Recent Posts

901

Living Room / Re: Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 03:15 PM »

Mystery solved. The description page doesn't say so (that I can see) but I've just heard from the seller. The copy of Delphi comes with an "Education" license. Basically this translates to personal use only, no right to distribute compiled software (whether free or for-profit): section 4.2 in http://dn.codegear.com/article/36957

It appears to be a legitimate copy then, and a legitimate seller, though the license info should really be prominent on the description page.

Since I haven't actually published anything in ages anyway, and would love dearly to play with it, I'm still a little tempted!

902

General Software Discussion / Re: FeedDemon going free

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 02:13 PM »

o_O, 200 MB of RAM?! Does it run under the JRE or what? And the program is not that big...

-Lashiec (January 15, 2008, 02:02 PM)

No, it's a native Win32 app (written most likely in Delphi). My guess is the memory use comes from parsing XML into DOM - that can gobble up RAM pretty fast. And note that FeedDemon embeds a browser (IE by default; there was once an unsupported method of plugging in Mozilla instead), so the browser is also responsible for some of that amount.

903

Living Room / Re: Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 01:08 PM »

Hi Marek. The Delphi item on Ebay has up to $2,000 in buyer protection. If that buyer protection is applicable for us in eastern Europe, that would make it a safe buy (I guess).

-tamasd (January 15, 2008, 08:00 AM)

Does that in any way mean eBay is vouching for the seller?

-tranglos (January 15, 2008, 08:34 AM)

Okay, found it, and it does not. Eligibility for buyer protection only means that:

   1.  seller's eBay feedback rating is at least 50;
   2. At least 98% of the seller's eBay feedback is positive;
   3. The seller has a Verified Premier or Verified Business Account in good standing;
   4. The listing was on an eligible eBay site (eBay.com and certain other eBay sites self identified as such)
   5. PayPal is listed as an acceptable payment method; and
   6. The seller is a PayPal User from one of the following countries:

So it has little bearing on the actual merchandise, except to the extent that nobody must have complained about receiving pirated software from the seller. I asked the guy a question and will wait for response.

904

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor Needed

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 10:50 AM »

I am looking for an editor that will allow me to format the text like Rich Text, modifying color, underline, bold, etc., like Martin Aignesberger's great Notebook Pro editor. In addition though, I would like it to be able to replace my text editor and able to edit text files without adding formatting codes.

-KenR (January 15, 2008, 08:41 AM)

I can recommend PolyEdit: www.polyedit.com
Nice features, and works both as an RTF and plaintext editor. Original, useful docking mechanism, if you like docking.

Though for power plain-text editing, you may consider a "real" plaintext editor, such as EmEditor.

on edit: Forgot to add: PolyEdit is $27.95. I registered in May 2003, and all updates have been free since then.

905

Living Room / Re: Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 08:34 AM »

Hi Marek. The Delphi item on Ebay has up to $2,000 in buyer protection. If that buyer protection is applicable for us in eastern Europe, that would make it a safe buy (I guess).

-tamasd (January 15, 2008, 08:00 AM)

Does that in any way mean eBay is vouching for the seller? I suppose if he were selling pirated software he'd have been kicked off long ago. He's been at it for months, and has had an account since Oct. 2006.

(I once found a guy who was clearly selling "Nero originals" of various hard-to-find DVDs, claiming they were new and legit. A week later the account was gone.)

The price is luring! In our local distributor shop, the Delphi upgrades seem more pricey than regular full price in US Codegear shop.

-tamasd (January 15, 2008, 08:00 AM)

That's why I have a special place in my heart for resellers People have been badgering CodeGear about this for years, but they refuse to institute a direct sales channel.

906

Living Room / Re: Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 15, 2008, 07:37 AM »

Yeah, it's here:

Borland CODE GEAR DELPHI 2007 for Win32 ~ NEW

But, having slept on it, I'll pass.

