Related
There are a lot of great things on this web site, but not much for the real newbie. This submission is to help newbies get up to speed. The concepts and some details here can help almost any newbie with any PDA.
I’ve worked with computers for 30 years since they were driven by “audio cassette” tapes. BUT I’m a PDA newbie! When I got my PDA, a Cingular 8525 (HTC Hermes), I compared it to my last cell phone and was amazed that it had a color screen. I had no clue how I was supposed to get it to do what I wanted it to do. Since I‘m retired, I spent long hours on many days researching, finding free software, and learning and doing things to make it what I wanted. These are the results. I’m not going to go into all the research, just give you the findings and actions. Read your manual or download one from the Internet to learn the very basics of your phone. Try every possible button, menu and program to see what they do. Don‘t be afraid to crash your PDA at this point so long as you know how to do a Hard Reset (HR). I’m not going to give keystrokes on how to find the following data. Just don’t transfer important information to the PDA until later.
First, decide what you need to do versus what you would like it to do. Here’s what I wanted. I travel a lot and wanted a mini computer I could do MS Office work on, access the Internet to take care of business, call home on, find my way in strange locations, and enjoy a little. IOW, do what my desktop does except I wanted to carry it in my pocket.
One thing that will happen while you are doing all the following is that many of the PDA programs will show up as installations in your “Add/Remove Program” program in your Control Panel on your desktop. Since this includes entries going into your registry, it can lead to different problems. I use Norton Ghost back up to totally back up my system drive, let things happen as they will, then restore it back to normal when I’m all done. Then I install only ActiveSync, MyMobiler and Remote Keyboard plus a few others than I want to sync with when I connect occasionally. You should strongly consider doing this yourself.
First, I found out what I had - A full install of WM6 with several programs I really didn’t want and a real problem when I began loading program I wanted - not enough memory. The device says I have 64 Mb of RAM and 128 Mb of Flash memory (this is the “hard disk” storage available). When I looked at memory allocation it said:
Storage Program
Total 44.77 48.77
In Use 10.96 23.55
Free 33.81 25.20
This means out of the 128 Mb of storage 44.77 + 48.77 = 93.54 Mb were available and being used. Where’s the rest? Being taken up by the Extended ROM which holds the installation and system programs you are safer NOT playing with unless you know how to - like RegEdit, Task Manager (not Task), etc. These are system “hidden” files you can play with and really screw up your PDA. With “AdvancedConfiguration” you can set Extended ROM to be read and used. Also, almost ½ of the total available area set aside for Program installation on the hard disk was already used. I tried and found I could NOT delete or move any of the originally loaded files in “Windows” folder. We’re stuck with the bloat.
I haven’t found out for sure but (someone correct me here, please) the Storage seems to be used for a dedicated operating Page File or programs loaded into active operating memory type of work based on how many running programs you have running right now and the Program refers to the actual Flash (hard disk) space set aside for installations. Think of your desktop as having only a 50 Mb hard disk and having to have the operating system, Page File and programs plus storage on it. Doesn’t leave much.
A neat little trick I learned is that when you do a HR and are reinstalling the OS it pauses for 3 seconds with an explanation screen at one point before going on to install other proprietary programs (some of which were junk to me). If you want to know what was different, back up all your personal data and do a HR and let it run fully. Check all the Settings and Programs screens to write down what you have. Do it again but push the Soft Reset (SR) pin in the hole when it gets to that 3 second pause and let it reboot. It will stop the extended installation. When you do this you will find the numbers are now:
Storage Program
Total 44.77 48.77
In Use 5.77 22.85
Free 39.00 25.92
IOW, you cut your Page File use (running programs loaded into memory) by ½ but you didn’t really change what was taking up your Flash memory. That’s because during the install every program is loaded into the “Windows” directory and then installed or not. If not installed, they just sit there and can’t be deleted or moved.
