square bullets

[Joel Kolstad]

Hi Keith,

I found Make to be far superior to any batch file, even when I was using
DOS. When I built for the final test I'd simply delete *.obj and rerun
Make.

I was thinking of suggesting that to John, but it then occurred to me that I
think I spend more time getting "fancy" makefiles to work than I ever do
getting "fancy" batch files to do so (I use 4NT as a replacement on Windoze
for cmd.exe, and it has a lovely batch file debugger built-in). As such, I've
started to think of make more as a program to use when you care about
efficiency (only compiling the programs that actually need it) rather than
simplicity or ease of development; in many cases for something like a
microcontroller re-building from scratch using a batch file is still <5
seconds on a modern PC.

And I swear that some of the makefiles that the UNIX gurus write are absurdly
complex mainly for the sake of demonstrating just how "cool" the author is...

I don't understand what a GUI has to do with "rigid control". DO
you use CVS? If not CVS or something like it, IMO you really don't have
the control you may think you have (yes, CVS is a PITA).

I like Visual Sourcesafe, although I'd admit that when using a version control
system from a command line (rather than the fancy GUI), CVS is pretty much the
same.

 

[Keith]

If your project is part source and part obj's, are the obj's
(standard? 3rd party?) libraries, or do you just want to save time by
only recompiling things that change?

Generally save time, but the projects are usually done by more than
one person (last distribution list I counted for the project I'm on
now was over 250).

I'm *so* glad I don't do big systems! I type "GO" <enter> and my
entire rebuild is done in, say, 1.5 seconds. And I can archive an
entire project, tools and all, on one floppy.

It takes about ten minutes just to build a (two state) sim model
for the *small* corner of the chip I'm working on. The last
project (similar chip, different unit) would take an hour on the
largest system I had access to and another three days on a pool of
hundreds of systems for basic regression, just to make sure nothing
major got broken. ...and there are another eight or ten units and
chip regression going on at the same time.

Even with the differences in the scope of our projects, I think I'd
use something like CVS for version control in a small one-man
operation too. It's too easy to get something out of sync. BTDT.

 

[Rich Grise]

Go hunting? I typed "free PDF software" into Google years ago and
found http://www.pdf995.com which was a free shell program for Ghost
Script. It installed in under a minute and has worked well every
since. How many users ever need to create a PDF?

Speaking of PDFs, the PHB called me into his office the other day, and
shows me an email from some client, who has attached a couple of PDFs,
and asks if we can edit them. I says, "Well, as far as I know, you can,
but you have to buy special software." So, the PHB plunks down $299.00
and I download the full Acrobat Standard.

Turns out, it _can_ edit a pdf, _IF_ the pdf was originally created with
Acrobat 7.0, and you have the same system fonts that were used when it
was created. Other than that, it's useless. Well, It can create PDFs,
just like PDF995 does for free. So, I called the business office of
Adobe, and said, "I want my money back!" The gal said, "OK, just print
out our Letter Of Destruction:
http://www.adobe.com/support/pdfs/LoD_return.pdf ,
fill that out, and fax it in, and we'll credit your account within
48 hours." And she was all cheerful about it, like, they can afford to
refund a few dissatisfied otherwise-customers' money, because they're
raking it in hand over fist from the rubes.

One interesting thing - I called tech support, and said, "OK, I've got
the software, now is it or is it not possible to edit an existing pdf
file?" He says, "Yes." I said, "How?" and he said, "Our fee for continued
tech support is $39.00..." I cut him off. "WHAT!!!!!!?!?!?!?!? I just
plunked down three hundred bucks for this software, and now, in order to
get it to operate as advertised, you want me to pay you MORE???? Screw
That!" Which is when I called their main number again, and it was as
simple as pressing "2" for the refund department, which turned out OK,
see above.
</anecdote>

THanks,
Rich

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Rich,

You might want to check out these guys:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/pe_intro.php . You can try it out for
free...