907

Living Room / Re: Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 14, 2008, 08:57 PM »

One thing is whether borland/inprise/codegear/fancynameofthemonth and their license feels OK about reselling

-f0dder (January 14, 2008, 08:45 PM)

They don' like it, but thankfully the EU thinks differently, and if the software is really shrink-wrapped straight from a legit distributor, it's not even reselling. It's more like I ask you to buy it for me, and you do, and airmail me the package.

Why would anybody an individual person end up with a large amount of legit, shrinkwrapped copies of development software?

-f0dder (January 14, 2008, 08:45 PM)

Right, this is what smells somewhat. Then again, people who run their own brick and mortar stores sell their stuff on eBay, too, and offer better prices.

I certainly don't want to end up with a bad copy. I'm only considering this because the idiots at CodeGear won't sell it to me 

908

Living Room / Experiences buying software on eBay?

« Last post by tranglos on January 14, 2008, 08:15 PM »

I want to say upfront that I've only had good experience buying stuff on eBay. I don't do so often, but I pick sellers carefully, and have bought things from cheap (DVDs) to fairly expensive (my fine pre-Lenovo ThinkPad :-), without a single problem ever.

But I've never bought software. Specifically (the seller states) a legitimate, shrink-wrapped, never opened, never registered retail copy of Delphi 2007. eBay is about the only way I can buy it, since CodeGear marketing dept lives in a cave and they sell only to US and Canada directly. They have resellers worldwide, and the Polish reseller not only charges an enormous margin above CodeGear's price, but they expect you to order only by printing out an RTF order form and faxing it to them. The order form doesn't even have a line for first name/last name - only for company name. If they don't expect to be selling it to individuals, I am not going to plead with them, and I certainly won't be buying a fax machine to deserve the privilege of odering an expensive product from morons. (Yep, I have some strong feelings about them!)

Assuming the trade goes well, and that the copy is indeed virginal, the net result would be no different than me traveling to the US, buying Delphi retail and bringing it home. Or receiving it as a gift. EU law does not allow manufacturers to limit where or to whom they sell, so this is completely legit on my side. (A second-hand copy would be perfectly EU-legal too, but CodeGear would almost certainly block me from upgrades and patches, so I'm not considering that.)

So the only thing I am left to wonder about is how likely it is that the copy in question is indeed legitimate. The seller has lots of feedback, practically 100% positive, and he seems to be selling shrink-wrapped copies of Delphi and other software almost daily. He has a long string of such transactions, dating back months. So it looks pretty good. Is there anything I'm forgetting about?

Does anyone have any good or bad experience of the sort?

909

Living Room / Re: which hierarchical note program?

« Last post by tranglos on January 14, 2008, 09:16 AM »

(I recently noticed that the project is still being carried on SourceForge as if it were still active.)

-J-Mac (January 14, 2008, 12:26 AM)

It's been on SF for ages.

The code has always been open and for the taking, but the code is ugly, since I was learning as I went, and it would be quite difficult to expand it without first refactoring the heck out of it. I intended to rewrite the thing from scratch, but never managed to put together anything. Not for lack of trying, I just tried to bit more than I could chew.

I'm afraid the project is the opposite of active

910

General Software Discussion / Re: Inadvertent Googling in Spanish

« Last post by tranglos on January 13, 2008, 09:59 PM »

Nope, I don't have a Google account.

-cranioscopical (January 13, 2008, 08:54 PM)

Make sure FireFox accepts Google's cookie. Delete all cookies from Google, then pick the English-language site. This should reset Google's memory of your browser, unless you've tried it already.

If you were using IE, I'd advise you to scan for malware, since a trojan could be proxying your browser through a site in .es. Who knows, maybe FF can be hacked that way too?

Since Google thinks your requests are coming from Spain, try www.whatsmyip.org and see if the IP address looks fishy.

911

Living Room / Re: Which Software Personality Would Sing These Lyrics?