In order to change this memory bloat I had to find a different way. The only way I could find was to “cook” my phone and hope it didn’t turn into a “brick” to throw away or send back to the factory for a fix. I began looking at what was available. Keep in mind that I had written down ALL the programs installed by WM6 full and WM6 Lite (fast SR at 3 second screen). I had decided what I would like to have and what I didn’t need or want. This is important to do before this next step.
I am very experienced at installing lots of OSs over the years from CP/M (really, really old), DOS, Windows XT up to Windows XP (very different from XT) and tweaking the hell out of them. Doing it on the PDA had me a little concerned because it’s so tiny and different (so what, right?). I learned that it really is about the same as my desktop in setup and running. The first time I did it, I was worried and then surprised at how easy and straight forward it was. If you are concerned about this step and have this particular PDA, go to http://www.america.htc.com/support/8525/software-downloads.html , download the most current OS and do an install from your desktop to PDA with it. If your phone bricks send it to the factory, it’s their system. Once you’ve done it, it’s much less worrying. If you have a different phone do a little Google research and/or read more on this forum for your particular phone.
I researched different ROM cooks to see what they had compared to what I wanted. I came up with Shamanix and K-Flex as most likely for me. Their installs went just as easily and safely as the WM6 did. Don’t look at just the pretty colors, look at what programs they have and how they function doing what you want. Do some “WM6 FREE SOFTWARE” Google searches to find out what is available out there and what you can get it to do. Here are the test results with both Full install and Lite install:
Shamanix K-Flex
Full Lite Full Lite
Total 66.18 50.77 66.18 50.77 66.80 44.77 66.80 44.77
In Use 2.66 21.00 2.63 18.77 9.11 28.52 2.78 23.19
Free 63.52 29.77 63.55 31.99 57.69 20.25 64.01 25.70
FIRST - Now 66.18 + 50.77 = 110.95 for Shamanix and 66.80 + 44.77 = 111.57 for K-Flex versus only 93.54 Mb for WM6. Suddenly the OS installation files squeezed out an extra 18 Mb of Flash storage for other things. That’s a LOT when many programs average as little as 200 Kb (fit 90 in that free space). Next, K-Flex used almost as much Flash (hard disk) storage as WM6 but Shamanix only used 18.77 in the Lite install which freed up almost 6 Mb for more programs.
Sounds good, right? Remember, check what each OS provides, how you like the looks and what you want on you PDA. Since camera, media and online gaming usage are not important to me, Shamanix Lite is best for me. It still requires a few additional installs to replace what it doesn’t provide but that’s better than the bloat.
(PLEASE CONTINUE ON NEXT REPLY)
2nd half of first post
(Continued from beginning of thread)
Next, I bought a 2 Gb microSD card. That’s great for storage, but I want to install programs to that location, especially the ones I don’t use very often and can run slow safely (cards are much slower than RAM). Save the Flash storage for anything that needs processing speed like music, video, gaming, etc. Once you have a card installed, every time you want to install a program, it asks where to install. If you have access to ER enabled you can select from Device, Extended ROM or Storage Card. Use Storage Card as 1st, and Device 2nd. I tweak installation folders on my desktop but on the PDA you can’t. If it’s going to the Storage Card it will create the proper folder automatically like most Windows installations do in Program Files. Also, if you already have it loaded, it will tell you it must uninstall the prior one before it can install the new one. Actually, they’ve made PDA pretty idiot proof which is a good thing.
Before I go any further, here are two almost mandatory FREE programs you MUST HAVE!!!! MyMobiler and Remote Keyboard can be found many places. Both will allow you to connect your PDA to your desktop with a USB cable and set your PDA aside while you do everything on your desktop. It gives you a copy of the PDA screen on your monitor you can zoom plus use the normal mouse and keyboard on so long as the mouse is hovering over the PDA screen. Sooooo muchchch eeesieeer!!!!!!! In fact, it should be your first two installs before anything else!
Here’s a helpful hit on installing programs. Many times an installation program will come as a .exe file you run from your desktop. What it usually does is extract and create a folder that will hold a couple of files ending in .CAB. Then it will copy the appropriate .CAB to your mobile device. Then it will run the .CAB for installation. The .CAB is the important part. All the rest essentially sets up your desktop to run the .CAB on your PDA. Many times the installation program will be a .ZIP, .RAR, or other compressed file or even a .CAB file. If it’s a compressed file, uncompress it and look for the .CAB. When looking at .CAB files you will often find several with identical names except for the few letters just before the “.CAB”. These are the same but designed for different types of operating systems. I’m sorry I can’t rediscover the link for the details (maybe someone reading this will give us the link later) but I did learn that those with .ARM, .ARM4, Xscale, or rarely PXA, OMAP, or Samsung S3C24xx are for the newer PDAs running WM5 or WM6. Every PPC2000-2003 and every smartphone on the market (at least that I know of) is an ARM device. The others are for older system. If in doubt, try to run each one. The ones that are incorrect will NOT install. Only the one that IS correct will. From then on you will know which type to copy to your PDA. Once copied to a named folder (I use “Install CABs”) on the Storage Card, they can be simply clicked on at any time and installed. To regain memory or stop using it, use “Remove Programs” in Settings/System to get rid of them. You can reinstall anytime later.
One thing I did was move almost all of the CAB files for the programs I wanted to a designated folder on the Storage Card. One suggestion from others is to rename each CAB with a “#-“ in front of the name with the number corresponding to importance of that CAB to you. That way, when you do a reinstall, or HR, out in the field, your CABs are with you and you can see which ones should be loaded first. This works well if there is some conflict with installs one after another. Personally, I haven’t run into that so I rename them to a shorter name that identifies what it is (e.g. in35prtv33.24.arm4.cab becomes PocketPool.cab). The next thing I do is use the settings or preferences in each program to make a folder on the Storage Card the default folder - like My Documents, Favorites, Downloads, etc. Now they won’t be lost if I have to HR the PDA.
Along with the information in the above paragraphs, I do something else because I’m gone when I’m most using my PDA. On the Storage Card (a copy on each card I have) is the installed programs in the normal “Program” folder which are my operating files and a copy of the “Install CABs” folder which also includes a backup of my Contacts. One additional item is a “Serials” folder in the “Install CABs” folder. This has a .txt file of all the registration codes I need plus copies of all the altered (cracked) files I need if I have to reinstall anything on the road. So long as I can Hard Reset my phone, I can reinstall everything back to normal and continue as I need. Since I have several Storage Cards this is on each card. The balance of the Storage cards will have different eBooks, music, DVDs, etc. that don’t all fit on one card. That way, I have several backups of critical files plus entertainment as needed. I use a small dot of different colored paint on the bottom edge of each card so I can tell which card is in the phone at any time.
With all the above, if my PDA freezes or stops working properly, the universal fix-it is to do a Hard Reset. If that doesn’t work, I’m SOL. If it does I’m in business. All I do is a HR (Lite) and soft reset at the 3 second warning. Then I go back into my Storage Card and reinstall those programs I need to get back to where I can work.
Once you have things loaded and working properly, you can consider tweaking the system. During this process you may have found multiple editions of software you want to use like three different registry editors, five different tweak programs, etc. Go ahead and compare and see which ones you want and delete the rest. On a PDA it’s fairly easy. When everything is said and done, you can do a clean HR and only load those specific versions you want and have a fresh, clean, trim system to backup as your first installation process.
Finally, so you can see the results I came up with in this process, here’s a list of the programs I installed. All are on and working. None of them have to be cleared before I can have room to open another one. These are the final versions of similar programs such that there is minimal overlap but expanded utility when more than one is installed.
Sound Pocket Dictate
Mortgage CALC
WkTASK
Touch Caller
Tao Java
GSFinder+
Pocket Mechanic
Adobe Reader
ActiveX Flash 7
Sompy Media Player
enAlarmPPC
True Term Translator
TT Swedish-English
TT Spanish-English
TT Portugese-English
TT Italian-English
TT German-English
TT French-English
Town Compass US Travel Directory
Town Compass DataViewer
Tagalog for Travelers
SKTools
Paris Guide
Metro
mCity Tours
Google Maps
Flashlight Colors
UniSync
Spb Pocket Plus
tGetFile.dll
MIcrosoft .NET CF 2.0
Maufait Instafind
DinaSoft Tap Text
DinaSoft MemMaid
DinaSoft HandyMenu
CallFirewall
Tab Web Viewer (IE)
Dictionary Manager
Schap's Advanced Config 2.0
Yahtz
Warefare Incorporated
Vision Quest
Trivial Pursuit
Super Wild Wild Words
Space Adventure in Infinite Space
Smart Mahjongg
Dames are Trouble Game
Word Mojo
Ultimate Bowling Fighter
Mazera
Mars Need Cows
Hellfire
Bzzz
Realms
1001 Crossword Puzzle
Xplodus
Xonix
Pocket Spades
Patience
JumpyBall
Hot Death Uno
Advanced Lines
Here are my original results on memory usage.
Storage Program
Total 44.77 48.77
In Use 5.77 22.85
Free 39.00 25.92
Here are the final results
Storage Program
Total 66.18 50.77
In Use 36.55 25.77
Free 29.63 25.00
In other words, by opening and freeing the Extended ROM, Putting as much on the Storage Card as possible and applying a few tweaks for caching and folder locations, I still have almost as much of both Storage and Program Memory as I started with to run almost anything without having to remove and reinstall programs on the fly.
It’s a lot easier than you think and idiot proof in most cases. Don’t fear playing with your PDA and making it what you want. Have fun and ENJOY!
Dr. Ken Rich
Hello All,
I accidentally came across the following behaviour on my HTC Cruise, and I found it quite interesting. Personally, I am quite happy with my HTC Cruise, despite the famous display driver missing...
Of course, I am upset like most people, since HTC seemed to be so keen in advertising the device's multimedia abilities. HTC have lost a couple of credibility points for me...
Anyway, on with the question now...
When I select Programs from the start menu and move my finger up and down on the scroll bar, the display seems to demonstrate quite a lag; icons are slow to redraw and the display seems to "flicker". I understand this is quite subjective, it depends on the number of programs one might have installed, etc.
However..... When I select Programs from the HTC Today plug in, (2nd icon on top row of third tab), the same action (moving up and down the scrollbar), is so much faster!
It's not a big deal, but the difference on my HTC is quite striking. How about yours? I am a software developer and find this quite interesting as it seems to be the same function, but performace seems to be different. Can it be a setting somewhere, can it be that HTC developers did not pay the attention they should? (and admitted the fact that extra performance can be achieved by stating they will provide a "patch" for it).
Do you get the same behaviour?
Thanks for reading
You are correct.
Even when removing the "big menu" option as advised on TC tweaking, program list accessed from home plugin tab scrolls much much faster than program list accessed from "Start" menu.
This is quite interesting
................
yes same for me! - very strange, why would this be?
Yep, same here. Verrrryy interrresting.
When I actually got this device and scrolled the icons in programs, I was immediately puzzled as it did not seem to be very promising. The settings window has a much smoother scroll (yes, I know, it has less icons as well)...
I am sure there must be a difference somehow from an implementation point of view, or at least a different setting somewhere. Maybe a different startup setting, or something.
I have read about the tweaks and the different settings you can change, for example Cache font size, etc.
However, the mere fact that the same functionality has such a dramatic difference depending on how you invoke it, to me is a case of not so efficient programming.
If HTC comes out with a new display "patch" which actually manages to make a difference, then it would be almost certain that their "first" version was not so efficient, a mere indication they could have done better straight from the beginning.
