Recent Posts

4876

General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.5.0.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 09:47 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.5.0.0 Enlarged the font.  The comments are much easier to read.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.4.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 07:42 PM »

No version number update.  I updated the included Readme.txt.

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Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Allow commenting of files in directory listing

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 06:55 PM »

The latest version of Comment Explorer is pretty usable now.  Only shows ToolTip if there's a comment.  It's shown at top left of window.  Time out for the ToolTip is adjustable via .ini file.

One thing I didn't like about my shell extension was waiting for mouse hover time to show the ToolTip.  By using Arrow Keys as trigger, the response time is nearly instant.
Also it's not dependent on Windows file types.  A comment can be entered for files of any type and folders.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.4.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 06:25 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.4.1.0 Added .ini file option TimeOut to adjust the ToolTip time out in milliseconds.  Valid range is 1000 to 10000.  Default is 5000(5 seconds.)

If the value is not set or is outside the range it is set to the default 5000.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.4.0.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 05:59 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.4.0.0 Now it only shows the ToolTip when a Comment is available.  The ToolTip shows near the top left corner of the active window.  That should get it out of conflict with Windows ToolTips that show when you hover the mouse.

The ToolTip disappears when you hit the Up or Down key.  It times out in 5 seconds otherwise.
Here's a screen shot:

The next modification will likely be time out adjustment via .ini file setting.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 05:34 PM »

I had the file name show as ToolTip near the mouse cursor in the beginning so that I could get feedback. It's time to only show the ToolTip when there's a comment.  Also instead of showing the ToolTip at the mouse cursor I'll likely anchor it to some part of the active window frame.

I agree it's a bit confusing as it is now.
Thanks for trying it out. I'll try to make it more usable.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 05:02 PM »

Try using Explorer Details View.

The comment should appear near the mouse cursor and time out after 4 seconds. I find it easier to move the mouse to the caption bar. If the mouse cursor is over a file name, then Windows will show a tool tip on its own. Then it gets confusing.

If you have a 32 bit Windows you may want to use TipOff instead:

http://www.favessoft.com/tipoff.html

TipOff will run on a 64 bit machine if you use a 32 bit file manager such as FreeCommander.

The comment files are not interchangeable. TipOff uses a file in each folder where you make a comment using just the file name as key. CommentExplorer uses one data file for the whole system and uses the complete path as key (e.g. "c:\downloads\myfile.zip" instead of just "myfile.zip")  The drive letter thing is a royal pita.

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Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 04:49 PM »

I don't use office tools but I've heard rumors some won't run without a page file. If you really don't want a page file on your HD and have more ram than Windows can access normally then it may be useful to stick the page file in the ram disk.  But I don't use office tools anyway. Seems like a simpler solution would be to write the software so that it doesn't insist on memory it doesn't need.

For cutting down on disk thrashing and you have such excess ram on a 32 bit machine then it may be easier just to dedicate some to a disk cache.

Another special case, which may help regardless of the bitness of the OS may be use of some script tool or batch that insists on seeking in disk files to get data on every access.  Putting the data file in ram might be useful especially if nobody can figure out the script.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 04:43 PM »

I am doing something bad, because I don't know "It requires Scripting.Dictionary be available on the machine.", but i am looking for.
 

-Contro (August 26, 2011, 04:25 PM)

Just try it. If Scripting.Dictionary is not there you'll get an error dialog:
"Comment Dictionary Creation Failed!" and it will quit.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 04:40 PM »

It does seem to be a bit touchy.  When editing in place using the forum editor one wrong key and the whole post is wiped.  If not editing in place, then I can't use the hand cursor or suggestions.  Oh well.  Guess I'll just have to develop a punchy style through practice.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 04:20 PM »

Thanks for all the replies.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 04:11 PM »

You can enable additional checks via the options menu cranio, i think they include grammar stuff.

-justice (August 26, 2011, 03:11 PM)

I'm trying the Chrome extension. Hitting the hotkey seems to disable Enter key until I hotkey again. A bit awkward since it's Control-Shift-s. It would be nicer if it worked with selected text in any plain text editor. I'll use it for a while as it's more convenient than pasting in a web form on a site.

Ok, it just flagged "for awhile" and suggested "for a while" instead. Better than spell check only. Looks decent.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 03:53 PM »

Thanks for the link.  That was interesting.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 03:48 PM »

I'll try too and will comment.

 

-Contro (August 26, 2011, 03:40 PM)

Cool. 

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Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 01:46 PM »

Maybe not as much fun as using a ramdisk but I think I get the same results by having Firefox (3.6 with lots of extensions) load in at startup and then minimise itself - so it's ready and waiting. The next important part is to keep FF open all day, minimise if need be (even to the system tray) just don't close it.

Does a ramdisk offer much more than this? If so, I'll have to try it, I mean, does a ramdisk make FF faster in actual operation and not just loading up?