« Last post by tranglos on January 12, 2008, 11:39 AM »

And it goes further - "Warriors from Hell's domain / Will bring you to your death" - that's obviously the horde of GPL zealots

-f0dder (January 12, 2008, 10:49 AM)

I voted "Other", because this nowhere-to-run imagery somehow made me think of Larry Wall

912

Living Room / Re: Mommy, why is there a server in the house?

« Last post by tranglos on January 11, 2008, 03:14 PM »

Is it the one that corrupts the files you copy onto it?

The ad sure is neat, though!

913

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a light or a dark background in your editor for programming?

« Last post by tranglos on January 11, 2008, 02:52 PM »

Light on dark, of course.  You dark on lighters (hmmm... darklighters.  Where have I heard that before...) I can't figure out... the abundance of white blinds me... I severely dislike the theme for DC because of that... when I come here, I'm blinded for a few secs, LOL!

-wraith808 (January 11, 2008, 01:54 PM)

Fascinating. It just shows we see things differently

In your screenshot, the light grays are unreadable to me due to low contrast, I have to strain my eyes and they sink into the background. The white text, OTOH, produces a contrast that's much too high - it's readable but also headache-inducing.

I could live with the light grays, but only if using bold font, to add body to the character glyphs, and I would want to brighten them up a bit (though not to pure white).

In general, I cannot be comfortable with pitch-black backgrounds, since whatever text colors I use, the contrast is either too high or too low. Red on black or blue on black, as in some of the previously posted screenshots, is just illegible to me. I think that black tends to overpower the relatively thin squiggles of text, it seems to weaken all other colors, while white brings other colors out. Gaming sites - I can never read text on gaming sites, as they all tend to use black BG. Which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing!

On the other hand, pure white background blinds me as much as anyone. The first thing I do after reinstalling the sytem is reduce the whiteness. This is my default background, RGB 210/210/210:



Note the sparingly used syntax coloring. Apart from TextPad, the only editor I've found that lets me color the angle brackets but not their contents is EmEditor, and I love it that way. I use this color scheme everywhere, which means some funky looking websites, where the designers neglected to specify default BG color, producing a gray background with irregular patches of white. One of the easiest ways to tell crummy web design

And I experiment a little when using console tools. I avoid black, but also want the console to look different than regular windows (a nostalgic throwback to old-school monochrome monitors), so I've come up with these two schemes that work well for me:

My favorite shade of ink-blue:


And light gray on green is nicely legible, too, as Mouser noticed above:


(The font is Lucida Console bold)

914

General Software Discussion / Re: FeedDemon going free

« Last post by tranglos on January 10, 2008, 08:02 AM »

Another "victim" of Google Reader.

-muntealb (January 10, 2008, 07:37 AM)

Probably so, but then RSS is web content, and the browser is the ideal environment for viewing it. I bought FeedDemon quite early on and liked it a lot, but I always caught myself trying to do things I could do in a browser, and failing - like viewing a single image, copying its location or doing "download target". All the neat features it had didn't make up for the basic browser functionality that was lost.

It was also becoming more sluggish from release to release. I dropped out when Nick Bradbury sold FeedDemon to NewsGator. I should have known better, since he'd done the same thing with HomeSite before. Can't blame him, but it *is* his SoP, so I should have known better.

He's a magnificent coder! HomeSite became an archetypal HTML editor. Even today most free and commercial HTML editors are patterned on HomeSite's UI and feature set. But when Nick Bradbury sold it to Macromedia, it was only a short time before it disappeared from the market.

FeedDemon keeps growing, but the whole deal with NewsGator subscription model left a bad taste. Meanwhile Google Reader also keeps getting new features, but to me what's most important is having it in the browser, nothing can beat that.

Nick Bradbury is a fantastically gifted coder, but I can't say I'm sorry for NewsGator...

915

Official Announcements / Re: JANUARY 2008 GIANT SHAREWARE GIVEAWAY AND DISCOUNT CELEBRATION

« Last post by tranglos on January 09, 2008, 02:00 PM »

WHOA! So many amazing software... Should I enter the software drawing as well? What could I choose as the first option?

