or web-based client like GMail or RoundCube.

You'd better keep it structurally simple, use (nested) tables instead of HTML5 and the least amount of CSS you can get away with. That does keep the layout of your generated HTML message more or less the same between different mail clients.

Yes, I'm fully aware on how the above sounds. Took me hours to design and generate HTML mail messages correctly (using Windows batch script, so you could say I learned this the hard way). Mail is received correctly in the Thunderbird mail client and GMail/RoundCube clients, around 99% of the content shows up correctly in Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013 shows about 95% of the content correctly. Never tried it with newer versions of Outlook.

305

Living Room / Re: Assisted/Automated video conferencing, photo sharing etc brainstorming

« Last post by Shades on April 23, 2020, 04:25 PM »

If you have a beast of a server (in a datacenter), you could run the most recent version of NextCloud. Not only does this do file sharing like a champ, there are also chat and videochat features built-in. But having a lot of people connect to the video chat feature simultaneously, that requires "horsepower" and bandwidth.

306

Living Room / Re: Pandemic Quarantine DonationCoder Zoom Meet and Greet May 2nd

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2020, 08:54 PM »

Don't mind a meet-n-greet, Zoom I rather stay away from. Yet, there are few alternatives for big(ger) meetings.

307

Living Room / Re: Best Programming Jokes

« Last post by Shades on April 17, 2020, 05:03 PM »

Hahahaha 

308

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Searching emails with Archivarius

« Last post by Shades on April 12, 2020, 12:20 AM »

@Yatom:
MailStore Home is free, at least it was last time I looked on their site. MailStore Server is indeed expensive, but not necessary for your purpose.
At work I have several mail accounts (from different providers) configured in my Thunderbird mail client. Each account stores its messages/settings/filters etc. into a separate folder. MailStore Home is configured to look through these folders.

So yes, it is possible to have MailStore Home work with multiple accounts on multiple domains. 

309

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple version of a folder lock utility that would require a password for access

« Last post by Shades on April 10, 2020, 02:40 PM »

How do people access these files? By browser?
Ah yes, I read it now, browser access.

Do the people need to store files?
If not it can actually be rather simple. Which web-server software do you run?
Enable WebDAV for Apache 2.x.
Or on IIS 7 and higher.
Or on IIS 6.

(yes, you can disregard any remark regarding microstrategy, that is just a company who was friendly enough to write clear instructions for the most simple way to start using WebDAV (your own company's cloud drive))

Each user can have his/her own folder, with their own password and read/write privileges where necessary. At the back end, you can automatize the distribution of files in these user folders by using Powershell and/or batch scripts. Or do the user file distribution manually, whichever you prefer.

310

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Searching emails with Archivarius

« Last post by Shades on April 10, 2020, 11:51 AM »

Well, you could use a tool called: MailStore Home

With this software you can pull all your mail to your computer. You could then export these into a folder on your computer (using the .eml format) and then let Archivarius index these files.

This method makes sure you have a local backup of your mail.

However, when the MailStore Home software retrieves your mail, it already stores these messages and their attachments into a database of its own. And you can search through messages and attachments directly using the MailStore Home interface, which provides many search parameters for you to search through your mail. And it returns results fast. Even on my archive of 10 years worth of email, searches take a second or 2.

MailStore Home is free for non-commercial use.

311

Screenshot Captor / Re: Error sending mail

« Last post by Shades on March 30, 2020, 01:46 PM »

In the configuration panel from Windows, you will see a icon called 'Mail' appear after you install Outlook. When you double-click that icon, you are able to configure the settings from Outlook itself. Outlook should be able to define all required parameters automatically when you fill in your mail address and password. After this configuration you can test if you are able to send/receive messages within Outlook itself.

You then should check if Outlook is setup correctly for all mail features. It would not be the first time that Outlook messes up the default settings, so while you think it is setup correctly, it isn't. Can be a real time sink getting all settings correctly.

