Recent Posts

5226

Living Room / Re: DC get together in Western Europe?! July 2007?

« Last post by Darwin on July 22, 2007, 02:06 AM »

Hi all,

Tom (tomos) and I had a lovely vist at Grotte Scladina and a great time in Bouillon, touring the Chateau of Godfroy de Bouillon, the first Christian King of Jerusalem. The guy was a real boy scout... He looted all of the churches in the area to help fund his campaign. At any rate, without further ado, here is a picture of us together in an area that formerly contained a large chapel but which was given over to stables in the 18th century and today serves as a theatre for a falconer's show:



So, who's who - anyone care to hazard a guess?

5227

General Software Discussion / Re: 2007 Shareware Industry Award Winners

« Last post by Darwin on July 19, 2007, 08:31 AM »

FolderMatch?! Sure, it's "ok" (I even own a licence for it) but c'mon! It hasn't been updated in over two years and there are much more feature rich and easier to use candidates in its specific category (file and folder synching) - Super Flexible File Synchronizer and Beyond Compare 2 for a start... I can't believe it was a serious contender for best overall

5228

General Software Discussion / Re: 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 19, 2007, 04:15 AM »

Crap, pooh, derision, corruption... Shall I continue? No... Anyway, I finally managed to access a list of dll's called by Morpheus under WinXP Media Centre Sp-2 and WinXP Pro Sp-2 and there are differences, but all of the dll's NOT called by Morpheus under Pro are present on my computer. What do I do now?  More of the same, I guess...

5229

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Darwin on July 19, 2007, 04:12 AM »

Hi SKA,

PDFConverter Pro 4 can certainly edit pdfs that are not password protected... as for which alternative to Adobe is best, I couldn't say, really only having used Adobe (5 and 7) and PDF Converter (3 and 4). The Fineprint PDF editor gets a lot of good press as do offerings from Nitro and Jaws. There are others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head!

Your other option would be to get a good OCR utility to allow you to edit in a word processor and then resave as pdf. I've used OmniPage, ReadIris and Abbyy and they all work great. Currently I have Omnipage Pro 15 installed but also have a licence for ReadIris Pro 11. There are subtle differences between the two of them (and Abbyy and I usually find that I miss features of the other two when I am working in whatever I happening to be working with - I have OmniPage 15 installed at the moment because I also have PaperPort 11 Pro and PDF Converter Pro 4 installed. These are all Scansoft/Nuance products and are designed to work together...

OK. Enough out of me - I'm just rambling. Check out Zaine's excellent Great Software List for other perspectives/ideas. NOTE: you may be able to come up with freeware alternatives.

Good luck!

5230

General Software Discussion / Re: 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 19, 2007, 01:36 AM »

Grorgy - yes, I updated to the latest build yesterday (though it turns out to be the same one that I had from early last week). As for Sp-2 vs. Sp-1, I was mistaken - the machine that I am able to run Morpheus on IS running Sp-2, fully patched. There are only two differences compared to my machine: mine is running the English version of XP Pro whereas the other machine is running the French version of XP Media Centre. I assume at this point that I have managed to remove something from my Windows installation or that there is a serious conflict somewhere. I can't do much about the Windows installation until I get home and have more or less run out of ideas about the conflict. I'm going to see if I can list the dependencies on the other machine using Process Explorer (tried yesterday but PE, running from my thumb drive, couldn't see the exe at all - I'm going to place both Morpheus and Process Explorer in the other machine's root directory and see if that makes a difference).

5231

General Software Discussion / Re: 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 19, 2007, 12:27 AM »

Ha ha! I was looking at this issue too  - I last used Morpheus on August 8, 2004. I note, too, that the computer that I CAN run it on here is still on Sp-1. I'll have to keep looking for a solution...

5232

General Software Discussion / Re: 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 18, 2007, 08:21 AM »

Nope - Dependency Walker doesn't like 16-bit modules, sadly. Still, I'll take a run at the Virtual PC option - hadn't thought of it and missed it the first time I read Lashiec's post - cheers! Will also make good on my promise to look for orphaned WB files.

5233

General Software Discussion / Re: 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 18, 2007, 08:13 AM »

Thanks for the suggestions. Lashiec, I'll give dependency walker a try, though the author states that it won't work on 16 bit programmes, but perhaps he means it won't run under 16 bit versions of windows? I have run Process Explorer, which shows the dlls in use by m-gui.exe but doesn't indicate whether or not any are missing!

Grorgy - I've had WindowBlinds installed in the past, but uninstalled it several months ago. I wonder if I need to do a thorough search for orphaned WB files? I'll do both of the above and report back.

Ta.

5234

General Software Discussion / 16-bit Program under XP - woe, woe, woe is me...

« Last post by Darwin on July 18, 2007, 05:20 AM »

Hi all,

I'm trying to use a 16-bit program (3-D morphometrics visualizer called Morpheus) that I have run under WinXP Pro Sp-2 successfully in the past (August 2004) on the very notebook that I am writing on right now. It's always worked flawlessly but in the intervening years something has gone awry and I can no longer click anywhere on the main menu bar (File/Edit/View, etc.) without the program shutting down. The error message (I had to record the crash so that I could isolate the frame to read the message!) is pretty uninformative:



I've completely removed the original installation and have reinstalled the application. I've confirmed that it works on a different XP Pro machine and have spent some fruitless hours trying to determine if I am missing an essential dll. This may very well be the case, but I'm buggered if I can figure it out!

So, my friends, I turn to the donationcoder community in hope that someone has any insight!

Thanks,

Mike

PS Morpheus has a command line component that still works on my machine... even from within the GUI version.

5235

General Software Discussion / Re: Best jukebox that is NOT iTunes?

« Last post by Darwin on July 18, 2007, 04:08 AM »

Yes - I've had nothing but good experiences with the Creative Suite. I really like version 5, though I no longer use it (I'm onto MusicIP Mixer).

5236

Official Announcements / Re: DC-IRLDD #2: DonationCoder Real Life Dinner+Drinks, Sat 7/14, Champaign Illinois

« Last post by Darwin on July 12, 2007, 01:39 PM »

I REALLY regret that I cannot attend... I'll be in Belgium, where I'm trying to organise a mini "European meeting" in July, but hope to get to the next one!

-Darwin (June 18, 2007, 09:42 AM)

And I'm not even going to be able to make the European meeting!

5237

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

« Last post by Darwin on July 06, 2007, 12:49 AM »

Too late for me, Curt, as I bought Registry Manager last year. However, thanks for letting us know about the discount - it's a great tool 

5238

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Darwin on July 06, 2007, 12:46 AM »

Thanks Curt! 

5239

Living Room / Re: DC get together in Western Europe?! July 2007?

« Last post by Darwin on July 04, 2007, 08:38 AM »

Dang! I'll be very sorry to miss you, but very happy to get back home to my wife and two little boys. Five weeks is a long time to be away. Torrential rain just now... Here I came prepared for the record breaking European summers of the past four or five years and I should have brought SCUBA gear! 

5240

General Software Discussion / Re: Any "search this folder only" engines?

« Last post by Darwin on June 30, 2007, 09:15 AM »

Thanks for the screencap of Wilma, justice  I spent a fair bit of time trying to find one on the website and was frustrated!

5241

General Software Discussion / Re: Any "search this folder only" engines?

« Last post by Darwin on June 30, 2007, 09:12 AM »

Archivarius is $19 if you are a student and the licence does cover 2 computers, well a desk and a laptop anyway  ahhh i love my student id card 

-Grorgy (June 30, 2007, 04:27 AM)

Yes! This is how I got my copy, too. I've yet to load it on another machine (I have two others) but will do so when I get back to Canada.

5242

General Software Discussion / Re: Any "search this folder only" engines?

« Last post by Darwin on June 30, 2007, 12:23 AM »

Nice find Curt  I am pretty sure that you can set any of the big indexers - Google, Live Desktop, Yahoo/X1, Copernic, etc. to search and index one folder only, but with Wilma, why bother with the overhead?! I'm using Archivarius for my indexing needs and love it, but it is payware. I like Archivarius because it lets you set up different indexing jobs and run them, or not, at your discretion, so I have a dedicated index job that I run manually to catalogue the dc archive, along with others for e-mail, my documents, etc. Archivarius allows me to schedule and automate each one or to run them manually. The really cool thing is that I can search all of them at the same time or search them individually. Very powerful and very flexible.

5243

General Software Discussion / Re: Ultra Explorer; I am impressed!

« Last post by Darwin on June 30, 2007, 12:13 AM »

Not free, and I don't know how useful/useable/stable it is, but I *think* AccelMan has the potential to provide a multipane "experience"... I used it for a while after the giveawayoftheday well, er, giveaway, and was marginally impressed, though not enough to switch from my beloved DOpus

5244

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 29, 2007, 11:59 PM »

I'm interested in Curt's question about Chameleon (and I apologize if it's actually been answered - I'm in Belgium and it's early am here and I've yet to have any coffee!): will Chameleon allow me to start programmes in a certain order without having to specifiy the delay that occurs between them (is it smart?)?

5245

General Software Discussion / Re: Is the Windows start menu dead?

« Last post by Darwin on June 27, 2007, 12:26 PM »

I haven't really weighed in here so will do so now: I like the start menu and don't think it's going anywhere, but I REALLY wish that Microsoft would innovate more with it. I think that Vista Start Menu is where they SHOULD have taken it with XP.

5246

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Darwin on June 27, 2007, 12:23 PM »

Scansoft's PDF Converter Pro (Current version is 4, though I have version 3) is very good working with PDF files, when it works.  But it is pretty buggy IMO.

I upgraded to version 4 (of PDF Converter Pro) and it is a quantum leap over version 3 in terms of speed and stability. I find it very useful.

5247

General Software Discussion / Re: KMPlayer and GOMPlayer

« Last post by Darwin on June 27, 2007, 12:19 PM »

KMPlayer has so many settings I can see how this one could be missed...
[ Invalid Attachment ]

Check that box to make a very large KMPCfg.ini file (mine is a whopping >27k!)
[ Invalid Attachment ]

-Hirudin (June 23, 2007, 02:15 AM)

Thanks Nighted - I'd missed that one! I'm here, live, in Belgium. It's raining. A lot. Hard. Why'd I ever leave Vancouver Island?

5248

General Review Discussion / Re: Best spreadsheet

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 06:15 PM »

In the "rest" category, you can add SoftMaker's PlanMaker, which is the companion to TextMaker (and only availble, I believe as part of SoftMaker Office 2003/2006 or Ashampoo Office 2003/2006 - same package, different branding). It's very fully featured and stable.

5249

ProcessTamer / Re: Is ProcessTamer "Portable?"

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 03:16 PM »

Cool! Thanks mouser!

5250

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:48 AM »

Probably just "inelegance" would suffice... but I am pretty fond of making these kind of words up, too - they often just feel/sound "right" at the time and modifying a word like this can highlight/add emphasis to your point. One of the joys of the English language is how plastic it is (and one of the banes of those trying to try learn it as a second language!).