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Vista related changes needed?

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Posted by Onoitsu2   USA  (248 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #15 on Tue 24 Oct 2006 08:19 AM (UTC)
Message
I have the same reasons as Ksilyan's last post mentioned, but I run XP Pro, volume license edition (I purchased a legal volume license when I worked for Gateway, through their employee sales) and I use an app called VMWare Workstation, and have linux installed in there, so that I can run my main XP apps, and also have FULL linux at the exact same time, so I could if I wanted to host asp pages, and cgi on the same computer, as it even creates virtual devices including NIC cards, with "REAL" mac addresses, and separate IP addresses, or you can use NAT. I even have windows 98 installed in this fashion, cause I have some apps that will not run on NT based OS's and the compatability wizard is a joke on those.

I think that users of linux know well the program called "Wine" as it can allow many windows apps to run fully, and many others to run partially. And then there is the somewhat opposite version which is cygwin, in which u can run an X server, and MANY, MANY linux apps. Has anyone picked up on the lack of apps that cygwin does support? Of course not, cause it supports MORE than Wine does, due to the Win API that was previously mentioned being so very riddled with holes in the documentation, that Wine will never be at the same compatability level as cygwin, as nearly EVERYTHING is documented, and re-documented, and overly-documented in linux api's, so the task of making linux run on windows is a more simple task.

I realize that I have a very sporadic thought posted here, but bear with me it is late, and I have been up for quite a few hours :)

I do hope that MS does realize that it does have a very small market of developers that are slowly becomming smaller with every release. This being attributed to the hole riddled documentation. I mean even the MFC classes are virtually undocumented, and this is from their own MSDN site, and also from an MSDN CD that came with MS VIs Studio Pro 6.0, even in my C++ book that used that very version of compiler did not document things enough, to such an end that my professor ended up making us all code on a linux server, that we would telnet into using putty. That having been done, if anyone from that class goes on to bigger and better things in programmming they are mroe likely to stick to linux, than use anything MS, due to being inconvienced once, and having to translate a book written for windows into linux based actions.

As Always, Just my 2 Cents...

Laterzzz,
Onoitsu2
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #16 on Tue 24 Oct 2006 10:08 AM (UTC)
Message
I tried using VMWare but was unsatisfied. The biggest problem was having a completely separate hard drive for the virtual machine, which meant moving data back and forth was quite the exercise.

In my dual-boot setup, my /home directory is on an ext2fs partition, and I have a Windows driver that can do full read/write operations on ext2fs. It sees the /home partition as H:. So I can completely and transparently share data between the two. Windows can't see the / (root) partition, and Linux can only read (not write) C:/, but that doesn't matter since I don't put any data other than program files there.

That being said, VMWare is a god-send for many applications, especially if you really need Linux in a GUI environment and don't have a Linux box to run it on (or to VNC into), or if you don't have an Internet connection available to use ssh over.

I have yet to play around with Wine. I don't have much time during the school year, and since I'm dual-booting Windows, the need is smaller. Of course, once I start running Photoshop again, it'll be a PITA to dual-boot into Windows just to do that, so I'll play with Wine at that point.



I wouldn't say that MS has a small market of developers. It depends a great deal on what part of the market you're looking at. If you're talking about developers who make end-user commercial products (including games) Windows wins hands-down. If you're talking about people who make mathematic, scientific, or development-related tools, then I think you're right and the Windows market is getting smaller and smaller. And for server-related stuff in general (cvs, svn, sshd, httpd, ...) Windows is also sorely lagging.

I guess I have never really had the "joy" of writing code to use Windows GUI APIs. I just use Java when I need to write a GUI, which so far has been a grand total of about 3 times, I think... :-)
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Seawolf   USA  (57 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #17 on Tue 24 Oct 2006 03:08 PM (UTC)
Message
I use Stardock apps to enhance my shell, myself. Man, after using Windowblinds 5, the default XP GUI feels horribly slow.