Newer versions of Outlook do this automatic configuring worse than older versions. Also, make sure there is no other mail client installed on the computer you install Outlook on. Again, it can mess up the default associations even when you tell Outlook to be the one and only mail client. Had that particular problem myself on one computer. Outlook refused to make all the default associations. Tried it with Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019, all the same behavior. The only thing that helped was removing the other mail client using Revo Uninstaller to make really sure all associations were reset, then remove Outlook again using Revo Uninstaller, a complete reboot and finally re-install Outlook.

Another note:
If you use the 64-bit version of ScreenShot Captor (or any other 64-bit application for that matter) and use a 32-bit Outlook, do not expect things to go smoothly. Using a 32-bit application? Use a 32-bit Outlook.

Mixing and matching versions should not matter. In practice, the translation between 32/64-bit with regards to Office products is always giving you headaches in the best case scenarios. Especially when you have to start working with Extended MAPI features of Outlook and/or Exchange.

For 3rd party command-line mail clients I can recommend 'CMail' and 'SwithMail'.




 

312

LaunchBar Commander / Re: major problem on boot

« Last post by Shades on March 23, 2020, 05:46 PM »

Sounds to me like you store the configuration file(s) of your launchbar on the computer, not your USB stick. And when you use the pendrive on another computer, it will not find your configuration and needs to use the most minimal defaults before it is able to run on the other computer.

Better find out where you store your configuration file(s) and copy these into the folder that contains your launchbar on the pen drive. Most software check more than one location to find their configuration file. The default Windows user account folders are often used, Windows registry is often used, but also the folder that you run the application from. 

313

Living Room / Re: COVID-19 might have just killed ISP data caps

« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2020, 03:06 PM »

Data caps is just there for the ISP to pick the customer even more clean. The equipment to handle the traffic generated by customers is already there at the ISP and costs practically as much when it is running or not. Caps also require more administration on the customer's end but mainly on the ISP's end.

Data caps used to be a thing in the Netherlands too, around 1990. Haven't heard of this being a thing since 2000 in the Netherlands. Here in PY data caps are only a thing with people that buy internet for their phone. For domestic connections, no data caps in any shape or form. Connection quality and/or reliability in PY isn't so great, but has made pretty big strides since 2005. And there is a big push for domestic fiber connections going on. As most houses do not have a coax cable connection anyway, it is almost as easy to roll out fiber as it is to roll out coax. A 20MBit/sec fiber connection (internet-only, no TV or phone plan) is about 10 USD monthly.

Even though prices are very acceptable for the customer, ISP's make more per connection. much more people want and commit to contracts with the ISP, because no data cap head-ache, which they know only all too well, because of their phones. The same happened in the Netherlands all those years ago, the same is happening here in Paraguay as well.

The US would not be any different, but I get the impression that management layers at ISP's do not want to let their claws release the concept of data caps.

314

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest GOG Giveaway

« Last post by Shades on March 20, 2020, 11:23 PM »

You can also get the game 'Tomb Raider' for free on Steam. The website 'Rock, Paper, Shotgun' alerted me today about it, tried it and it is free till the 24th of this month.

315

Living Room / Re: Share your tips and comforts for dealing with the stress and fear of a pandemic

« Last post by Shades on March 19, 2020, 05:46 PM »

Here in PY there is a story about a Italian person who traveled here, he went out, was spotted by his neighbors and was chased by police to the Italian consulate here. Government is getting pretty strict about sick foreigners, who leave their habitation while sick with the virus. They are handling those persons to the appropriate embassy or consulate, becoming a problem for their government.

No more travel allowed between 20:00 and 04:00. Pharmacies, supermarkets, gas stations, cash-points and funeral homes. That is more or less it. Convenience stores are limited to 10 persons max. All that for 11 confirmed cases in the whole of Paraguay, no casualties as of yet.