They are implemented differently too. If you open Programs from the Start Menu and close it then go to Settings -> Memory -> Running Programs you won't see anything. Now if you launch Programs from the HTC plugin and then close it and then go look at running programs you will see it running. (This is assuming you don't have the HTC Task Manager configured to close applications when hitting X). Must be implemented differently in the back end.
I agree there is a difference. Scrolling of icons f.e. under programs is much quicker, not sure are executebale files running quicker too?
That really weird! scrolling is really smooth, I have noticed the icon on my top right I have a .net configurator icon, when opening programs via the plug in the name under the icon is missing but opening programs normally the name under the icon is there realated some how?
It seems indeed a different program. I have WkTask installed and when I get the Programs appearing via the HTC, I can see that this actually starts a window (as hambola says).
When I select Programs via the Start menu, no window title appears.
Another difference is that when I start Programs via HTC home, I can see the scrollbar getting "smaller" as the icons seem to be added in that window "on the fly"; then the icons always appear "top-aligned". When I close that window and reopen it via HTC, it is the same.
On the other hand, when selecting Programs via the Start menu the icons are already there, plus the scrollbar remembers its last position after the window has closed.
There are small differences really, it is just interesting how these affect the quality of scrolling...
is this in anyway linked to the driver issues?
Not sure, sometimes I'm not even sure what things are linked to driver issues and what things aren't. For example I used to have an 8525 which is apparently not affected by this driver issue. But rotating the display on that device was no faster than what I get with my TC. In fact maybe it was even slower, I don't have it with me to compare. So I don't know if drivers will even fix something like that. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
What about the dialer skin coming up on the TC. That's really slow. I see the different sections being painted on the screen. The Comm Manager will only load up fast if it's not in the "Running Programs". So first time I run it, it loads up in one shot, if i close it and try opening it again I will see it paint the different blocks. If I actually stop it in Running Programs and then try it again, then it loads in one shot. Driver issues? Who the hell knows. I doubt it though.
If driver issues fix video playback and they also fix the camera lag, i'll be content. if overall smoothness is fixed and extensive graphics (like games) is fixed, then i'll be happy.
I agree with hambola. I am not sure it's a driver issue. To me it simply shows that it could have been done better.
An even more annoying issue is the dialler skin as habola also suggests. The camera thing is also important.
To me the video playback is not much of an issue; I always encode in QVGA mode without any problem or quality loss. Quality loss is relative, I think it looks fine on the phone, obviously it's not a good idea to play that QVGA video on my PC. An additional advantage when encoding QVGA is saving space. My files in QVGA are usually less than 400MB, whereas my full screen versions are usually less than 1GB. To be honest, I do not see the use of it. Last time I was waiting in an airport, I had around 10 movies in my phone, all perfectly watchable (with perfectly watchable subtitles), a couple of GBs of music and I had additional free space in my storage card. Noway, I could fit 10 movies on it, if the quality was DVD-like. So basically, I do not mind... I think Coreplayer copes ok.
The little things such as lag in scrolling, the dialler skin coming up in pieces in a device that is a PHONE, the camera; these things annoy me.
-And how do you make phone calls, if there is no keyboard?
-Well, you press this button and the dialpad comes up...
-Ah! I see it takes some time to draw that dialpad...
-yes.......
See my point?
quickly thinking about this, it sounds like the HTC plugin is launching it in it's own shell, therefore it isn't monitoring everything else that is going on if it were launched from the main program list, ie. when launched from program list, the priority of running tasks is set to all, whilst from HTC, the program becomes the main focus. Maybe to do with threading, HTC was compiled with hyper threading, and the normal today screen wasn't. This is a very loose and fast analogy by me so feel free to shoot it down!!
also, you have to consider what memory is being freed up by which launcher, for what app etc. etc. etc. Memory plays a big part in performance, if there isn't enough of it, then the CPU has to start working shifting sh#t around, lots of cycles wasted etc. Gotta remember this is a M$ OS, they aint the brightest sparks sometimes
This same thing happens on my Athena after I launch the programs folder a second time (using standard start menu). This is most likely caused by the bitmap icons being loaded in the device's cache. Wouldn't get my hopes up.
so i was at my programs tab today and i suddenly noticed there was an extra plus box at the verry bottom in its own row. i was very puzzled and clicked it and it took me to the program list. when i hit back another box appeared!
i tried to actually add programs to them but it wont accept and now i have 2 extra plus boxes at the bottom of my tab
anyone else ever seen this??
i now have 4 extra they seem to be multiplying
More programs icons
Well you are not the only one My children also discovered that you can scroll the programs tabs down and so get not 9 but I think 18 icons for quick launch. After that it sometimes shows tabs with + sign but will not let to assign any programs to them. I think I saw in some configuration program also a possibility to manage these tabs.
i've noticed the same thing. now i'm up to 18 boxes and it seems to stay at 18.
I've got 9+9 boxes since the beginning and they are all fully functional.
TF3D 1.2.34837.3 1813.6 was originally installed on my Raphael GER version.
i thoguht 18 was normal? thats what ive always had
but im getting more than that below them that are not functional
This is actually an easy one to fix, and does not even require a soft reset.
TF3D can have a maximum of 18 icons (2 screens of 9 in a 3x3 matrix) in the Programs tab. Sometimes TF3D allows the creation of additional squares; however, these additional squares are essentially useless, since you cannot assign a program to them. What's worse, they cannot be deleted from the interface, leading to a Gremlins-like proliferation of empty squares on the Programs tab.
They can be removed through the registry, however, by deleting the additional entries and (most importantly) leaving the proper entries alone.
First, open your registry editor (I use PHM RegEdit, there are plenty of others). As always, BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY before making any changes!
Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\Manila\ProgramLauncher\"
There are 18 proper keys, listed from 0 through 17. Any keys that do not belong will have numbers above 17. Delete all keys other than those numbered 0 through 17. Exit the registry editor. If you are on the Programs tab, navigate away from it, then back, and you will see that the rogue squares are gone. That's it.
thanks alot man! worked perfect
Following on from another thread where people were asking about availability of apps to start a looping video recording app, I've started work on this, and have made some promising initial progress.
I'm having to do this with Mortscript since the only language I can code in is not suitable for writing phone/pc apps sadly, but so far it looks to be quite suitable.
If you're interested in this I'm afraid you'll have to be quite patient as I can't promise it will be complete by any date and I might even fail to complete it, but I'm posting up now because I believe that it's still useful at its current state.
Basically what the code does at the moment is as follows:
Tells you how much memory is spare on your SDcard
Asks you what you want the minimum remaining memory (in MB, ie when your remaining memory reaches a certain point the script stops recording)
Opens the camera in video mode
Begins recording
Once recording, the remaining memory is checked every 5 seconds
When the remaining memory dips below the amount you specified the recording stops, the camera turns off, and a message confirming remaining memory is displayed.
If you add the script to the appropriate start menu folder then you can add it as a home screen shortcut like any other app, so that just one touch will fire it up.
At present I have not started working on the actual looping functionality of the video, so it records until it reaches the memory limit you specify, or until you stop it manually, but I think this is still useful.
Now for the 'funny' important stuff:
Please understand this code comes with absolutely no promises/guarantees etc - if you choose to use it, you do so entirely at your own risk and I am not responsible for any outcome of doing so. I've run it several times and it has worked well for me, but there's no guarantee that it will behave the same for others.
I'm not going to be answering questions about the most basic stuff in relation to Mortscript. Please read up on the basics of what it is and what it does, and how you implement it before using this script. It's nothing personal, just that my free time is extremely limited so I can't afford to spend it answering potentially lazy questions.
Do as you wish with the script if you want to modify it and improve it, or just tailor it to your own needs. For instance, you may wish to do away with the question about minimum remaining memory and set a fixed amount so the recording begins from just one shortcut press. I've set it like that really for ease of testing but it may be handy for people who want to keep a certain amount of their card empty.
