Multiple HTMLs into a Single Document – MultiDoc2HTML v0.2 – Redesigned & Recoded…

Refer to my post on MultiDoc2HTMLv0.1 and I explained why I had to develop this software. The initial version that I started writing ran into some problems which I guess happened because of a corrupt installation of office on my PC or maybe the associated ActiveX libraries. Then I got an innovative mechanism running so the code worked fine. The only problem was that there were 2 executables reading and writing to an anonymous pipe and waiting on each other wasting (precious ;)) computing cycles. So I re-wrote this version in C# with .NET 3.5. This version is a single lean/mean executable of 15KB.

Application

It is very easy to use, and free of some bugs (which I hope you already discovered) in v0.1. This software is an easy replacement to commercial tools which are generally e-book compilers. But who wants such a heavy package when all they need to do is combine multiple HTMLs into a single document. As I wrote in my previous post, MS Word has a function to insert HTML files into word. But it only works with around 25-30 HTML pages and after that without a warning the function gives up. Spooky as it sounds, I have experienced it on quite a few PCs now. Another interesting thing with MS Word is that it uses a lot of temporary files for recovery, etc. so generally automation fails because of this. I had to code a hack in this version to avoid that kind of a behavior. I generally close my Word automation server after every 25 inserts and re-open after that. Now the application is very scalable and can run multiple threads concurrently to have multiple documents generated and then merge all of them into one document. That maybe a task for the future version. Right now there is only a single worker thread.

I have tested the application with 1000 HTML files and it got a very nice word document out without any problems either with the automation server or sequencing. You can download the application by clicking here (Get MultiDoc2HTML v0.2). I have also posted the source code in my forum which can be found at: Forum Discussion: Multiple HTMLs into a Single Document – MultiDoc2HTML v0.2.

Ciao and have fun computing…

Girlfriend 6.0 vs. Wife 1.0-Comparative Trial

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it’s a memory hog leaving very little system resources available for other applications. He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.

Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He’s finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

Some features he’d like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.

1. a "Don’t remind me again" button
2. a Minimize button
3. An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 be installed with the option to uninstall at any time without the loss of cache and other system resources
4. An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode which would allow the system’s hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

I myself decided to avoid the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 7.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 7.0 on top of Girlfriend 6.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 6.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug that I should have known about. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conficts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, The uninstall program for Girlfriend 6.0 doesn’t work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system. Another thing — all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.

EasySMSv0.1 for Windows Mobile 6.x – Source Code

My previous post http://www.naresh.se/2009/09/24/easysmsv0-1-for-windows-mobile-6-x/ describes in detail why I created EasySMSv0.1 for my Windows Mobile device. Just search the Internet for “tmail.exe crashing in Windows Mobile” and you will find loads of people with the problem. Not one of them has been able to find a proper solution. I have created the application to have a possible solution to typing in an SMS and sending it to your list of contacts. Some applications like “BaselsSMSer” were good but had their shortcomings. No copy, paste content features, no group mailing, etc. were pretty frustrating. And some like “Power SMS” were completely useless and did not meet my criteria. And most of these were paid. Phew.. so I created my own.

Now as promised, I have published the source code for the software. It can be found on my forum at: Source Code for EasySMSv0.1.

The same post also talks about other features that I am planning to add to this software. So this is not the last of the EasySMS versions that you have seen. If you have ideas and feature requests, do not hesitate to reply me on the forum thread or this post.

Have fun computing…

EasySMSv0.1 for Windows Mobile 6.x

The tmail.exe (i.e. the messaging application) on my Windows Mobile v6.1 is crashing all the time and it really frustrates me. The other effect was that I was not able to write to my contacts or do anything with the messaging application which left me paralyzed and it also felt as a big drop in the functionality of my Windows Mobile device. I have an ASUS P570 updated with the latest code. The repetitive crashing started happening after I was in Germany and I don’t know why, it has never stopped. Google search brought up a lot of people with similar problems and as always people had lots of advice to give. I didn’t want to do a hard reset on my device because it has a lot of data and registry settings as well as is very tightly coupled to applications on my storage card. After some searching around, I found Basel’s SMS Sender to be quite a tool but it lacks functionality like sending to multiple contacts, copy, paste of the content, etc.

So I decided to write my own app which satisfies my requirements. The binary CAB installer for EasySMSv0.1 is available at http://funcomputing.uuuq.com/downloads/ … taller.CAB

The application can send SMS to one or multiple contacts from phonebook to other numbers then mobile, with multiple concatenated SMS support. It also takes in numbers typed in directly and as an added bonus, allows you to spam the people around. Though I do not recommend using it since spamming others will get you into their black book and you will be charged for each and every SMS that you send.
The application works pretty good. I will soon post the source code and am also thinking of future enhancements to make.

 

Please use the thread http://www.naresh.se/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12 in my forum to discuss and submit bugs/ideas for the application, etc. The source will be published on the link in the forum thread which can be downloaded only if you are a registered member of the forum. Enjoy and keep computing.

One more language! – NOOP (NOP) from Google…

I first started working with languages when I was born! Seriously, I had to learn the so called “Human Languages” to communicate with other humans, a couple of them were basically restricted to my region/country and one which is accepted universally (at least with the people I am working with). During my school days I started with another set of languages which one needed to grasp in order to communicate with a mathematical machine known as ”Computer”. In that sense, my first computer language might be Finite State Machine/Automata (FSM/FSA) which I studied in my school. Then BASIC, C, C++, Java, etc. during my graduation period. After that variants of those main languages with use of extra class libraries such as Visual Basic, Visual C++ (with MFC & ATL), ASP, JSP, JDBC, ODBC, etc. Recently I am doing more and more stuff in CSharp (C#).

Imagine the mess I am getting myself into working with different languages and not to mention various libraries which provide similar functionality in different ways. And then comes one more language NOOP which runs on JVM and is very much similar to Java! Huh, is it not more class libraries? Maybe instead of Java Main it might have a NOOP Main which ultimately calls Java Main from inside some class/wrapper library? So why is Google inventing a new language instead of just releasing some strongly typed libraries? As I understand, it wants to be everywhere. The day is not far when Google will come out with its own high level assembler.

Anyways, one of the interesting thing I found was that NOOP would not have any statics. So no singleton entities or maybe singleton implemented using some intricate library calls. No implementation inheritance means no subclassing and I don’t even want to know how OOD will survive without that. Or maybe I am too old and too much into assembly! No primitives is something I am looking forward to but I am not sure what kind of load that will put on the system. Again it might be good for user mode non-critical applications but can it do any real mathematics (try building a calculator with inter changeable types i.e. simply using objects and typecasting or leaving it to the compiler’s mercy for runtime interpretation of values).

Lets see how it turns up and if Google somehow manages to impose it on us gullible folks once again. Check out more on: http://code.google.com/p/noop/