Pretty draconian measures, but there used to be a pretty dictatorial regime here in the '80s, lead by a guy named Stroessner. The people that hark back to those days, are pretty pleased with all of this. Unfortunately, those people are of the generations that are more vulnerable, so they might got more than what they wished for.

316

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a Mass Mailer

« Last post by Shades on March 18, 2020, 06:36 PM »

Do not do this, using the IP that your companies mail server is running on (if that is the case at your company). Anything that bursts out so many mail messages at once, will cause that IP to flagged as a spammer. And it can take some time before you are allowed to send any mail again. It will also reduce the reputation of your own mail server, regardless.

So, if you have IP addresses to spare, use those. Seriously.

Seeing the screenshots from TurboMailer, they are from the Windows XP era. Back in those days it would have been less problematic to push out a lot of email messages at once. Nowadays, everything is much, much stricter and there are many organizations that patrol the internet to fight against spam.

*edit*
I forgot:
It often takes a day or 2 or 3 to restore your outgoing mail functionality. Perhaps one day before it is noticed that outgoing mail is not received and the intended receiver starting to complain, the you need to go to the site or sites that have you flagged as spammer to create a request for removal and than you need to wait until they pull you from their list. Sometimes this is immediately, with others you can wait for a day or 2.

And all of them keep your IP address in a sort of 'person of interest'-list for a few weeks. Do you burst out another email message this way in that penalty-period, you'll lose the ability to send mail for a week, if not more, depending on the guidelines of the anti-spam organization's guidelines. All of the organizations clearly warn you for this, the first time you'll make the request to be taken from their spammers list.

What you are ordered to do sounds more like a PR panic move than anything else. Not worth it to drag your mailserver's reputation through the mud for it, if you would ask me. But I know you didn't.

Maybe you could use a command line script to push out messages in a time-controlled manner.
In that case, I can recommend 'SwithMail' and 'CMail'. Then you only need to design a HTML message using HTML4 syntax, because that makes sure every mail client is showing the message as intended. Store it as a text-based file and use that file as the mail body in either command-line mailer. Then you only need a list of recipients and repeat sending the message to each of that list separately. Maybe that prevents you being flagged as spammer.

Or sending this message to yourself, with the intended recipient as a BCC. Don't know if that gets you flagged either. But perhaps worth a shot. 

317

General Software Discussion / Re: sluggish Win 7 and 10 upgraded to hot Win 10 - transfer automatic or by hand?

« Last post by Shades on March 14, 2020, 11:15 PM »

After 7 years a computer has "collected" a lot of cruft. While transfer software might spare you a bit of time to setup your new(ish) computer with your old tools and/or data, the accumulated cruft will hamper the functioning of the new(ish) computer for as long as you are using that system.

So, it is actually better to start from scratch, (re)configure your software and keep what you won't be using archived on the portable hard disk you will end up using for the transfer. A fresh start with 7 years worth of new insight(s) on how you need to use your software/configuration setup in a financially beneficial manner will be much more preferable, even if it does take more time initially to set everything back up on the new(ish) computer. That time investment will pay itself back quickly in time and/or money, because you'll end up with a much snappier system than muddying on with an old crufty setup.

There is even a chance that transferring your old Windows installation onto a different computer isn't even allowed (by the letter of the license agreement) from the old Windows license. OEM systems have a Windows license that is bound to the hardware of the computer they are installed on. This type of license is not transferable. And if the new(ish) computer also has an OEM licensed version of Windows on it, you'll enter some shaky legal grounds.

Now Microsoft won't care too much about this, but if you need to have everything properly licensed for business purposes, ISO certifications etc. it will be less of a legal headache to just start the setup from scratch instead of transferring.

318

Developer's Corner / Re: Clickthru Google Ads script from 2015 not working, ideas why?

« Last post by Shades on March 13, 2020, 08:55 PM »

With the passing of time, inevitably, insights and methods change. Usually for the better.

That is true for for any kind of science, but also for computing.