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

I found PDFCreator first. I had a license for Adobe PDFWriter, but
the install of PDF 7.0 (I think it was 7) caused so much grief that
I had to uninstall everything PDF and start over, so lost
PDFWriter. PDFCretor is good enough.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/


How many users know it's possible?

Less than 1% would be my guess.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Manuals? This laptop came with *NO STEENKIN' MANUALS*.


BS. Ever try to fix a Windows registry problem? Where's the
documentation for that? Hmm? Windows is 25% of the price of an
entry level system. By comparison, Linux is free.

Older versions of Windows allowed you to type scanreg /fix from the
C: prompt to fix a lot of problems. I am looking at a program called
"Brute Force Uninstaller" that lets you write scripts to remove unwanted
programs cleanly, and leave no trail in the registry. Its a freeware
package from http://www.merijn.org/ where you can find some other free
and useful software tools.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Rich Grise]

Rich,

You might want to check out these guys:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/pe_intro.php . You can try it out for
free...

No need - I installed PDF995 months ago, and it's been working just fine.

Thanks!
Rich

 

[Jim Thompson]

Rich,

You might want to check out these guys:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/pe_intro.php . You can try it out for
free...

Hi Joel, That looks interesting. Have you used it yourself?

...Jim Thompson

 

[Keith]

Older versions of Windows allowed you to type scanreg /fix from the
C: prompt to fix a lot of problems. I am looking at a program called
"Brute Force Uninstaller" that lets you write scripts to remove unwanted
programs cleanly, and leave no trail in the registry. Its a freeware
package from http://www.merijn.org/ where you can find some other free
and useful software tools.

IFF you know what registry keys to edit. The registry is simply a
horrible design. Note that no special tools ae needed for Linux
(or OS/2). Just delete the programs that aren't wanted.

Editing Window's registry is equivalent to playing russian roulette
with your data.

 

[Jim Thompson]

IFF you know what registry keys to edit. The registry is simply a
horrible design. Note that no special tools ae needed for Linux
(or OS/2). Just delete the programs that aren't wanted.

Editing Window's registry is equivalent to playing russian roulette
with your data.

I've never quite understood why we had to switch to a registry
approach.

For years and years INI files sufficed quite nicely. Some of my
"golden-oldies" work just fine under XP with just an INI file.

...Jim Thompson

 

[martin griffith]

No need - I installed PDF995 months ago, and it's been working just fine.

Thanks!
Rich

There is also primoPDF and PDFcreator, I stopped using 995 since it
kept calling home for adverts/sponsors, Primo works just fine


martin

 

[Keith]

I've never quite understood why we had to switch to a registry
approach.

Oh, but it's such a good place to hide tracking information,
timestamps for product expiration, and such things. It keeps BillG
in Chinese food.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

IF you know what registry keys to edit. The registry is simply a
horrible design. Note that no special tools ae needed for Linux
(or OS/2). Just delete the programs that aren't wanted.

Editing Window's registry is equivalent to playing russian roulette
with your data.

I've edited the registry for years with no problems. The idea is to
create a script to clean up all of the computers I repair for disabled
veterans to remove all traces of common programs where I can't just
reformat the hard drive and start over. Remove a program once while
writing a script and save the script to the workshop server for the next
time. Then combine a number of scripts to save time. Start the program
and let it run while I'm busy doing something else. Its a lot faster to
fix a few problems than to start over, and if I can let a program do
most of the work its even easier.

I have collected the install disks for a lot of software that i have
to remove so I am going to take a freshly installed copy of the OS, save
a text copy of the registry. Then I will install the program and save
another text copy of the registry. I will locate all the new and
changed files, and write the script for that program.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Joel Kolstad]

I've never quite understood why we had to switch to a registry
approach.

For a single user, the only particularly good benefit that I can think of is
that it makes backing up programs' settings somewhat easier, because they're
all held in one place. When you get into company environments with many users
with different hardware configurations, it's a lot easier to configure
software when all of their settings are in one known spot (the registry)
rather than in an unpredictable directory somewhere (since different machines
and users will typically have their software installed in different
locations).

