NANY 2011 Release: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

[tomos]

it doesnt seem to work with GridMove, no matter which setting I choose under exception...
I only use the keyboard shortcuts for Gridmove - Win+G shows grid, then number key selects 'area'
With Auspex running, and Grdimove in 'Block' / 'Compatability Mode' or 'Allow' mode, the Win+G combo doesnt work (the grid shows, but the start menu pops up and takes focus so I cant resize window).
Oddly it works okay with the Auspex window [edit] i.e. when it has focus [/edit] (no matter which setting in Exceptions), but doesnt work with any other windows.

Fixed in the next build (i.e. 58 or greater) which I shall release later in the week. A good catch, which has helped me further improve the program's compatibility with other applications.

I'm afraid the symptoms are exactly the same here with build #59...

[cranioscopical]

the thing that triggered the comment is my wife

Ah, yes, wives and 'the look' — that's come down on the distaff side from Eve, with some refinement by every generation  

she types 'quid' to get £

I try to keep my own mnemonics as something that can't occur in English. As often as possible they begin with a 'q' which never is followed by 'u'.
You might suggest ukp in place of quid, in order to avoid a £ pro quo.

[timns]

the thing that triggered the comment is my wife

Ah, yes, wives and 'the look' — that's come down on the distaff side from Eve, with some refinement by every generation 

she types 'quid' to get £

I try to keep my own mnemonics as something that can't occur in English. As often as possible they begin with a 'q' which never is followed by 'u'.
You might suggest ukp in place of quid, in order to avoid a £ pro quo.

I've started using ~ as the first char... it's an easy one to hit. But each to their own. I'm just pleased she's getting some good use out of it: over 35,000 characters saved so far. That's a lot of wear and tear on the ol' manicure 

How are other people's stats doing?

[cranioscopical]

How are other people's stats doing?

793 (not thousands) but an extremely important 793!
I have wiped out and reinstalled Auspex quite a few times.

[timns]

it doesnt seem to work with GridMove, no matter which setting I choose under exception...
I only use the keyboard shortcuts for Gridmove - Win+G shows grid, then number key selects 'area'
With Auspex running, and Grdimove in 'Block' / 'Compatability Mode' or 'Allow' mode, the Win+G combo doesnt work (the grid shows, but the start menu pops up and takes focus so I cant resize window).
Oddly it works okay with the Auspex window [edit] i.e. when it has focus [/edit] (no matter which setting in Exceptions), but doesnt work with any other windows.

Fixed in the next build (i.e. 58 or greater) which I shall release later in the week. A good catch, which has helped me further improve the program's compatibility with other applications.

I'm afraid the symptoms are exactly the same here with build #59...

Indeed so, and I fooled myself by not testing very well... unfortunately handling this is a real pain in the rear, since GridMove is a bit naughty in using the Windows key at all. I'll stay on it, but we should remember:

"Don't use the windows key for keyboard shortcuts in your program, the "Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines" says the following under Guidelines - Interaction - Keyboard:

   Don't use the Windows logo modifier key for program shortcut keys. Windows logo key is reserved for Windows use. Even if a Windows logo key combination isn't being used by Windows now, it may be in the future."

          

[tomos]

I'll stay on it, but we should remember:

"Don't use the windows key for keyboard shortcuts in your program, the "Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines" says the following under Guidelines - Interaction - Keyboard:

    Don't use the Windows logo modifier key for program shortcut keys. Windows logo key is reserved for Windows use. Even if a Windows logo key combination isn't being used by Windows now, it may be in the future."

           

well, I can look at grid move - I'm using the exe but I'm sure I could get the ahk file and change the key or request it be made customisable or something.
I certainly couldnt live without it at this stage OTOH I hate missing out on this one... 

[tomos]

Oddly enough, when I change it for GridMove, pressing Win+G open a new tab in FireFox and searches for the AHK text version of the (new) modifier key pressed [<^>!]

I have other apps that use the Win key, but offhand I cant remember which, so I guess they're one's I dont actually use in practice... (oh, I just remembered one I do use - I'll test it later).
I'm just thinking now that while other apps should not use the Winkey, the reality is that some do, and if that is the problem (of course maybe that isn't the problem at all) you'll have to be able to add them to the exceptions list successfully...

Okay, I tested a couple of other apps that use the Winkey and they are not affected.
Next I'll be pestering you with basic questions about how to use it 

[tomos]

Okay, it's working very nicely!

...but I'm afraid I've got another keyboard problem:
Alt+Tab works okay but Alt+Shift+Tab to reverse the direction no longer works (sorry!)

FWIW in my old Photoshop Ctrl+Tab & Ctrl+Shift+Tab work as expected to cycle through open docs

[timns]

Good spot - I'll have a look at that alt+shift+tab.

... and if it's not too late or annoying, the next build will in fact be able to handle your original Win+G shortcut. Finally cracked that bit.

[timns]

Build 60

New Features

   * Completely threw away and re-wrote the Completion popup. It's much, much faster and will end up looking a lot nicer too (feedback please - is it working ok?)
   * Auspex now cooperates with those naughty apps that use the Windows key as a global hotkey modifier
   * Keypad 0 now selects the most likely Completion item (in addition to KP1 through KP9 as added in the previous build)
   * Dainty little performance gauges on the main screen can now be hidden via the View menu (but why would you want to do that?)
   * Pop-up Character Map available in the main screen for convenience

Bug Fixes

   * Replaced the Clipboard monitoring code with something more stable
   * Backup now also includes all Options and Stats

[cranioscopical]

.60 looking good so far. I can't conufse it as easily as .59!

[timns]

.60 looking good so far. I can't conufse it as easily as .59!

Whew! Maybe we're getting somewhere again.

Thanks for spotting that it can't minimize to tray any more. I also just noticed myself that a single-item popup is not very pretty at the moment. About to add custom colours and some general tidying-up there.

[joiwind]

.60 going fine here - and at last the Completion popup window opens near the cursor.

7353 characters saved.

However I'm getting duplicates in the Completion list.... why's that ?

Also I was wondering about an overall option for Completions where you can choose between Tab or Space or Return to accept a proposed word - IMHO Return is the optimal option.

[timns]

.60 going fine here - and at last the Completion popup window opens near the cursor.

7353 characters saved.

However I'm getting duplicates in the Completion list.... why's that ?

Also I was wondering about an overall option for Completions where you can choose between Tab or Space or Return to accept a proposed word - IMHO Return is the optimal option.

Are the Completions totally identical? i.e. no trailing spaces?

I'll definitely add an option to use other triggers apart from tab/numpad.

Thanks!

7353 saved, and let's say you type at 40wpm... that's...er... about... 35 minutes of your valuable time 

[cranioscopical]

FWIW I'd still like an option to tack on a trailing space…

[timns]

FWIW I'd still like an option to tack on a trailing space…

As a sort of global thingy? As it's you...  of course. I'll put it in redmine.

[joiwind]

.60 going fine here - and at last the Completion popup window opens near the cursor.

7353 characters saved.

However I'm getting duplicates in the Completion list.... why's that ?

Also I was wondering about an overall option for Completions where you can choose between Tab or Space or Return to accept a proposed word - IMHO Return is the optimal option.

Are the Completions totally identical? i.e. no trailing spaces?

I'll definitely add an option to use other triggers apart from tab/numpad.

Thanks!

7353 saved, and let's say you type at 40wpm... that's...er... about... 35 minutes of your valuable time 

No trailing spaces - but the dups also tend to disappear then re-appear !

[tomos]

Build 60
[...]
   * Auspex now cooperates with those naughty apps that use the Windows key as a global hotkey modifier

Well done I'm happy - I couldnt get used to the new key I was using for GridMove ....

You've probably noticed this minor GUI issue (or may be reported already):
if the Auspex window is too small, the word "Replacements" disappears. So does the box for the replacement text.
I got caught that way the first time I used it - I couldnt see any sign of where the replacement text was supposed to go - I was trying to add it to the "Name" and couldnt figure out why it wasnt working... (well, I did figure it out)

[timns]

Build 60
[...]
    * Auspex now cooperates with those naughty apps that use the Windows key as a global hotkey modifier

Well done I'm happy - I couldnt get used to the new key I was using for GridMove ....

You've probably noticed this minor GUI issue (or may be reported already):
if the Auspex window is too small, the word "Replacements" disappears. So does the box for the replacement text.
I got caught that way the first time I used it - I couldnt see any sign of where the replacement text was supposed to go - I was trying to add it to the "Name" and couldnt figure out why it wasnt working... (well, I did figure it out)

Thanks for the update, and the further feedback. I'm not very pleased with the GUI - as soon as I've done the rest of the underlying important stuff, I may well change the layout. Gives me an excuse to create a "version 2" at some point!

[cranioscopical]

Gives me an excuse to create a "version 2" at some point!

        o
Oh Go^{^}d!

[timns]

Gives me an excuse to create a "version 2" at some point!

        o
Oh Go^{^}d!

you know you could use an Auspex regex to fix that:

"Oh [G|g]o{1,2}d!" -> "Oooh goody goody the joy is with me!" 

[cranioscopical]

you know you could use an Auspex regex to fix that:

"Oh [G|g]o{1,2}d!" -> "Oooh goody goody the joy is with me!" 

Hoist with my own petard!

[tomos]

I got another problem interaction I'm afraid... (it's with my clipboard extender [edit] which I'm considering changing anyway but thought I'd best report - as far as I know it is used by a good few people here at dc ** [/edit])

First, can you clarify the exclusions speak: 'Block' I presume means ignore?

Okay, the app is the clipboard extender, 'ClipX' http://bluemars.org/clipx/ ClipX 1.0.3.9 beta 7 x86 (Jul. 6th, 2008)
First it didnt work at all so I added it to the exclusion list - that improved things but there's still a bug:

Ctrl+Alt+V will show the list of, eh, clips I can paste.
Normally I can escape out of that list if I cant find what I was looking for (the list is limited) - but I cant 'escape' from that list with Auspex running - no matter what the exclusion setting is.
Again, it does work properly when the Auspex window has focus but not with any other window I've tried

Hope that's clear....

** hmmm I just looked at the ClipX page, it hasnt been updated since 2008 - maybe I should simply change my Clip app...


EDIT2/ the problem only seems to be when I'm writing in a browser window (e.g. here) or in a html 'rich text' window (e.g. InfoQube/Evernote2xx)

[tomos]

Re Alt+Tab:

(just in case it helps)
I noticed that Alt+Shift+Tab does work when the Auspex window has focus

hope that helps, - boy this app will be the death of the Acronym ;-)

[timns]

Some excellent reporting there, thank you very much (or 'tvm' as we Auspex users say  )

I'll look into the clipboard thing, and of course the shift+alt+tab, which annoyingly I was sure was now ok. May well be related to the AHK thing reported here a week or so back, with all the 'SHIFT' stuff going on behind the scenes.