This is the archived version of Roland Weigelt's weblog that ran from 2003 to 2023 at weblogs.asp.net

Contents tagged with Tools

  • GhostDoc 1.2.1 released

    6 Comments

    While working on version 1.3.0, I ran across some minor issues in 1.2.0 that were pretty easy to fix. These fixes are now available in version 1.2.1.

    Download: on the GhostDoc homepage

    What's New:

    • Fixed: Under certain circumstances, acronyms used in parameter names that are referenced in summary texts are not handled correctly (the first character of the acronym is shown in lowercase).
    • Added: Better visual feedback after pressing "Import" and "Upgrade" buttons during setup, now the wait cursor appears while the determining the differences between the two configuration (current/imported or default/imported).

  • What do you use for bug/issue tracking of your private projects?

    4 Comments

    Currently I'm using an Excel sheet for keeping track of bugs and change requests for my Visual Studio Add-in GhostDoc. The worksheet was easy to set up and definitely does its job -- for now. But I'm not sure how things work out in a couple of weeks or months.

    Searching for "bug tracking freeware" on Google, there doesn't actually seem to be a shortage of tools I could try, given an infinite amount of time (which I don't have). So I'm asking the bloggers out there who have their little private pet project running for some time now: How do you keep track of things? I would definitely prefer something that doesn't require a web server.

  • GhostDoc 1.2.0 released

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    Version 1.2.0 originally was planned to contain mostly new rules; but it turned out that many of the planned rules require some kind of individual customization/configuration, so this had to be taken care of first. Internally, this release now does use configuration settings for each rule (e.g. templates for the generated texts), but the dialogs for actually editing these settings have not been implemented yet (they will be part of a 1.3.0 release). From a user's point of view, version 1.2.0 contains some important bug fixes and new rules for handling properties and methods with names starting on "Is", "Has" and "Can". 

    Download: on the GhostDoc homepage

    Note for users of version 1.1.2

    During setup, GhostDoc upgrades configuration settings of previous version (stored in the file "Weigelt.GhostDoc.gdc"). Usually this file is located in the GhostDoc installation directory, but due to a bug in version 1.1.2 the file was stored in the root directory of one of your hard drives.

    If you have made changes when using version 1.1.2 that you want to keep, you can import the old settings using the "import" feature on the configuration dialog (see the help file for more information), then delete the ".gdc" file in the root directory.

    What's New:

    • Added: New rules for handling method names starting with "Is", "Has" or "Can".
    • Added: New rule for handling property names starting with "Is" or "Has".
    • Added: Internal changes in preparation for rules to be configurable individually (affecting e.g. import/export) in future versions.
    • Changed: During the setup phase, importing and upgrading configurations can now be distinguished(button and window title renamed).
    • Fixed: Editing the adjectives for the "of the" reordering does not enable the "Apply" button; pressing the "OK" button does not store the changes. If anything else is modified in the configuration dialog, the changes will be stored correctly.
    • Fixed: Configuration file is stored at the wrong location (root of the installation drive). This bug was introduced in 1.1.2.
    • Fixed: GhostDoc can be affected by installing other add-ins, sometimes setup dialogs are shown again when Visual Studio is started.

  • GhostDoc 1.1.0 released

    2 Comments

    A new version of GhostDoc, the winner of Roy Osherove's Visual Studio add-in contest, is available - finally! Some bugfixes, some new features, an all-new help file, some eye-candy... but the most important work was done on turning a contest entry (with some corners cut to meet the deadline) into a stable foundation for the coming versions. To have this whole thing manageable, I pretty early on decided to push most of my ideas and the feature requests of users to version 1.2.0 -- looking back, a wise decision as finishing 1.1.0 turned out to be pretty painful.

    Download: on the GhostDoc homepage (Edit 2004-08-31: removed link to a specific version)

    First Steps

    • Install the MSI
    • Start Visual Studio to complete the setup

    After installation, the Windows start menu contains a sub-menu "Programs -> Weigelt -> GhostDoc" with shortcuts to the help file and the demo project.

    If you hate reading manuals, you should at least take a look at "How do I see some action without reading boring stuff?" -- the link to that topic is on the start page of the help file ;-) 

    What's New:

    • Added: Configuration dialog for acronyms and words involved in reordering operations happening when sentences are generated from identifier names (e.g. "of the", "no the" words).
    • Added: Import/Export of settings (on the configuration dialog).
    • Added: Help file and help in dialogs.
    • Changed: The "of the" reordering now checks for certain adjectives affecting "of the" trigger words and takes them into account while reordering.
      Example: If "size" is configured as an "of the" trigger word and "initial" as an adjective, then "initialPageBufferSize" will be translated to "initial size of the page buffer" instead of "size of the initial page buffer" (as in Version 1.0x). In contrast, "primaryPageBufferSize" will still be translated to "size of the primary page buffer" (because "primary" is not on the list).
    • Changed: The rule for method names consisting of only one word now checks for parameters and adjusts the generated doc comment accordingly ("<Verb> this instance." for methods without parameters, "<Verb> the specified <first param text>." of methods with parameters.).
    • Fixed: Bug in the automatic detection of acronyms -- words consisting of consonants and only one vowel at the start of the word (e.g. "Add") were classified as acronyms.
    • Fixed: Bug in the handling of all-uppercase words in identifiers -- the words (e.g. ID) were split into single characters.
    • Fixed: Bug when documenting properties in interfaces -- XML documentation comment didn't appear (reason was a fat bug in Visual Studio's CodeDOM; I'll have to check whether this still exists in VS2005 as soon as I get the copy I ordered at Microsoft).

  • WinXP SP2 - How to Replace Notepad.exe

    18 Comments

    Installing SP2 brought back good ol' Notepad... what a shock. So I performed my usual steps for replacing Notepad with Florian Balmer's excellent Notepad2:

    • Create backup copy of c:\WINDOWS\notepad.exe
    • Change Explorer view options to show system files
    • In temporary folder: Prepare new notepad.exe.
    • Copy the EXE into the clipboard
    • Open folder C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache in Explorer
    • Ctrl-V, Backspace
    • Ctrl-V, Backspace
    • Ctrl-V, Backspace
    • Answer the "insert WinXP CD" dialog so Notepad won't be reverted to the original version.

    But this time the dialog didn't appear and after a few seconds Notepad was changed back to the original (huh, what original? Didn't I just overwrite the version in the dllcache directory?).

    Well, with SP2 there's a Notepad.exe in C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 that will overwrite the replaced versions. After creating a backup copy of C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\Notepad.exe and replacing this file with the new EXE I tried to replace Notepad again -- with success (even though no dialogs appeared).

    Update 2007-07-31: My colleague Jens Schaller has posted a how-to for replacing Notepad on Windows Vista. 

  • "Edit in Notepad" Entry in Explorer Context Menu

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    Busy preparing version 1.10 of GhostDoc, I'm currently writing the help file (CHM). I haven't spent much time yet on looking for a help authoring tool, so I'm using the HTML Help Workshop which is fully sufficient for the few pages I want to combine in a CHM file. It's one of those "it works, but man who designed the GUI" tools, and some things are done definitely faster when editing the .hhk, .hhp or .hhc file in Notepad (I'm using Florian Balmer's Notepad2 as a replacement).

    I have a shortcut to Notepad in my "Send to" for quite some time now, but recently I got really tired moving my mouse from the top of the explorer context menu to the "Send to" menu over and over again. Fortunately, writing a small registry hack for creating an "Edit in Notepad" entry near the top of the context menu is trivial, here's the .reg file:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Edit in Notepad]

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Edit in Notepad\command]
    @="notepad.exe \"%l\""

  • Cool Google Search Macro for Visual Studio

    1 Comment

    Marty Garins wrote a really cool macro for performing a Google search from Visual Studio.

     

    See the feedback section of that blog entry for a minor addition I proposed (urlencoding of the search text). By the time you are reading this, it may already be included in the macro code.

    Tip: If you want to limit your search to the MSDN site, add the red text to line building the URL string:

    Dim url As String = String.Format("http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Amsdn.microsoft.com+{0}", selectedText)

  • GhostDoc Delay

    1 Comment

    As the public interest regarding GhostDoc was next to zero (which isn't necessarily a bad thing at this phase of the project), I've done a quiet release of version 0.9, available only to some of my colleagues at work. The overall reaction was very positive and a lot of "cool, I want more" ideas  poured in which showed that they did "get" what GhostDoc is about. Unfortunately, when planning the future direction for GhostDoc, it became pretty obvious that the way the rules for method and properties are currently defined is a dead-end.

    So I have decided that there will be no public release of version 0.9. I will completely rework GhostDoc towards a more extensible architecture, even if this means I have to throw away a lot of work done in January. No idea how long this will take, but I try to make several small steps to minize the risk of getting carried away. More details will follow later.

  • GhostDoc has reached Dogfood Status

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    A lot has happened since my last GhostDoc related posting. The addin version of GhostDoc is pretty close to a first public release. I'm already using it both at home and at work, but it's a bit complicated to keep the two configurations in sync. It's not really rewarding to define more specialized rules if you can't move them to a different machine. So I've decided to delay the release until some very basic import / export functions are implemented. They will be ugly, but straightforward to use and fully sufficient for a 0.9 version.

    Here are two screenshots of configuration dialogs:

    1. The main dialog

    2. The dialog for editing a property rule: