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Messages - wpswizard

#1
Open Bounties / Re: Icon routines in OS/2
2008.04.09, 19:19:34
Hi all,

Quote from: Pete on 2008.04.08, 15:00:56
Quote from: Criguada on 2008.04.08, 13:59:10
Chris is doing a lot of work with his WPSWizard, and since the other project regarding icons (i.e. PNGDesktop) is commercial, I think we should award the bonus to Chris Wohlgemuth (sp?).

Bye
Cris



Hi Cris

Maybe it would be best to wait until WPSWizard actually works?

So far I have tried all the 0.6.1-a* releases and can only say that it has potential but due to the problems of system lockups/crashes that it introduces all releases have been uninstalled rapidly.

Hopefully there will be a usable version of this software sometime...


Regards

Pete



Just for the record, WPS-Wizard "actually works" for quite a few people. So a "usable version of this software" is available right now.

I won't put my marketing hat on and bend the truth until nobody can recognize it anymore just so everyone can keep a warm and fuzzy feeling. Some will not like the following text and some will label me as an arrogant a**hole. I don't care, it happened before and I'm too old to play those child games.

Pete,

frankly spoken your problem is of no relevance for me for the following reasons.

-First and foremost you are the only one complaining. My time is too valuable to dedicate it to a problem which seldom occurs if at all.
-You fail to provide a ticket in the bug tracker with a usable problem description. Writing of system lockups/crashes in some forum is *not* a proper bug report. I need a crash log or at least a description of the actions you did before a crash happened (which files were involved, which folders, which features were activated etc.). There is quite some debugging support available. Just read the docs.
-You fail to try ideas others suggested to you. For example did you test by now with a non-SMP kernel to see if it's multiprocessor related?

I don't deny your problems but I won't do the tedious debugging for you just because you're not willing or not able to do it (maybe just because you don't have the necessary WPS experience).

Future releases of WPS-Wizard most probably won't fix your problem because I don't work on it. I didn't work on it for the current release, either. The only advice I can give you is trying to find the cause of your crash for yourself by testing, testing, testing with different configurations and issue a bug report afterwards. Yes, this may mean rebooting the system 30 times or more often. I do that, others do that, you can do that. If you don't know how to use a WPS class lister or how to change the install script for customized installs you're simply lost.

There's a commercial product which may be of use for you. Granted this product has it's own fair share of problems and crashes judging from the bug reports I've seen and which is inferior to WPS-wizard.

---

Generally spoken,

- a problem without a ticket in the bug tracker will be ignored
- a problem without an attached description how to see it or without a crash log will be ignored

Regarding the bounty,

everyone can spare his/her breath. I won't claim it for the simple reason the source to WPS-Wizard will not be opened. Some friends have access to it right now but the general public won't. So WPS-Wizard does not qualify anyway.

Why keeping it closed source? Well, something like 11 or 12 years of development went into it (that's longer than some of you are aware of the existence of something like a computer...). It's full of fixes for WPS bugs and I don't intend to disclose this knowledge lightly as it represents a valuable asset. I simply don't like the idea that I will see my own code in some payware a few days after the source is public. In the end it fixes quite a few of the crashes you see in the commercial product.

   Regards 

              Chris

#2
Open Bounties / Re: TrueCrypt port
2008.02.03, 12:45:04
Quote from: The Blue Warper on 2007.11.16, 13:56:34
Hi!

Don't know if any of you already knows about that, but this URL might possibly come useful to someone:

http://people.cs.uu.nl/eelco/aefs/

It's an AEFS-based IFS, though I fear it may be a bit outdated nowadays.  But sources are available, so one could manage to update it to a more current encryption technology level.


It's certainly not outdated with regard to encryption technology. AES is the current industry standard for block encryption. If you think it's outdated you are probably a mathematician working in the cryptanalysis department of the NSA and just invented a secret algorithm to break strong encryption.

The OS/2 implementation probably has some problems wrt security. But that's more an OS/2 kernel problem (e.g. no safe memory areas). But if someone placed a trojan on your OS/2 system to use security holes of OS/2 to read your encrypted data you probably should seek for cover to make sure you won't vanish to some hidden area somewhere in asia or Guantanamo...

BTW there is now a linux port of AEFS as can be seen on the page.

    Regards Chris
#3
Hi David,

one thing I noticed yesterday with the Noia Blue theme. You created a nice icon for the launchpad and assigned it to <WP_LAUNCHPAD> which works ok. If one has a second launchpad (like me) the second one still uses the system default eCS icon. Assigning the icon to the launchpad class instead the ID solves this. The class name is WPLaunchPad. Just a minor thing.

  Regards Chris
#4

The evening I killed the multimedia classes I swore never ever to discuss anything WPS related with anyone having less than 5 years WPS programming experience or less than 7 years SOM programming experience. But anyway here we go...

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
  Hi Cris,

Quote from: Cristiano Guadagnino on 2008.01.31, 14:24:55
Christian, do you have experience with the recent versions of their packages? eSchemes v1.46 is a great improvement over the previous versions, and a HUGE improvement with respect to the tools we previously had to modify eCS's look. We badly need this, even if it is only "looks".

