Recent Posts

976

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 08, 2010, 10:27 AM »

hmmm
it causes my (admittedly ancient) FreeHand9 (vector drawing programme) to totally malfunction. Shortcut keys dont work or do something else rather than what they should...

This is after simply having started it - I havent set up or changed anything yet.

Okay, I set it to ignore Freehand and things are fine - thought I'd report anyway in case of interest to you.

[XP SP3]

-tomos (October 08, 2010, 07:10 AM)

Yes all comments and feedback is useful. I'll try to get the program to somehow detect if an application is already doing something hairy with keyboard events. There's some hotkey detection I have yet to put in place for example.

So thank you all, for the continuing testing and reporting 

977

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 07, 2010, 09:35 PM »

Attention all DC-ers who are helping me with Auspex!

You guys have my gratitude, and the very least I would like to do is to give you an honourable mention in the program's About screen.

So! If you've tested and commented, reported an issue, contributed in any way in fact, I would like to add you to the list as my own "thank you"

Please PM me with your name or nickname in the form you'd like to see it, and optionally a URL to your own DC or other webpage and I'll put you in the Roll of Honour  

So now's your chance folks. Step right up, give 'er a go, find a bug* and let me know!

(Jeez I sound like a fairground hawker)



Take a look, and think to yourself: "Oh boy, that could be me!"

* Don't feel obliged to really find a bug

978

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 07, 2010, 09:22 PM »

Build 32 in place folks.

New Features

    * Auto-update check in place, but does not download anything yet
    * Changed the cursor positioning for Replacements. -1 is now end of line, and counting starts from 0 so that you can have the cursor positioned before the first character of the Replacement block
    * Only one copy of Auspex can be launched
    * Replacements and single-word Completions may now begin to appear in longer suggestions

Bug Fixes

    * Fixed a drag issue where dragging a Replacement to a new folder may cause it to be lost, or overwrite some other Replacement
    * The last word in a sentence is now captured as part of a candidate to become a Completion
    * Backup path now saved correctly

Chris, please check again whether Auspex now correctly ignores KEdit. If not please get me a screenshot of the Exceptions screen in Options if you can. Thanks!

979

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser Update: ContactFX 0.0.1.17

« Last post by timns on October 07, 2010, 05:27 PM »

Ok, here goes in no particular order:

1. "Control Pallet" should be "Control Palette"
2. Some hints for the little blue icons (looks like maybe maximize, collapse, centre?)
3. When editing the main label in the purple area, the edit box is not high enough
4. Error message 'Contacts must have 1 User ID field: Currently there is ony 0."
(I was dragging some fields between 2 contact windows)
I then ended up with a contact with 2 family name labels, then it crashed.
6. Still calls itself version 0.0.1.13
7. Address Book is 2 words
8. If I minimize the windows I can't get them to restore

I really like the overall look of the app, and the ability to drag stuff around is pretty nice. Can you add a couple more fields as soon as contacts can be saved? I'll start keying a few real names in and see how it feels to use.

980

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser Update: ContactFX 0.0.1.17

« Last post by timns on October 07, 2010, 10:29 AM »

Downloaded and running smoothly! What level of feedback would you like from this build?

i.e. only bugs for now? or also small stuff? or right down to typos?

981

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 06, 2010, 12:00 PM »

As I said before it's working fine for all accents and special characters, however I have come across two more anomalies, neither of which are serious :

* I use G-Lock's SpamCombat and if I try to copy some text from an email to the clipboard I get an error saying SpamCombat cannot open the clipboard.

* When I insert some text with 'Replacement' into a new email (using iScribe) the upper-case letters turn into lower-case - again no big deal. I have tested with pretty much all the other text apps that I use and it only happens in this case.

Could you give some information about the three "speedometers" - what are they supposed to show ? They don't correspond with 'Typed', 'Saved' or the stats.

Thanks again.

-joiwind (October 06, 2010, 05:33 AM)

Ah - that makes me pretty happy. I don't know if anyone else in this forum has ever had to deal with deadkey processing but it's a right SOB.

Ok to explain the dials:

The first one on the left shows, as a percentage, how much typing Auspex has saved you. The tiny number in the middle is the actual number of characters it has typed on your behalf.

The middle dial is how many times Auspex has done something for you.

The rightmost dial shows, for the last-used item, how many times it has been used in total, against the min and max usage of all items.

They are all reset daily, but the overall stats are kept forever. You can see them in the Options window under 'Statistics'.

All a bit of a gimmick I guess, but I do like to see them spin around  and it gives me a feel for how much effort I'm saving.

On a good day, I have saved over 8,000 characters typed (I have some big replacements)

What I have definitely noticed is that it takes quite a while to get into the habit of setting up and using the replacements. But once they stick in my mind, I am lost without them.

So this program is certainly not something you plop into place and just get an immediate 'hit' however with longer use I hope you all get some real benefit.

