DJ pointed out that the use of ctrl-c in the translation program to copy original string to translation interfered with normal copying, so I changed it to shift-ctrl-c in version 1.1.1 of Xlator.exe.

Programming is fun, writing documentation is boring.

I haven't yet met a developer that doesn't agree with that. And if you want to do it properly it is also a lot of work. And why do I bring this up? Well because I recently added a fairly advanced feature to ProfilerQuery, and I realized that I needed to document it before releasing it. And in preparing for that I also realized that the current documentation is woefully out of date. So I decided to write new documentation from scratch. With illustrations.

Crikey! It's a lot of stuff to explain if you want everything to be crystal clear. But wanting and achieving are two different things. I'll be happy if I can keep the mist from turning into fog. Sometimes I wish I had left ProfilerQuery at version 1 when it was still relatively easy to explain. But of course that takes me back to Programming is fun.

So far I have covered Basic use, most of the Selection tab, and Command files.

And of course while I document I notice little things that I didn't see before. And the inner monolog goes something like
- There's a space missing in "Add &Close"!
- Right, I'll soon have that fixed.
- But that means you have to redo the screen shots!
- Oh, feck! Will anyone really notice? Or care?
- Well, if no one else does, you will notice and care yourself! It'll bug the hell out of you!
- Sigh! Ok, ok, I'll take new screen shots! All right?

Ok, I've let off some steam. Send me some nice thoughts and I'll go back to my documentation. I promise. And if I don't go ballistic you'll see a new version of ProfilerQuery in the near future. But wait, the sun is shining and it's really nice outside. Make that "in the nearish future" ;-)

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
most frustrating of all: most users don't bother to read it.

I know! But it's to a large degree a matter of personal pride. You've spent maybe 100s of hours developing a program and if people don't use it, or don't use all of it, it's not going to be because you didn't give them every chance. 

Quote:
What I have evolved to is launching a PDF of the User Guide from the Help menu.

I do just that in ProfilerQuery. But you probably never looked ... 

ProfilerQuery 3.12 is available

If you looked at ProfilerMissing, you'll have noticed that I implemented a way to send keystrokes to DVD Profiler using the SendKeys function. I wanted some similar functionality for ProfilerQuery, but I found SendKeys to limiting. After looking around a bit, I found that the freeware program AutiIt had a dynamic link library that could be used to achive the same thing, but without some of the more troubling limitations in SendKeys.

The most important things that SendKeys couldn't handle, but AutoIt could, was menu access thruogh the Alt key, and ability to check checkboxes and radiobuttons.

ProfilerQuery 3.12 allows you to use that functionality in two ways. You can specify a command sequence that is executed every time you select a profile by double-clicking a row in ProfilerQuery's result. You can also create script files that can be executed at any time from ProfilerQuery's menu.

The documentation has - as you have read in previous posts - been completely rewritten, now in the form of a normal help file, which hopefully gives a better overview of the content. The chapter named "Automation" describes the whole AutoIt functionality.

There is also a new utility, named KeyCatcher, to help you construct and test command sequences.

At the same time I took a deep look at the translatability and decided to go the whole route. Previously it was mainly the text in the different windows that were translatable, and not the text in the code. Now pretty much everything is translatable. However, since the data in your collection's exported XML file will always be in English, the values used as comparisons in the queries will also be in English.

There is a new translation kit with all the new strings, and a bug fixed Xlator.exe for those who wish to contribute new or updated translations.

As always, you find the downloads here.

Thanks for all those updates. I'll send you soon updated French translation.

Thanks again, Gunnar. Much appreciated. I'm sure, many people care for your valued work.

ProfilerQuery 3.13

I have added a small, but significant, feature to the SRP/Region check.



You can now select a specific region and save flags for just that region. Why is it significant? Because if you save flags and then load them in DVD Profiler, you can select Collection / Flagged / Adjust Prices and set the SRP to the correct currency.

Although DVD Profiler lets you do that for both zero and non-zero SRP values, you probably only want to do it automatically for zero values. And you will of course have to do it once for each locality. Although, as you can see, you can select EURO from the dropdown list and fix all Euro locations in one go.

Personally I find it a waste of time changing zero value currencies, because to me zero is zero no matter what currency. But I realize that others feel differently, so now you can fix this easily for your entire collection. However, I would suggest that you hold off on contributing these changes unless you have more than just this change. But that is, of course, up to you.

By the way, this window is now completely translatable. That means that there are in fact three new strings to translate. Apologies for that to my translators. The translation package has been updated.
Note though: The locality names are collected from the exported XML file, so they will always be in English.

ProfilerQuery 3.15 (experimental)



I had an idea that I wanted something that resembled the Showcase view in the iPad  profiler. This isn't what I wanted. 

Actually, I wanted a virtualized display, i.e. one that loaded only the images that was currently inside the window. Unfortunately I could not find a way to do that. I tested loading everything in a wrappanel inside a scrollviewer. That worked find for a couple of hundred profiles. But then I tested my full 8000 profile collection... Let's just say that it took an awful long time to populate and it ate memory like a black hole.

So I came up with a compromise. I show 48 titles. This works best with ProfilerQuery maximized. Then you can use down arrow to show the next 48. And guess what up arrow does?

You get the same titles as in the result tab. But that's pretty much it. You can't sort them or do anything with them (other than look at them).  I'm not even sure how well this works with different screen resolutions.

I think this may have potential. But I'm not sure what to do with it. So you tell me! What would you want, in order to make this useful, if at all?