Ironically, my XP x64 box seems to have some speed issues (probably related to my drivers having been released before the OS was) but my Vista x64 box has nothing of the sort.

I really have no idea how development used to be, but it seems like MSes documentation has gotten much much better over the last however many years. I don't code, though.
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Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #18 on Wed 25 Oct 2006 01:43 AM (UTC)
Message
I would say the issue isn't the small number of developers, but rather the small number of "good" developers. A lot of stuff I have seen sold for $500 I could have coded, and I knew way less when I saw the program than I do now about the Windows API. Sure, they put "time" into the application, but very little actual innovation. Linux often has the reverse problem. Lots of innovation and attempts to make sure X, Y and Z *always* work, but not quite as much time making sure everyone can use it easilly. This is why I can burn a crappy, badly made DVD with simplistic menus and its nearly impossible to use anything inexpensive to come close to producing a studio quality DVD like you get real movies on. In linux you could do this far more efficiently, with way better control and way more options for how to make it work, *but* just burning a "basic" DVD is almost impossible without knowing complex command line options or using a proxy application to control the burner, like the Nero version for Linux, which doesn't even support the full set of features in the Windows version. The fact that its merely a shell over top of a very suffisticated and detailed piece of software is ironically so hidden that someone using it would consider the capabilities of the OS to be garbage, when the real problem is the bad software sitting in between them.

So yeah. There are advantages to how Windows does things. Major ones, at times. Unfortunately, it got that way often by ignoring developers needs, catering to the worst common denominator among the users and, as in the case of the date functions in VB, Excel and MS Exchange, by intentionally crippling their own product, so they could shove someone else out of the market through the method of making deals with PC makers to install *their* product, which they rightly claimed was "compatible" with someone else's. There are so many compromises in the OS from this, and so much time spent gluing stuff together into an interdependent mess, that they can't even unravel it, never mind someone else that has none of the code, and documentation that, as Onoitsu2 points out, often has just plain totally ludicrous and unbelievable holes in it.

Yes, things are way easier to do "if" there is a way to do it already and/or you can afford to price of buying stuff that does. Even something as simple as dealing with icons under windows is virtually impossible *without* buying another application, because the stuff MS has PC companies pre-install can't deal with them, most graphics apps won't save in that format and the "basic" programs that come with the OS, like paint, haven't beed significantly improved since Windows 3.11, when it was "probably" actually easier to find a free font maker than it is now (though it would have probably been a DOS application...) Its those "ifs" that constantly trip me up. Coding a solution requires things I can't afford or stuff that was written on Linux, where it works well, but has serious installation and interconnection problems on Windows *or* I could buy a solution, but that might range in price from a full application that I can get for $50 to a 500 line widget you can't code without a $1,000 investment in extra documentation and compilers, which sells for $500...

Oh, and none of the solution are usually modular enough to borrow feature X from application Y, when its missing from Z. Most of my frustration is "usually" due to this sort of problem.
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #19 on Thu 26 Oct 2006 02:49 PM (UTC)
Message
I think one problem is that your definition of "user" is way too broad. I read this sentence:
Quote:
catering to the worst common denominator among the users and, as in the case of the date functions in VB, Excel and MS Exchange
and did an immediate double-take, because the vast majority of Windows users never use that scripting, don't understand it, and probably don't even know it exists. For the purpose they wanted to achieve, they generally did a good job at that.

By the way some people might take offense at your claim regarding number vs. quality of developers. :-)

Quote:
Even something as simple as dealing with icons under windows is virtually impossible *without* buying another application
Icons have always been something that really ticked me off, yes. There are some easy-to-get applications that deal with them, but only partially; for instance they might not save in all sizes, with transparency, and so forth. On the other hand, I don't hold it against the developer that s/he charge money for an application that gives full icon support, given that it requires a fair amount of work. But again, most users don't really care about this.