Now if I can just make it more cooperative with all your pesky apps... 

982

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 05, 2010, 05:45 PM »

Build 30 now in place. Mainly small improvements to performance:

New Features

    * You can now go straight to the stats screen from the Tools menu
    * Path to Backup file now saved
    * Now a little faster and smoother in operation
    * Graph labels colour-coded so you can see what they refer to

Bug Fixes

    * Apps in the exclude list will now be totally ignored
    * Small memory leaks plugged

The perennial question: is it now working better with those tricksy keyboards and apps?

983

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 05, 2010, 11:04 AM »

YES - all's well here, sorry I didn't get straight back !

Thanks timns, it's great, everything is working now - except for what seems to be a small anomaly with the Reposition cursor to option : if I set it to 0 (zero) then the cursor ends up at one space after the end of the word or phrase, if I set it to 1 then it ends up just after the first character in the phrase (the latter is probably normal) but shouldn't it either sit right next to the last character in the phrase or right at the beginning when set to zero ?

-joiwind (October 05, 2010, 10:52 AM)

Ah, thank you, that's good to hear! At least something seems to be working  

At the moment, having cursorpos=0 means 'leave the cursor where it is' so you're right, there's no way to make the cursor move to the very front of the replaced line. I'll have to make that -1 for no move, and 0 to be beginning of the line.

If the cursor is one space after the phrase, I hope it's because you either have a space in the replacement itself, or you do not have the 'erase trigger' checkbox checked.

If not, it'll be one of those 'bug' things I've been hearing about 

984

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 05, 2010, 10:16 AM »

Build 28 uploaded. Please give it a shot.

-timns (October 04, 2010, 08:50 PM)

Sorry timns, after a while working with 28, the arrow keys started up again, as well as the HOME and END keys.

Left arrow: ♦
Right arrow: ♠
Up arrow: ◘
Down arrow: seems to work ok.

But it's all unpredictable == difficult to fix I'm afraid

Jan Roelof

-jpijper (October 05, 2010, 02:54 AM)

Ok thank you for the further information. But is there any chance that the dead keys etc did work for you, at least for a while? And I was also expecting that replacements and completions containing accented chars were now ok... 

985

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 04, 2010, 08:50 PM »

Build 28 uploaded. Please give it a shot. And if you've been lurking in the thread wondering whether to give it a try... g'waaaan 

From the wiki:

Build 28
New Features

    * About screen now shows my appreciation to those of you who have contributed in some way. My deepest apologies to anyone I may have missed. Let me know! And if you'd like to see your name in lights, please just join in!
    * Accented characters and dead key support. Man, this was hard work! Everything about it was a complete pain
    * Added some explanatory text to the Stats window (Tools->Options)

Bug Fixes

    * Sometimes items were lost when dragging them around in the tree. This should be ok now
    * Smoothed out the auto-typing
    * Cursor positioning within Replacements now correct
    * Fixed a couple of 'Control has no Parent Window' errors
    * Fixed the situation where the same word could be both a Candidate and a Completion (caused the same word to appear twice in the pop-up)

986

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser Update: ContactFX 0.0.1.13

« Last post by timns on October 03, 2010, 05:59 PM »

I'd like to throw in a feature request: can we have it hook into skype to dial out automatically?  

That would make me switch to this thing in a trice. I don't want to encourage bloating but that's really the one reason why I use pagico to keep my address book at the moment.

987

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on October 01, 2010, 09:27 AM »

Ok thanks chaps - I do appreciate your input and your patience.

B24 was supposed to at least pass your characters through correctly: I think we're almost there based on jpijper's feedback, but joiwind, oh boy!

I'll keep rolling along this weekend.

988

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 30, 2010, 04:56 PM »

Folks,

I just uploaded build 24. This is one that could really stand some testing, and contains some features that I think are important:

Auspex now avoids tracking storing or showing any passwords (quite pleased about this, I think it's important, and in fact one of the reasons I did not use a key tracking program in the past)

Finally managed to make some progress with accented characters - can someone with a freaky keyboard let me know if we're getting somewhere please?

Please see the wiki for a more complete list of changes and some ideas on where and how to use the program. Other ideas, hints, tips, clever usages would be appreciated. Are people seeing a saving in typing effort?

http://redmine.dcmem...projects/auspex/wiki

989

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 28, 2010, 10:12 AM »

Thanks folks - I wonder if you (jpijper and joiwind) would mind grabbing the next build and giving it another try please? I shall be adding some logging features and I'll be able to see your keyboard locale etc. more easily.

I'll try to upload in the next day or two, so it'll be build 24+ that I'll be asking you to try 

I did have an initial attempt to read your keyboard layout and then use Windows' own mapping to find the characters you're actually typing, but it would seem it's not working yet. Time to set up some new locales here and see how we go.