For years and years INI files sufficed quite nicely. Some of my
"golden-oldies" work just fine under XP with just an INI file.

INI files don't allow multiple levels of hierarchy, and while I'd readily
admit that software guys seem to often like to impose somewhat artificial
hierarchies, software development today does consist of a lot of "drag and
drop" design, and if each control needs to store its own settings somewhere,
it's a lot easier for that control to have a specified place to do so (the
registry again of course) rather than somehow having to interact with the
"main" program whenever settings need to be stored. A good example would be,
say, a toolbar button control that saves its position and what all the buttons
on the toolbar are -- it's a lot cleaner if the toolbar button control class
worries about saving all that information and the program it's a part of
doesn't need to know. Although I wouldn't suggest it's pretty, having 50
different registry branches to store all this information is probably better
than having 50 different .ini files floating around your hard drive.

The registry approach was created in an attempt to solve some real problems
with INI files, although I think the solution wasn't as good as was initially
envisioned. If XML had already been around when Microsoft was cooking up the
registry, perhaps they would have used that instead.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

IFF you know what registry keys to edit. The registry is simply a
horrible design. Note that no special tools ae needed for Linux
(or OS/2). Just delete the programs that aren't wanted.

Umm... are you forgetting all those .fubar_rc files that litter a user's home
directory in *NIX? There are plenty of times when they're not documented
either and -- unlike Window's registry or even .Ini files! -- there's no
agreed upon standard for what their format ought to be; every software author
has to "roll their own" standard or use one of the dozens of different
implementations that are available out there. Yecch!

The various Linux desktops even have a hard time agreeing how a software
installation routine is supposed to register a new program with their "Start"
menus. Uggh... But it is this "registration" that makes it ill-advised to
just delete a program executable in Windows OR Linux -- when you install a
control of software package, you're telling the system, "I'm ready to run and
interoperate with you!" and just deleting the executable doesn't remove that
"annoucement" (a registry entry in Wndows, some .config file in *NIX);
obviously not a good idea for a robust system.

Editing Window's registry is equivalent to playing russian roulette
with your data.

That's why they make it easy to back up, and the system even does so
automatically for you at potentially "dangerous" spots (such as when you
install a new device driver).

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Hi Jim,

Hi Joel, That looks interesting. Have you used it yourself?

No, but I have used (and own a copy of) Foxit Reader Pro (after trying the
100% free version for awhile). It's not perfect -- it has several
non-negligible bugs, such as not always remembering toolbar positions, search
becoming very slow in a small number of documents for some inexplicable
reason, printing not working correctly with a small handful of printers,
etc. -- but in at least 99% of the cases it's as good as Acrobat Reader and
the ~1.5MB footprint (and no installation required -- just run the executable
directly!) makes it look quickly on any machine. That's why I originally
tried it -- we have some old lab machines that are something like 600MHz
Pentiums, and occasionally I'd want to pull up a data sheet on one and Acrobat
Reader 6 is *painfully* slow to start-up and run on such machines.

---Joel

 

[Rich Grise]

Umm... are you forgetting all those .fubar_rc files that litter a user's home
directory in *NIX? There are plenty of times when they're not documented
either and -- unlike Window's registry or even .Ini files! -- there's no
agreed upon standard for what their format ought to be; every software author
has to "roll their own" standard or use one of the dozens of different
implementations that are available out there. Yecch!

The various Linux desktops even have a hard time agreeing how a software
installation routine is supposed to register a new program with their "Start"
menus. Uggh... But it is this "registration" that makes it ill-advised to
just delete a program executable in Windows OR Linux -- when you install a
control of software package, you're telling the system, "I'm ready to run and
interoperate with you!" and just deleting the executable doesn't remove that
"annoucement" (a registry entry in Wndows, some .config file in *NIX);
obviously not a good idea for a robust system.