You may have to change minor bits of this script to make it work for you. Main example I can think of is depending on where the default location is for video recording files on YOUR phone (ie storage or card - it should be card for this script to work), and also the name of your card. On mine the card is called "Storage Card" - yours may be different and would therefore affect the script.
Other stuff I've not thought of yet but that people might whinge about.
In a nutshell though, I hope some of you find this useful, and at some point hopefully in the not too distant future this might be a bit more automated and do exactly as some of us wanted on the other threads about looping video.
If others want to use this as a base and finish the job I'm not going to be upset shall we say.
Script in post #2
Either download the zip file, unzip and place the script in an appropriate folder on your memory card, or copy this script code into a notepad file & save it, then change the files extension from .txt to .mscr & place it where it needs to live.
Script contents/zip download:
Code:
Free1 = FreeDiskSpace( "\Storage Card")
Freemb1 = Free1 / 1048576
Message((Freemb1& "MB left") , "Memory remaining:" )
Min = Input( "Remaining Memory Cutoff Limit(MB)?")
MinMem = Min * 1048576
set Mem, MinMem
Run( "\windows\camera.exe", "-v" )
WaitForActive "Camera",5000
mouseclick(240, 700)
set Delay, 5000
while wndActive "Camera"
sleep Delay
Free2 = FreeDiskSpace( "\Storage Card")
Freemb2 = Free2 / 1048576
if (Free2 le Mem)
# end recording & close camera
mouseclick(240, 700)
close "Camera"
Message((Freemb2& "MB left free") , "Memory Info:" )
#to do - delete the file just created
#to do - start recording again:
#mouseclick(240, 700)
endif
EndWhile
Reserved in case I need it for anything else....
This is interesting, will try after I read up on mortscript. One thing cought my eye, it seems with mortscript you are able to do software clicks on the screen (#to do - start
recording again:
#mouseclick(240, 700)
Would this mean we could have a way to asign a hardware key to take pictures in camera mode? I know this has nothing to do with your app, it just came to my mind after seeing your code. It would be nice to have a hardware key to take pictures with our HD2's.
Anyway I will be following your thread for updates on loop recording. Thanks for your work here.
Thanks for your comments mate.
I'm not sure about the hardware button in camera mode. It might be possible but I'm only a novice at Mortscript myself so I don't actually know. I would guess that if MS is capable of registering the activation of hardware buttons and distinguishing between them, then it should be possible but don't quote me!
A script to do that would I think have to effectively listen for the camera being activated, then once it is launched, listen for hardware key presses from a specified key which would in turn trigger the on screen mouseclick command.
Something for another thread I think but an interesting idea anyway. If you search through the mortscript examples thread (approx 70 pages!) you might find something that helps.
After a quick look at the manual this morning I think it's going to take me a little while to figure out how to delete the last created file in the DCIM folder, but once I have it sorted I will post up the amendments.
Run into a problem tonight with timestamps.
The time a file was recorded is showing up exactly 1 hour wrong from when it actually was made, so I have to try and figure this out. It's not the phone clock since the timestamp for the current time is spot on.
Go figure!
Thanks for posting updates for us. Hope you will find a solution, could it have something to do with summer/winter time? Or with local time? Don't know for sure of course, just trying to help.
I think there's a very good chance that's what it's linked to yes, but no idea how to get around it.
The dates where the clocks move forwards/back are not the same each year, so I can't hardcode it in. If there's a way I can get the script to check whether the phone's clock is using GMT or BST then that would likely solve it but I've no idea if that's possible.
Have raised a thread elsewhere to ask for help but no luck so far.
Well - I'm going to be struggling with this a bit guys.
I've not had any replies to the thread (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=690134) asking about this time difference (I'm wondering if I have posted in the wrong subforum perhaps?) so I'm not really going to be able to get past the issue anytime soon. Kind of scuppers the project until I can work around that.