990

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 27, 2010, 10:13 PM »

Build 23 uploaded. I would hope this is a little better in several ways: more options are now hooked up, it starts working as soon as you run it, and it's beginning to track phrases as well as single words.

991

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 26, 2010, 06:30 PM »

@joiwind

I just uploaded a new build that tries to read and handle the currently loaded keyboard layout instead of the default. Would you be able to let me know if it's working better?

Build 20 or greater.

992

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 24, 2010, 04:36 PM »

Fixed in Build 18+

-timns (September 24, 2010, 03:17 PM)

So it is.
Should I be able to run multiple copies of Auspex?

(just toddling along)

-cranioscopical (September 24, 2010, 04:16 PM)

Eep. I dread to think what may happen. I'd better block that. Thanks.

993

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 24, 2010, 03:17 PM »

@timns
.16
Doing some really odd stuff.
Can create two folders with the same name

Also, within a folder group called MASTER:
I had one folder, called ONE
with sub-folder SUB-ONE
Then I dragged another folder SUB-TWO into folder ONE
So I had
    MASTER
         ONE
           SUB-ONE
         TWO
           SUB-TWO
Restarted Auspex
Now have two sub-folders with the same name
    MASTER
         ONE
           SUB-ONE
         ONE
           SUB-TWO

(and the other in a bowl of marbles)

-cranioscopical (September 23, 2010, 02:39 PM)

Fixed in Build 18+

994

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 24, 2010, 03:16 PM »

Will this be able to something like...

type "calc:1+1" and Auspex grabs it and replaces it with 2

is this like the macro functionality you mentioned??

-Perry Mowbray (September 16, 2010, 11:11 PM)

This is now working. You create a new item with the Action set to 'Expression Calculator'

For instance I use 'ccc' as a mnemonic to trigger this. Then you can type something like 'ccc 11+22+33' and when you hit the trigger (space, tab, return, etc) it will replace your typing with the result. Quite a few functions are supported.

995

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 23, 2010, 02:49 PM »

@timns
.16
Doing some really odd stuff.
Can create two folders with the same name

Also, within a folder group called MASTER:
I had one folder, called ONE
with sub-folder SUB-ONE
Then I dragged another folder SUB-TWO into folder ONE
So I had
    MASTER
         ONE
           SUB-ONE
         TWO
           SUB-TWO
Restarted Auspex
Now have two sub-folders with the same name
    MASTER
         ONE
           SUB-ONE
         ONE
           SUB-TWO

(and the other in a bowl of marbles)

-cranioscopical (September 23, 2010, 02:39 PM)

By gum, you're right. I'll have a look.

996

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 23, 2010, 09:41 AM »

I'm still having clipboard problems (even after quitting CHS): (see attachment in previous post)

Ugh, so I see. I've been seeing quite a few things about that same problem when searching google. I'll see what I can do, and at least get rid of that ugly dialog.

997

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 22, 2010, 10:06 PM »

Build 16 uploaded. Actually it may be 17 

Minor improvements, should be a little smoother.

: The calculator is working for most simple expressions

: You can now create sub-folders in the tree

Extensive additions to the wiki

998

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 22, 2010, 12:45 PM »

No it doesn't do anything yet, but you CAN add predefined text by just keying it in. In the wiki you can see what we have already. You can also reference your own existing predefines - just use the mnemonic field, wrapped in % chars

In the example below, my 'Nest Test' pulls in 2 other replacements that I have set up: address and phone number, whose mnemonics are 150 and 250 respectively.



This is very useful. In my case I use it to build up URL's from shorter building blocks. If any part of the URL needs to change, I can modify one replacement and all the references are automatically updated too.

999

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 22, 2010, 10:53 AM »

timns - any luck with the punctuation problem (keyboard mapping) ? All usual characters work fine it's punctuation, the num-pad  and all "unusual" characters : e.g. {[¤µ*etc.

DELL azerty keyboard

-joiwind (September 22, 2010, 10:38 AM)

Redmined! I'll take a look today. There will be a new build later for sure, since I just got the calculation function going.

1000

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

« Last post by timns on September 22, 2010, 10:18 AM »

build 14 seems to be running better here... although I nearly put a bug into Redmine as I thought Auspex was stealing the input when it first started... but then it didn't

-Perry Mowbray (September 22, 2010, 12:47 AM)

There's a known issue at startup where it does not process input correctly until it has received and lost input focus just once.

Have you thought about an auto learn feature? eg all words typed longer than the standard setting are automatically added to an Auto-AutoComplete folder during normal typing... this would be like intellisense.

On close those items are deleted... or alternatively can be moved to a different folder.

Er, actually, it does that already. It's not configurable yet, but at the moment any words 6 chars or longer that you use 3 times will start to appear as a suggestion. You don't seem them appear in the tree until next time you start, which is something I'll fix. If you try that, and words are not appearing for you, do let me know!