Quote:
Oh, and none of the solution are usually modular enough to borrow feature X from application Y, when its missing from Z.
Unfortunately that is the nature of most software in general, not just on Windows.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #20 on Thu 26 Oct 2006 07:27 PM (UTC)
Message
Quote:
I think one problem is that your definition of "user" is way too broad. I read this sentence:

> catering to the worst common denominator among the users and, as in the case of the date functions in VB, Excel and MS Exchange


Actually, I was just using that as an example of the compromises they have done to shove people out of the market, not an end user issue. Its hard to be specific, but I have read "lots" of cases where some developer has griped about MS *not* adding 4-5 features they wish they had to make is easier to write code, yet adding 15 of them that do nothing but tweak a few GUI elements, move some menu options around or add some new wizard for picking the user's nose, because someone complained the couldn't figure out how to do it. I tend to agree with this assessment. And sometimes it seriously gets in the way, since they fail to think of more "obvious" solutions that everyone would benefit from.

Though, one example I can think of is that its real easy to "tell" something like Windows Media Player to associate some file type with itself. However, unless the other application you install is able to do so for itself, its nearly impossible to configure the settings for this any other way. Sure, you can try to use command line options, but some only work correctly with DDE, for which no mechanism is available to either discover. And for than matter, you can't revert anything in the OS, like file associations, without reverting entire installs, instead of just fixing the one thing wrong. Now, you might argue this is a bad example, but its the only one I can think of at the moment. Most of the stuff they do "does" make the software easier to use for people that have no clue *why* it works and who you find occationally blinking dumbly at you when you ask them if they accidently turned off the switch on the back of the computer (having informed you it won't start). The problem is, anyone that "knows" how it works and has some clear idea what they want to do is often "prevented" from doing it, precisely because of all the hand holding the OS forces on you and some of that you can't even turn off in your own applications without practically rewritting sections of the API with your own modules and objects.
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Posted by Seawolf   USA  (57 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #21 on Tue 07 Nov 2006 01:07 AM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 07 Nov 2006 01:08 AM (UTC) by Seawolf

Message
Damn I didn't realize this thread had gone on without me. Or I didn't reply for some reason. I dunno.

You can change file type associations really easy. It's been in Folder Options for as long as I can remember. Am I missing something here?
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #22 on Tue 07 Nov 2006 01:43 AM (UTC)
Message
I've found that setting extension handling manually sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Some applications seem to "take control" of their extension, e.g. PDF, and every time I changed the file name or the program it would get put back to PDF.

In Windows 98 or 2000, when I told it to make some association it was typically much more reliable than it has been with XP. It's harder to get at the advanced settings, for example, and it seems to really want you to use its simple "use this program..." dialog thing. This is actually a pretty good example of where something got dumbed down to the point where it's hard to use.

Still, I'm not sure the part about applications changing things is a good example. If you go in and change stuff around, it's kind of your fault if things don't work anymore; for the normal user who just installs a program and has it make the right changes, things tend to work. It's only when you want to do something unusual that you need to work at it a bit.

Also I think that handling extensions is a problem over all OSs. I'm not sure how much I like the Mac way of automagically picking the right program, either, when files don't have extensions; it stores some kind of meta-data in the directories. (I think OSX changed this because it uses the Unix way, if I remember correctly. I haven't looked into this for a while.)
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #23 on Tue 07 Nov 2006 03:15 AM (UTC)
Message
Quote:
You can change file type associations really easy. It's been in Folder Options for as long as I can remember. Am I missing something here?