It is also very possible that the content of the 'show_ads.js' file has changed to better suit newer insights/methods. And that the link generation scripts behind your website are not able to cope with those changes. And that will likely require the attention of the person(s) who created those scripts for your website in the first place.

Generic answers are the best you can expect, without disclosing much more info about your website. Unfortunately, it sounds more and more like a job, requiring time to investigate and fix/test.

On an even more general note:
If you are unable or unwilling to find out and work with Google's new insights/methods, you'd better bite the bullet and spend some cash on one or more persons that are already able with time to spare.

319

Developer's Corner / Re: Clickthru Google Ads script from 2015 not working, ideas why?

« Last post by Shades on March 13, 2020, 08:38 PM »

While the action of pinging/checking links is rather simple, access to the server that hosts your website can and does vary a lot, depending on the software that your hoster uses to give you access to your website.

Very few hosters give you command-line access directly, (using TelNet/TTY client, like 'Putty') but that is usually the simplest way for their customer to execute commands like: ping https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
Most hosters give you an online version of a TelNet/TTY client nowadays. Which is usually a lot less advanced than a dedicated client and slower too. But when you are in a pinch, it suffices.

When you don't get any response from your ping command, it's highly likely that this particular domain is not available anymore and you'll need to find out which Google domain is currently hosting those scripts/ads.
If you do get a valid response, then you could use a browser on the hoster's server and see if you get the content from the file 'show_ads.js' in the link https://pagead2.goog...m/pagead/show_ads.js.

If you get valid content there, the file/folder structure at Google hasn't changed, so you can be certain the your problem is not this particular link. However, if you don't get any content or garbage content, you'll have found the (first?) error on your end. Unfortunately, you must repeat this for every link that your website generates. It won't be too difficult of a job, but time-consuming it definitely will be.


Did you try to see the ads in your site using only your favorite browser inside your own network? If so, go and use a computer/tablet/laptop that you do not own in a network that isn't yours. With permission, of course.
If ads de show up on that device, you can be sure that you have a local problem (as in: your computer/browser is blocking your ads and you'll need to go revise all extensions/configuration options on your own computer.

But if the ads also not show on the other computer, it is more likely that your problem is related to your hoster and/or your website configuration than anything else. And that analysis needs a very different approach. How different? That depends on your hoster and the software they use to manage their hosting equipment.

All of the above is more or less manual labor and I'm sure that a developer extension, making most of the above a lot easier, does exists for your favorite browser. Yet going through the motions manually will give you a troubleshooting mindset, which will help you solving future problems.

Logging files give you better insights too. Perhaps even more than the manual stuff above, but I understand that you are S.O.L. on that front, unfortunately.

320

Living Room / Re: Looking for audio merger Y-cable

« Last post by Shades on March 13, 2020, 12:28 AM »

A splitter cable (without any electronics built-in) can also be used as a merger cable. With the analog style of cable, it doesn't matter which way the signals are carried.

But you also have splitter cables that do have some kind of electronics built-in. And then, more often than not, the electronics only allow one way for the signals to be carried. There is often a good reason that a splitter cable has some electronics built-in (like managing the impedance, preventing 'ground loops', amplification, clearing up possible noise etc.). The simple analog splitter cables don't have such features and should therefore be used with high quality audio equipment. And if you are wondering about your own audio equipment being high quality, it usually isn't.   Good quality? Sure.   Fit for purpose? Sure.   But high quality? Nah.

While not exactly what you are looking for, this link may give you a good idea where to look next.
If you are a hands on type and want to make such a merge cable yourself: link

321

Developer's Corner / Re: Clickthru Google Ads script from 2015 not working, ideas why?

« Last post by Shades on March 12, 2020, 09:43 PM »

I see a http link in your <script> ... </script> text. Think you'll need to change that to https.