-Lashiec (January 09, 2008, 01:37 PM)

Indeed! The selection of discounts and giveaways is just wondrous, thanks mouser and cthorpe! Although, like tinjaw, I'm already using a number of these great apps, which makes my choice a little easier.

916

Living Room / Re: which hierarchical note program?

« Last post by tranglos on January 09, 2008, 01:06 PM »

bardamu2000: i'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you but Keynote has ceased to be developed by its original programmer. though the author released a minor update recently, check out this thread.

-lanux128 (January 09, 2008, 12:47 PM)

Guilty as charged, and I don't even have a good excuse.

Tagging - I wish I had though of that early enough.

Alarms though I never felt were a good idea for KeyNote - there is an explanation why in the FAQ (last item in the 1st section)

URLs - I never actually had to implement this, because it's part of OLE and comes for free with the Windows richedit control. I've just dragged a URL from FireFox to KeyNote, which inserted the URL and the description. I didn't even know it worked

Other media content - not recommended due to the way binary data is stored in RTF format. Including even a single high-res picture will bloat the knt file hugely, and there is no way to avoid it except to use a completely different data format, which was not available at that time. (If you wanted text formatting, RTF was the only viable option - and this hasn't changed much really, though there are two commerical Delphi editor components that replace richedit nicely). There's a chapter on that in the FAQ as well

917

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: WinManagement Snap!

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 08:42 PM »

Works great now, thank you!

918

Developer's Corner / Re: Article Convinces Me To Move To vi(m)

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 05:27 PM »

@tranglos: try cream?

-urlwolf (January 08, 2008, 04:36 PM)

I did, but then there's little point to using Vim (or friends) for the menus and toolbars, unless I'm missing something about Cream's capabilities. The feature list is lengthy, but it doesn't seem to add anything EmEditor or the like won't already do. When I was trying out Vim, I actually used the console version the most, so as to concentrate on the keyboard and because the menus in gVim only add more weirdness to the package.

919

General Software Discussion / Re: Logitech's Setpoint

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 05:19 PM »

Tranglos - After having no luck with the G5 and G7 mice - lags and delays - the MX Revolution totally rocks!  I'd say the best overall wireless mouse I have used.  I have WebSite Watcher watching the Amazon and Newegg pages for the MX Revolution so I can maybe buy one or two more if they go on a big enough sale.  This mouse works so well I just know Logitech will discontinue it!!

-J-Mac (January 08, 2008, 04:03 PM)

MX Revolution is indeed sweet. The only thing I don't like about it is that it runs no more than 3-4 days without charging - compared to months for mice with replaceable batteries, but those were too heavy for me. But MX Revolution looks like a damn spaceship sitting on my desk, all is forgiven!

920

Developer's Corner / Re: Article Convinces Me To Move To vi(m)

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 03:18 PM »

Today one of the python blogs I read posted about an article they thought was the "Best Vim Article Ever". It has convinced me to (as often as possible) use vim for the next three months and see if it sticks.

-tinjaw (January 08, 2008, 09:57 AM)

Darn, this is the best Vim article ever! It almost convinces me to give it one more try - although in the case of (g)Vim "try" is probably not a good strategy. A better idea would be to erase all other editors from the system first

I recall the last time I gave up on gvim was when I was reading through the manual and found a section, not too far into the document, about how, if you want to sort text, you can invoke the shell and run the sort command. I stopped reading at that line, uninstalled the whole thing and promised myself never to waste time with 30-year-old Unix tools again. It reminded me of Linux users ridiculing Windows for requiring restart on driver installation, but when I first installed RedHat (granted, about 10 years ago) I had to recompile the kernel before it recognized the sound card - at least the docs said it had to be done.