Yes, you missed the part where I said that you can't "revert" them to prior settings, without in most cases reverting the entire install, and you couldn't even do that prior to ME. Also, if you *need* to use DDE, you have damn well better hope its documented some place on the web, since most applications have no help in them for telling you either command line options or DDE settings to talk to them, and this *includes* MS products, nor any way to find out what the correct DDE command is. So, lets say you have the following:

FudPlayer: command line=-p <song>, DDE=play "%1" -unmute
CrudPlayer: command line=<song>, DDE=--not supported--
DudPlayer: command line=--not supported--, DDE=module.zip.play "%path" "%1"

How the hell do you even figure out *what* to set these to in most cases? Applications with multiple functions for the same file, like "add to playlist", "play", "remove" and "burn", for example, are even worse, since not only is the DDE interface usually never documented, but, if you ever set these, or they are set by something else, to another application, you will "never" get them back, without reinstalling the original application and not all of those will ask, never mind reset, their own associations. This is being "friendly". The problem is, they are friendly, by not doing the BS that applications used to, and changing them without your permission, but some don't provide any way "internally" from their menus to fix the associations, even if you "do" want them associated, so once it sees that a) its already installed and b) something else has the file type, you're screwed. All of which was "much" simpler when DDE didn't exist. Now... The very feature designed to make it "easy" to define different behaviours actually makes it harder to set the perferences, if the application itself doesn't let you fix it.

Now, mind you, this is just short sightedness imho, since it would have made a lot more sense to have an ActiveX like "DDE" inspection system in place, so "if" an application uses DDE, the OS could list available function and set the correct settings for them. But.. The much bigger mess is "stacked" types. Paint Shop Pro has probably 90 file types stacked in it, several MS applications have 10-20, etc. There is "no" feature in the File Type settings dialog to let you "search" for a specific type, so unless you already know what a .tif or .xyz is associated with, if its one of 90 stacked types, all listed under, "JustToScrewWithYou Files", you have no chance of finding the association that exists, removing it, then patching in a new one, even if you "know" the right DDE or command line functions to use with it. Not unless you have root access and know how to use Regedit to find which one to change.

Put simply, you have to throw out the tools they "expect" you to use and use stuff that they have tried in the past to get rid of, or drastically limit, because they didn't think the "end user" should have any way to do it in the first place. And this is something "you" don't even think is broken. My personal favorite has got to be the idiot stuff like MS' applications forgetting where I last saved a file, so I have to navigate through 12 directories every time I want to export every single individual file, in say... Outlook, which *might* be 200 files. No single "export all" function is available, and even if it was, it wouldn't remember where the frack I last saved to again. Worse, this behavour was inconsistent as hell, working fine one day, then forgetting the other 10 times I used it. I never could figure out why it failed most of the time or what possible reason there could be for it to forget in the first place.

Just lots of little things that make you waste small bits of time, doing the same thing over and over, because somehow it turns out to be the one bloody thing MS didn't wizard or bother to get right, but which no one else you ever try, generally, screws up that way. When combined with the programming level idiocies, which hamstring developement... it can rapidly get seriously irritating.
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,140 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #24 on Tue 07 Nov 2006 05:29 AM (UTC)
Message
I'm inclined to agree with most of what Shadowfyr has said in this thread. Often I think I manage to get things to work despite Microsoft's efforts, not because of them. And don't get me started on the Registry ...

:-)
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #25 on Tue 07 Nov 2006 06:40 AM (UTC)
Message
I think it depends a great deal on what you're trying to do. For a very long time, my primary systems were all Windows, and I never felt this level of frustration despite customizing the system rather heavily. Perhaps it depends on what kinds of customizations you want. For example, never (well, maybe just once or twice, but it was pretty obvious what to do) did I have to go mess around with DDE settings in file associations to get things to work the way I wanted.

I think there's an important distinction to be made about things wrong in the OS and things wrong in the applications. The paradigm is that the applications set the associations; if the particular application isn't good at setting its applications, is that really Windows's fault?