On the server that runs your website, can you ping (all of) the google domains you use?
Or take each of the (referral) links you use in your sites, copy-paste each into a separate browser tab and check if your browser shows you the content of these scripts. At least, if you see content, then you'll know that part is still available to you. If there is no response shown in the browser tab, then you'll know which links are failing and you can focus on getting these resolved.

Did you install a browser extension that blocks access to certain domains? Or do you have an extension that uses blocklists it automatically downloads from the internet? If so, it is possible that this list contains domains which you need for ads. Maybe you use a DNS server that is too overzealous for your purposes.

Do you have by any change a pi-Hole device running in your network? It is possible that it is configured to block with too much zeal for your purposes as well. Same statement is true if you are behind a (hardware) firewall.

It might even be the case that you have incorrectly configured the HOST file of your web server.

Way too many questions and way too little information. Most of this incomplete list of failure situations require a very different approach to solve them. If available, the exact error codes can be very helpful. If you have those, you could google these yourself and more than likely you'll find a manual with steps on how to fix these error codes. If you do, don't trust links to websites that claim to have a tool that automatically fix the problem you experience. 95% of those are male cow excrement in the best case scenario.

*edit*
I forgot: server logs are your friend. Dig through those and you'll likely find your problem. Most of the time log files are text files, but can be rather large. Not all text editors can handle large text files that well. One of the few that can, is the free version of emEditor, but there are a few more.

322

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2020, 08:40 PM »

People lose socks and keys, but can you lose a building?

-Arizona Hot (March 07, 2020, 07:38 PM)

Go to a casino and find out...?

323

Find And Run Robot / Re: Installable vs Portable?

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2020, 04:36 PM »

Use uninstaller software, such as Revo Uninstaller, IObit Uninstaller, Geek Uninstaller. There are more.

These can be used to start the un-installation process of the software. These start the normal un-installer functionality from Windows itself, and when that is done, it will go and check if there are still settings left in the Windows registry and/or files that were no deleted. You can then clean out the remainder and you are good to go to either re-install "fresh" or use the portable version that takes its settings only from the included configuration file.

324

Find And Run Robot / Re: No Break/Pause key on the keyboard and another question

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2020, 03:51 PM »

Regarding the Windows clipboard functionality:

[SHIFT] + [Insert] == [CTRL] + [V]
[CTRL] + [Insert] == [CTRL] + [C]

So the insert key being completely useless...I'll guess we disagree there. It is a nice alternative if you happen to work with software that hogs the [CTRL] based hotkeys and/or in VMs.

For issue 2:
It might be as simple as FARR remembering the height of its window between user sessions.

Say, for example, you made a FARR search that resulted in perhaps 1 or 2 results and you adjusted the height of the FARR window because of this. The next time you start and/or use FARR, its window height remains the same, but now you have lots of results. Each entry in the result list must have a default height, which is usually absolute. The other parts of the FARR window can have relative width and height. A cut-off is often the compromise between window items with absolute values in a window supporting relative width and height.

If that is the case with FARR, introducing a minimum width and/or height for the relative values section of the FARR window could prevent the cut-off for the results in the list view. Whether you do that with adjusting the height of the offending window yourself or the author of the software...

Ah, Mouser's answer indicates that there options to control the height of entry results in the list view from FARR, which makes it much easier for you. There are many pieces of software out there who do not have such control built into them and for those the ramblings above are still valid.

325

General Software Discussion / Re: 'Unfixable' boot ROM security flaw in millions of Intel chips found

« Last post by Shades on March 06, 2020, 11:11 PM »

Similar attacks were already possible by freezing the RAM modules and read these out on a unprotected computer to completely break open the security features from the first CPU. That method had a high failure rate and a lot of hardware/software complexity.

But now it is possible to do the same attack without resorting to all those physical tricks, only leaving the software complexity, which is very likely reduced to almost no software complexity once a few smart people write an efficient routine for it.

Apparently there is very little to expect from Intel regarding security in their i3/i5/i7 series of processors of the last 10 years.