There is another way potentially of finding the correct file to delete, which would be to go through the mp4 files in the video folder, and create a list of them, sort it by time created, then delete the latest one.
But I don't know how to do that and there isn't any useful info that I can see in the Mortscript manual about sorting data, or even creating simple lists of data objects (unless this is the 'array' functionality?).
So I'm a little bit stuck sorry.
Alright so here's the deal:
I'm working on this app (let my raise my "nerd" level to a new maximum, by stressing that it is a Magic: The Gathering app for the WP7. Nerd level raised.)
So - at any rate - I start out with a wonderously fluid Silverlight front-end. Works like a charm. Keeping it simple at first, I get the ball rolling with a simple life counter function, using local variables only. Flawless. Then I figure I'll raise the bar of challenge a little, and import a simple dbusing SQL CE loaded from Wizards of the Coast official online card database. My app has a "fairly" quick search engine that goes through the entire set of cards and displays a list of the cards with text. Again, pretty damn flawless. Now here's the pickle. Because my SQL CE DB of the cards is pre-built into the app, it is, by default and no way to change it: read-only. I want to load and create a new DB on the fly, by reading a simple .txt file, and parsing out prices. Ideally, this DB would be created once, and everytime afterwards, simply updated. Now I can read and modify the Database easily, however, when i try to read the .txt file from the online source, it fails with epic certainty. Even more bothersome, I can't get the bloody thing to run efficiently in the background.
So to the question at hand: Does anyone know of a quality way to read a .txt file from an online source, parse successfully into a database, and do so as a background task?
Thanks
Could you elaborate on how exactly does it fail? Also, by "on background", do you mean that you are trying to update the database on a background agent (which I would not suggest in your case) ?
edit: Looks like it's a bit old thread. Are you still having this issue?
Well, by fail - I mean it either doesn't update the database at all - or it crashes and the program terminates.
And why would a background agent not be recommended? I like the idea of BG agent simply because i'm assuming the average user is going to be impatient and close out the app before the db actually updates the prices...at which point, it would be ideal if this were running as a background agent because otherwise i've discovered that just stopping DB search/edit halfway through sometimes hangs or crashes when you try to get back into the db.
Ideally, i'd like this thing to be pretty glitch free. I suppose i could do like every other app out there and only grab a price when a single card is selected, but ideally i would like the entire price database to be accessible in an "offline" mode. Its only a single text file updated weekly.
I see you're point on using a BG agent, but are you familiar with the limitations? You probably don't want to limit the sync to the moments when the phone is plugged into a power source, so periodic task would be your only choise. However, those are memory, cpu and clock time (25 seconds) constrained, run approximately every half an hour (can not be changed) and you can't start them instantly. Also, they need to be rescheduled every two weeks and there's a limit of how many BG agents can be scheduled for a device on total (can be as low as 6). So, you can only schedule the BG agent in your app, you can't start it immediately, if the completely sync process takes more than 25 seconds the agent would get killed and if the text file is somewhat huge you could run into the memory constraints of the agent.
I don't think there's anything you can do to make the sync succeed if user choses to close or suspend the app while it's syncing. I thought of an another option though: maybe you could just load the data for a card when it's drawn and store it to the database together with the last update time. Then in future you could first check if the database has up to date info on the card and use that instead of loading it from the web. Or maybe you could load the data for all the cards in the decks when the game starts.
Yeah. my solution for the time being is to see if there is an updated pricing text file online, and updating the silverlight accordingly (ie a "New prices available" button that appears if there are new prices) and a big ass warning box that warns users to not exit the app during an update.
however, i'm still having issues with parsing the bloody the txt file in-code. its a pipe-dil txt file so, it shouldn't be this complex to parse into a new table. i'll post up what some of the code looks like tonight for my parsing engine.
Sure, post ahead and I'll see if I can help you with that.