NANY 2011 Release: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App

[timns]

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.

[joiwind]

Yup, sorry for the bother, I really can't understand what's happening. I thought it might be the remnants of a FF add-on - Keyscrambler - that were till hanging around and in fact yes, although I have uninstalled FF long ago (I use K-Meleon) there was a keyscrambler.sys driver still there. I have deleted it but still no joy.

My keyboard driver is the usual MS one, version : 5.1.2600.1106

[timns]

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)

[Perry Mowbray]

with build 28...

Is there a problem with the System Tray Icon? A couple of times now Auspex won't restore from the Tray and the process is chugging away on the CPU...

It's happened twice now... I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for a recurrent reason...

[jpijper]

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

[timns]

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... 

[joiwind]

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 ?

[timns]

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 

[joiwind]

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 

-timns (October 05, 2010, 11:04 AM)

Yes, you're right I hadn't checked the 'erase trigger' checkbox...ouf !

[timns]

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?

[cranioscopical]

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

-timns

It ignores my Kedit now 

Thanks for the backup path!

(Plane sailin')

[joiwind]

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

-timns (October 05, 2010, 05:45 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.

[timns]

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... 

[timns]

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!

[timns]

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

[cranioscopical]

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!

-timns (October 07, 2010, 09:22 PM)

Yes    (See #85 above).

[jpijper]

Can't install version 32: appears not be a valid archive ??

Jan Roelof

[tomos]

Can't install version 32: appears not be a valid archive ??

-jpijper (October 08, 2010, 06:30 AM)

I've finally gotten around to installing it (after downloading about 20 versions )

but the point is: it works here
Did you try re-downloading it ? (it may be in the browser cache and damaged so you could try clearing the cache - or use a different browser)

[tomos]

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]

[timns]

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 

[joiwind]

All going well here with v.32.

A suggestion : remember window size and position from last session - but that's probably already in the roadmap.

[timns]

All going well here with v.32.

A suggestion : remember window size and position from last session - but that's probably already in the roadmap.

-joiwind (October 08, 2010, 11:47 AM)

It is now 

[mouser]

how about adding update support using my dcuhelper utility?
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=9607.0
i stand ready to help!

[timns]

From the wiki wiki wiki:

Build 37
New Features

    * Icons for menu items and the options tree
   * You can now freely edit completions to make them even more useful
   * Compatibility mode introduced to try and get Auspex working better with those 'difficult' apps such as KEdit
    * All new and exciting "Productivity Boost Bar" indicator now available in the Statistics window.
   * Completely re-wrote the keyboard handler to try and get it working better with dead keys and Unicode characters
    * About screen's credits window now supports URL's
    * Tree view of all items is now sorted correctly
    * New Refresh button updates the Tree view so you can see any new items which have been added on-the-fly
    * Program's screen size and position are now saved

Bug Fixes

    * Spacebar now closes the completion pop-up

[timns]

how about adding update support using my dcuhelper utility?
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=9607.0
i stand ready to help!

-mouser (October 08, 2010, 09:19 PM)

I may well take you up on that when I reach that point on the map! Thank you, as ever, mr mouser