Apparently you've never heard of RPM's or Slackware packages. There's even
a utility that comes with Slackware that will make a "real" Slackware
package from source. You still do "configure", and "make", but then you
run "checkinstall", which creates the package and installs it. It keeps
all of its records in /var/log/packages, which has a file for every
package installed on the system, telling removepkg exactly what to delete.

And about your .fubar_rc files, if I uninstall fubar, and it doesn't clean
up its own config files, at least I know where they are to delete them
myself.

That's why they make it easy to back up, and the system even does so
automatically for you at potentially "dangerous" spots (such as when you
install a new device driver).

I just don't trust any S/W that does stuff without telling me what it's
doing. Or worse, does stuff I didn't _tell_ it to do.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Hi Rich,

Apparently you've never heard of RPM's or Slackware packages. There's even
a utility that comes with Slackware that will make a "real" Slackware
package from source. You still do "configure", and "make", but then you
run "checkinstall", which creates the package and installs it. It keeps
all of its records in /var/log/packages, which has a file for every
package installed on the system, telling removepkg exactly what to delete.

Last I was playing with such things (over a year ago), getting start menu
icons wasn't something that worked on all the (popular) desktops out there,
but I suppose that since desktops seem to have been boiled down to KDE and
Gnome for probably 90+% of users, this has been sorted out? What you're
describing sounds like a step in the right direction, although it still
doesn't pass the "grandma" test of just being able to click setup.exe and go.

Keith was claiming that he could just delete a program's executable on *NIX
compared with the hassles of Windoze's add/remove programs routine; what I was
trying to point out was that *NIX surely needed such functionality as well.
The "removepkg" bit is new to me, but appears to perform that function.

And about your .fubar_rc files, if I uninstall fubar, and it doesn't clean
up its own config files, at least I know where they are to delete them
myself.

I'd say the chance of *not* being able to find a Windows program's setting
under HKLM and HKCU/Software/Company Name/Product name is only marginally
higher than not being able to find a *NIX's program's seettings under ~MyName.

I just don't trust any S/W that does stuff without telling me what it's
doing. Or worse, does stuff I didn't _tell_ it to do.

That's reasonable enough, although any of the mainstream Linux distributions
installs plenty of daemons during a "default" install just as Windows has
plenty of start-up processes by default. Granted, In Linux it's probably a
little easier to track down where a process came from compared to Windows.
(In particular, it seems like almost no one in Windows *wants* to use the
Startup, preferring to use the registry auto-run keys instead.. .it's hard to
believe this isn't done as a slightly sleazy attempt to make control of one's
own machine a little bit harder...)

---Joel

 

[Ken Smith]

I found Make to be far superior to any batch file, even when I was using
DOS. When I built for the final test I'd simply delete *.obj and rerun
Make.

Its better to create your Makefile with fake targets for that sort of
thing.

You can then type:

make clean to remove all temp files
make all to do a total debug build
make flash to make the shipped result (yes it goes in a flash)

I use a combination of make files and batch files. There are some things
that make just doesn't do well. For these, a batch file that runs make
works better.

I don't understand what a GUI has to do with "rigid control".

A GUI with only one button:


-------------------
! !
! ------- !
! ! DO IT ! !
! ------- !
! !
-------------------

Is what is needed here.

DO
you use CVS? If not CVS or something like it, IMO you really don't have
the control you may think you have (yes, CVS is a PITA).

I've only ever worked on one project that used purchased CVS tools. It
got totally screwed up. We had one "programmer" who would "get" a file,
copy it to his Mac and then "put" it back unchanged. Later he would "get"
the file and over write it from his Mac and "put" the new version. This
totally screwed things for everyone.

Since then it has been more like this:

Dave: I need to work on XYZ.A51
Ken: Ok here's a CD with it on
...... time passes ...
Dave: I'm done with XYZ.A51. Here's the changed version.

This along with making a full backup of the source at all important points
and always putting our names and the dates in the comments has worked well
for us.

 

[Ken Smith]

Read the manuals guys, then complain. IMHO for $100, XP is damn good
value. WAAAAY easier to maintain and operate than Linux GUIs.

So, what is Microsoft paying these days?