  I had tried to install eSchemes v1.46 in this eCS 2.0RC1 and it caused a real mess: all frame window buttons (close, maximize, etc) vanished (they were working, but vanished) and every dialog control (buttons, radio boxes, check boxes...) stopped to work. The system became unusable and I was not able even of uninstalling it without hack: I had to rename estlrl11.dll, reboot machine, and uninstall eSchemes v1.46. Problem is: it deleted all DLLs (even those from eStyler that come with eCS) and now the eStyler cannot run anymore (it complains about missing dlls). Also, the features provided by eStyler (like gradient colors on titlebars) are not working anymore. And I was not even able to see what eSchemes really does! :(

  The main problem with most WPS enhancers is the fact they do not have a good "uninstall" feature;

eSchemes is not a WPS enhancer. It's a mixture of WPS classes and extensions to PM. The Deluxe version adds some stuff to the multimedia subsystem afaik.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
a good uninstall feature is that once the add-on is uninstalled, the system goes back to the previous state. In the case of eSchemes, the readme says one should backup INIs (I had done that), but backing up INIs cannot help with restoring DLLs. Also, I never suspected eSchemes would replace eStyler. Maybe it is said somewhere (?), but since the program has a different name (eSchemes / eStyler), it was very annoying to verify that I was not able to install a new add-on and, as a result of trying, cannot use the older add-on that was working without problems.

No addon needs to replace any system DLL in OS/2 to add a feature because of the modular design of OS/2. There may be exceptions though (in general just lazyness on the developer side. I also did this before). In the case of eSchemes it's just developer lazyness afaics.

Anyway, I'm confident the eSchemes people got the point by now and will improve the installer.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
   Just as a statement about WPS add-on problems, WPS-Wizzard also game me some headaches. I tried to install it and I thought it worked... but the system became unstable (beeps, WPS hangs, vanishing icons...), even disabling all features in the WPS Wizzard configuration. When installing a icon scheme, even at 32 bit color mode (using Panorama Video Drivers) the icons were washed-out when displayed in small sizes (in eCenter).

I heard rumours in OS/2 land that filing a bug in a bug tracker or notifying the developer sometimes helps fixing a problem.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
I like a lot the features of WPS-Wizzard; its the most impressive WPS feature add-on since xWorkplace - and for that I would like to congratulate the author, which had created good multimedia classes and also superb Audio Data CD/DVD Creator, but I never was able to keep it installed in my three OS/2 systems for the same reason: WPS instability (beeps, hangs etc). I thought it was because I had too much add-ons in my Warp 4.52 CP2's WPS, but this eCS is "vanilla", the only WPS add-ons installed are those that come with eCS 2.0RC1.

WPS-Wizard wasn't tested on any Warp 4 flavour for years. Do you have XWP installed on the other systems? If yes disable features of it to narrow down the problem. Start with disabling turbo folders.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
   Anyway, the uninstall was not without problems also. The system hanged while restarting the WPS and I had to uninstall it the ugly way: renaming its DLLs, rebooting, running checkini, cleaning all references to its classes and THEN uninstall it.

When the WPS is already broken (beeps and hangs) because of a bad class registration or whatever an uninstall program has a hard job to do it's job because the program of course is designed to remove something from a *working* system. That's the whole point about creating an INI archive. Being able to remove a class without relying on a working WPS.

BTW your 'ugly way' of deinstalling is in fact the best to do it. Remove the DLL and run checkini to discard all traces of a broken class or registration. Way better than using the OS/2 system API to do a class removal.
There is no point in running the uninstall afterwards because the classes are already gone.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
   I would like to notice that I am *not* complaining about the authors.  ;) They are doing a supreme effort to keep OS/2 / eCS alive, with new functionality and updated look and feel  :) ; but WPS is really tricky: it allows these updates, but there are a lot of checks that must be done before the install program could extend it.

As a matter of fact you can't do and don't have to do many checks prior to installation. For WPS extensions the problems are *not* related to installation.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
Also, the install should save files needed for a correct uninstall process *and* the uninstall should work even when things had gone wrong (since most people uninstall a program like those exactly because something has gone wrong!).

   Maybe serenity systems should spend some time extending WarpIn so WPS add-ons could be installed and uninstalled without those problems.

If I got a dollar each time someone suggest to use WarpIn for installation to fix a bug in the WPS (did I mention the problems with WPS extensions are not related to installation?) I'd be a rich man today.
BTW WarpIn already has the ability to install WPS extensions. It was made for XWP in the end.

Quote from: djcaetano on 2008.01.31, 15:18:44
I know how to cope with this mess, if needed I am able to open a class list, delete the offending class, locate and rename faulty DLL files and somewhat restore the system manually, but many users can't and then we are obligated to listen that old story that "OS/2 needs to be reinstalled once every month, which is annoying" ... :(

To overcome the WPS extension mess one had to replace the whole class management and loading part in SOM and fine tune it. That may for example prevent the WPS from loading a DLL twice and thus messing up all the DLLs internal data structures.
I don't know if anyone is thinking about doing that or if any of the eCS people care about this at all.

It was my intention to reply to more posts of this thread in this message but for some reason the quote feature does not work for me so I leave it as it is... This may leave the impression my remarks in this posting are only directed to the author of the quotes.
Most of my remarks apply to quite a few posts in this or other threads.

   Regards Chris