Still, the article is really informative as far as evangelizing goes. Unlike the author, I really have no trouble with finding arrow keys on my keyboards, but it does makes me yearn for the power of navigation. If only it weren't so ugly and angular

So here's an idea that I'm sure Vim people will totally scorn, but let me try it anyway. How about reversing the Vim paradigm and have a GUI editor that behaves in standard Windowsy ways, but also includes a command interface? It would be a little more verbose than Vim, of course: hit ESC to enter the command mode, type the command, press Enter to accept it. (This is your clue to start ROTFLing!)

At one point I  did exactly that for my abortive attempt at rewriting KeyNote. I wanted to make the UI entirely configurable  and scriptable from the word go, so nothing was hardcoded. The menus were built  from XML files, and all commands had textual representation. There was a command handling engine patterned after Windows message passing mechanisms, which meant that the engine didn't care where the commands were coming from: menus, keyboard, scripts or macros, and macros could be easily recorded and replayed. It was really nice, because there was really no distinction between built-in commands and macros or commands with custom parameters. The regular File|Open command would be something like {cmdOpen} for example, and you could add {cmdOpen file="foo.txt" readonly="true"} as a menu item anywhere. Some parameters had default values and were optional (here: readonly), others required a value (here: file), so if you wanted to have a custom Open command that would always open a file in read-only mode, you would specify {cmdOpen readonly="true"}, and the program would prompt you for all the missing required params.

So while I was testing this, I added a command line to see how various commands were interpreted. Now, this particular implementation was of course awfully verbose, because it was meant to be used in  UI layouts and scripts. You would not normally want to type {navigate direction="right" distance="42"}, but the principle remains. Apart from the lengthy typing, it was a fun way to use a program, and certainly great for debugging the command handler. Given a suitably concise command language, perhaps modeled after Vim, might it not be an interesting way of providing some of Vim's keyboarding power while not forcing users to abandon the familiar GUI-ness of Windows programs?

921

General Software Discussion / Re: Logitech's Setpoint

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 02:52 PM »

No issues at all on WinXP SP2. The drivers that come on CD with the device are usually outdated though, and I've seen bugs in SetPoint 3.x. Nothing that affected system stability however, just UI annoyances, such as various settings not remembered across reboots. Upgrading to the latest 4.0.x release seems to fix them.

I've never used gamepads though, just mice - MX Revolution and a "wired" (what's the opposite of cordless?) laser mouse.

922

Developer's Corner / Re: Article Convinces Me To Move To vi(m)

« Last post by tranglos on January 08, 2008, 12:55 PM »

Heh, the graphic referenced at the end of the article is both hilarius and probably true:
http://www.bemroses....et/images/curves.jpg

923

Developer's Corner / Re: Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

« Last post by tranglos on January 07, 2008, 02:37 PM »

"More like code magpie".

-tinjaw (January 07, 2008, 02:20 PM)

Oh, absolutely. I've looked at more cool and shiny stuff to code with than I'll ever be able to learn, let alone use for a good purpose. And it *is* overwhelming - to the point that, since coding is not my paid work, it's almost all collecting shiny stuff and ever less frequently actually using it.

Um, tinjaw... I don't know if you're going to like it, but my latest shiny trinket: IPython

924

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: WinManagement Snap!

« Last post by tranglos on January 07, 2008, 01:58 PM »

I'll try that, thanks a lot!

925

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: WinManagement Snap!

« Last post by tranglos on January 07, 2008, 01:46 PM »

Maximize vertically or horizontally :
---------------------------------------
Ctrl + WinKey + Left or Right : Maximize horizontally
Ctrl + WinKey + Up or Down : Maximize vertically

-Armando (January 07, 2008, 12:42 PM)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was just going to post in search of these two behaviors. My wish has been granted before I even asked, how's that for greatness?

WinKey + Down : snap bottom window border to screen edge

-Armando (January 07, 2008, 12:42 PM)

One minor bug perhaps: the window snaps to physical bottom of the display, i.e. gets underneath the taskbar (if the taskbar is at bottom).