Same goes for the "programming level idiocies". Plenty of people write Windows code all the time to develop advanced applications and seem to do fine. It would seem that Shadowfyr is simply cursed to be the one who wants to do things that nobody else wants to do. :-)

And finally, I don't think Windows should get the blame all on its own for what is really a feature of software development in general. Windows did an excellent job making the computer usable for normal people trying to do normal tasks, So did the Mac. Unix isn't good at that at all. Unix is very good for people who really know what they're doing. Not necessarily so for Mac or Windows, depending on what you're doing.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #26 on Wed 08 Nov 2006 01:08 AM (UTC)
Message
Well. I know my example wasn't "great", but the point is, they came up with this system, then failed to provide anything like the interface lookup, even as an optional extra, to expose the interfaces. Think about it. Lets say you want to "edit" a script in SciTE, but run it in Python... How? Right now, if .py is associated with SciTE, it **can't** be associated with the Python executable. Ironically, you could do this "prior" to XP, since that one didn't bother to check for duplicates. Now it will "tell you" that something else has the file type registered, refuse to let you change it at all, even if its to add an "edit" option, instead of "open", but **won't** tell you what its currently listed under or provide a way for you to find out. There might be several applications that use .py, each of which "might" have change the association, and no way to know "who" it currently belongs to, never mind find it, so that you can add a new option to edit it in some other application. Now, how "uncommon" is this likely to be, really? The setup was a pain in the rear to work with "before" DDE started to become common "some now have 'no' command line options at all" and now its worse.

But, XP has gotten better. I don't doubt also that "some" of the problems talked about here:

http://pcworld.com/article/id,117427-page,1-c,windows/article.html

have been fixed in Vista. I am less happy with some of the EULA issues. Sure, they are "relaxing" their restrictions, but still robbing us of the ability to upgrade a machine as often and as much as we like. The average tech head is goingto run into the EULA 1-2 times a year, since they will replace their CPU and motherboard twice as often as that, and the license won't let you move it to more than "one" other machine... And that isn't even getting into the DRM BS in it.

There are some reasons why Windows is getting "worse" even as it gets better. There are also growing signs of Linux getting better in the ways you claim its a pain in the rear. Most versions can now detect and mount devices, as they appear, without fiddling with the system files. Hardware, as long as it doesn't require proprietary drivers (and even in some cases if they normally would) work out of the box, where under XP most still "require" a seperate install to work right and Vista is playing catch up. All Windows has is polish, not base line functionality. Painting a wooden nickle silver and polishing it until it shines, doesn't make it less of a wooden nickle.
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Posted by Seawolf   USA  (57 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #27 on Wed 08 Nov 2006 03:33 PM (UTC)
Message
The Vista EULA was changed. You can reinstall to other machines (or change hardware) as often as you like as long as you only keep it on one machine.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=166

No, I didn't miss the other part, by the way. I just didn't have an answer for it. Something is better than nothing, usually.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/fileassociations/fa_intro.asp

Yeah, that does look pretty annoying. Someday they'll change it, I'd bet, but probably not in Vista. Except for NetDDE being canned.

I guess the file associations menu doesn't even exist in Vista, but you can still use Open With anyway.
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Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #28 on Wed 08 Nov 2006 05:13 PM (UTC)
Message
Quote:
I guess the file associations menu doesn't even exist in Vista, but you can still use Open With anyway.


Oh now that is just really helpful.. Given that its *usually* how things get screwed up in the first place and often doesn't list more than half the actual applications, if they are not ones the OS is actively aware of, like oh... some editors that use their own settings files, instead of burying their info in the registry. And even some that use the registry don't show up in that list. Bets on them removing the associations menu "because" it was a problem, but leaving "Open With", because its a "simple and easy to use method for *most* users", compromise? lol

I like Userfriendly's take one this:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20061108
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Posted by Seawolf   USA  (57 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #29 on Wed 08 Nov 2006 05:49 PM (UTC)
Message
I read userfriendly for about a month. Then I lost interest. So no, I won't check that out.

I don't really know why they did. Or care, really. It doesn't affect me in the slightest.
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