-nudone (August 26, 2011, 05:07 AM)

Depends on your setup. If you are on a 32 bit system with more ram than Windows can directly utilize then the RadDisk may be able to handle stuff like browser cache without writing to disk or "costing" you anything of system ram.  But it's probably not worth doing just for that. I don't like to leave a bulky app sitting idle.  If you have a zillion FF extensions to do everything then your method is preferable.  I didn't really run that many other than to maintain stuff related to the browser like uploading bookmarks, checking for dead bookmarks etc..  with Chromium I only have 4 extensions installed.  The bookmark checker is disabled until I run it manually. I don't need all the maintenance extensions that I did with FF. I'm only running AdBlock, LastPass and SpeedDial.

One other side-effect of running FF out of RamDisk is you let sites put on whatever cookies they want.  When you close the disk, discard everything.  No cookie filters, hunting for tracking cookies, and all that bother.  Just use a password tool to login to sites.

I got rid of my RamDisk as soon as I got with Chromium.  So for me it wasn't worth the bother. I couldn't think of any other real need to carry it around.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 01:32 PM »

I didn't find anything free even on sourceforge. I used a free one I'm sure a few years ago. My tendency is to use clauses instead of simple Hemingway type declarative sentences. Like, this idea connected to something, but, this other idea. I think many of the checkers just look for words "but" and "and" and stick a period after the preceding word, capitalize the following word, delete the "and" or 'but" then insert 2 spaces in its place.

Thing is if I write short sentences like. "He did this. He then did that." I feel like I'm writing "see Jane and Dick kick Spot's ass" or something.

When trying to find an easier hotkey every choice seems to stick "&nbsp" in the text. Guess I'm stuck with Control-Shift-s.

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 01:40 AM »

Seems tough to search on.  Either my spelling gets corrected(changes it to "particle") or even if I quote the phrase I get stuff like "download accelerator."

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Living Room / Re: Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 26, 2011, 12:51 AM »

I think the last time I used a grammar checker was Win2k.  Something will turn up eventually.

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Living Room / Good Free Windows Grammar Checker?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 10:30 PM »

I'm always mixing my tenses.  Looks like I need a grammar checker.  Anyone know anything for Windows7 that's fast, light and effective?

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Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 10:15 PM »

I used this RamDisk for awhile on my Vista64 PC.  It has 8 GB ram.  I only used it to run Firefox portable. If the HD was busy FF(was 3.6 I was using then but it's the same now) is a dog loading up.

I discarded contents on system shutdown. On startup I used an XCopy script I found on the web to copy the Firefox portable folder into the RamDisk.

It loaded quickly I'll say that.  But with Chromium I don't need a RamDisk for quick loading. I use FF as my secondary browser now.

If anyone wants to run FF portable out of this RamDisk I'm pretty sure this is the page I used as a guide:

http://www.wikihow.c...by-Running-It-In-RAM

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 08:08 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.3.1.0 Minor fixes.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.3.0.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 07:28 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.3.0.0 Added Backup Comments command to Tray Menu.

Note: copying the files to another machine is problematic if the drive letter changes. One thing that can help is if you can keep the same folder structure underneath the drive letter then you could just do text substitution in the comment file.

If you have a 32 bit system my TipOff utility is more comprehensive.  It has Copy With Comment shell extensions to copy files with comments to a different folder etc..  But it uses a comment data file with .tof extension in each folder to avoid the drive letter issue.

If you have download folders under C:\downloads or something similar, this should be fine just for associating a note with your download.

With TipOff your notes can be up to 4 KB in length instead of one input line.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.2.0.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 07:23 PM »

Looking forward to trying it out

-tomos (August 25, 2011, 05:48 PM)

Thanks. If you have 1.2.0.0 download again. I just posted 1.3.0.0. Added a crude Backup command to tray menu.  Just copies comment file to another in the folder.
It's a good reason to try out the Check for Updates menu command.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Comment Explorer 1.2.0.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 05:42 PM »

Comment Explorer 1.2.0.0 Fixed hang on exit if started with no comment file. Added Check for Update and Show Readme functions.

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Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Allow commenting of files in directory listing

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2011, 04:27 PM »

Ok, I have a working app uploaded to my site. See this post for particulars:

https://www.donation....msg259555#msg259555

Instead of writing the comment file on program exit, I use the same trick I did on my shell extension.  Append new comment to the file.  On load dupes are replaced in the dictionary with the newest entry.

There are Compact and Purge commands in the Tray Menu to remove dupes and dead entries(the file was renamed or deleted/moved etc..)

edit: I wrote a small dummy file and comment generator to write 5000 temp files and comments.  It took a bit of time to write out the file so not a good choice to have the entire file written on program close.  That's why I changed to the append technique I mentioned above.  But the Purge and Compact commands seemed to work fine with progress bar(if 100 or more entries are in the dictionary.)  As a safeguard I use a flag to note when the comment file is being manipulated for any lengthy functions. The program Quit Command won't quit if the file access is busy(unless you log out or stop task with task manager or something.)  In any case it should take quite awhile to build up 5000 comments in normal usage.  Therefore I think this Hotkey approach is OK for manual use.


edit2: also note while file purge or compaction is going on the hotkeys are temporarily suspended.  You shouldn't even notice unless you try to use the hotkeys while the progress bar is updating. On my system 5000 dummy entries were processed in about 4 or 5 seconds so it shouldn't be an issue.