[WANTED] Feedback and developers for Win32 Utils

[Daniel Berger]

Hi all,

The Win32 Utils Team is looking for a little help.

First, we would like to ask the Win32 users out there what sorts of
things you would like us to work on. Is there some interface you're
desperately looking for? Is there some functionality you would like to
see added to an existing package? Please let us know!

Second, we are looking for some folks to join the Win32 Utils Team.
Specifically, we're looking for people with a good C background and who
either know, or are willing to learn, the Windows API. Although we do
not require C extensions, using the Win32API module still requires a C
background.

We have a few things we're considering:

* A port of the Win32::Screenshot Perl module
* Image support added to the win32-clipboard package
* A File.stat method that uses win32-etc behind the scenes
* A Ruby interface for the Remote Access Service (big)
* A Ruby interface for TAPI 3
* Anything else you can think of

If you're interested, please send an email to myself, Shanko or Heesob:

Daniel: djberg96 at nospam yahoo dot com
Heesob: phasis68 at nospam nownuri dot net
Shanko: sdate at nospam everestkc dot net

(Remove the "nospam" and convert)

If you don't necessarily want to do development, but would like to take
part in the discussions, please join the win32utils-devel mailing list
or post in one of the forums on the project page:

http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/win32utils

That's our pitch folks. We hope to hear from you.

Thank you much.

The Win32 Utils Team

PS - A release of win32-changejournal should be out *soon*

 

[Zach Dennis]

Hi all,

The Win32 Utils Team is looking for a little help.

First, we would like to ask the Win32 users out there what sorts of
things you would like us to work on. Is there some interface you're
desperately looking for? Is there some functionality you would like to
see added to an existing package? Please let us know!

Provide an interface to retrieving special folder paths using function
calls like:
SHGetSpecialFolderPath in shell32.dll
etc...

I know that some systems require SHGetSpecialFolderPathA to be called in
place of SHGetSpecialFolderPath depending on what version of Windows and
what Service Packs are loaded.

see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;194702 for
more information

if this support is already added, i apologize, but i dont' think it is,
thx for all your hardwork!

Zach

 

[Shashank Date]

Hi Zach,

Provide an interface to retrieving special folder paths using function
calls like:
SHGetSpecialFolderPath in shell32.dll
etc...

What an amazing coincidence ! I suggested the same to Dan before he
posted this call for help. May be we should look into this together

--shanko

 

[Martin DeMello]

First, we would like to ask the Win32 users out there what sorts of
things you would like us to work on. Is there some interface you're
desperately looking for? Is there some functionality you would like to
see added to an existing package? Please let us know!

What would be nice (and I'm addressing this more to the community than
to the win32 utils developers) would be little command line tools making
use of the libraries. These could be shipped as examples, but the main
purpose would be to demonstrate how ruby can make your life easier.

As an example, a common method of passing around urls in my office is to
simply "net send" them to someone. However, retrieving said urls is a
pain, since the popup box does not allow text to be copied from it (!).
So I wrote a very small 'nsgrep' program that simply greps through the
event log and prints out text you can copy/paste - not even 20 lines of
ruby, but it makes life easier. Similarly a command line tool you can
call via "locked <filename>" and will return details of the process
holding the lock on the file would be handy, or a 'df' tool for people
without msys/cygwin installed, etc etc.

martin

 

[Zach Dennis]

Hi Zach,




What an amazing coincidence ! I suggested the same to Dan before he
posted this call for help. May be we should look into this together

That'd be great! I've got some C code which wraps the ability for Java
using the JNI interface, perhaps that will help having something to look
at when using it for Ruby? I just subscribed to the win32-dev mailing
list. If you subscribe we can talk about it over there more.

Zach

 

[Shashank Date]

That'd be great! I've got some C code which wraps the ability for Java
using the JNI interface, perhaps that will help having something to look
at when using it for Ruby?

Yes, it may. Can I have a look at it please ?

I just subscribed to the win32-dev mailing
list. If you subscribe we can talk about it over there more.

I am subscribed. See you there ...

Zach

-- shanko

 

[Paul]

There is a lirary on the raa called win32-guitest which can be used
for testing windows applications. Its quite old and only runs under
cygwin. It would be great to see this extended and to work correctly
under native windows.

I can probably help out a bit too.

Paul

 

[Sascha Doerdelmann]

Provide an interface to retrieving special folder paths using function
calls like:
SHGetSpecialFolderPath in shell32.dll
etc...

There is a file called winshell.rb included in my sourceforge project
Piggy. It might do what you want until someone comes out with a better
solution.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/piggy/

Unless Win32 Utils I wanted to be platform independent. My solution
was to implement what I need from a Windows point of view and think
about other platforms later. If someone thinks this file could/should
be included into the win32 Utils I'd be happy to contribute it as a
starting point.

WxWidgets has a stable, platform independent file system interface but
I didn't look up if it supports windows shortcuts because I am still
using FxRuby.

Cheers
Sascha

 

[Daniel Berger]

There is a lirary on the raa called win32-guitest which can be used
for testing windows applications. Its quite old and only runs under
cygwin. It would be great to see this extended and to work correctly
under native windows.

I can probably help out a bit too.

Hi Paul,

Well, I hate to co-opt someone else's code, especially since I'm pretty
sure MoonWolf is still actively updating his software. He just hasn't
updated *that* particular package in a while.

I would recommend sending MoonWolf an email and/or patch.

Regards,

Dan