I decided to break the gbScroller app into two parts. The first is posted in the forum as gbClientCapture.

It captures the area under the transparent dialog client, merging each new capture into a horizontal image for subsequent scrolling. I've not yet written the scrolling app.

The area between the Toolbar and Statusbar is captured and merged into a horizontal image.

This app displays a transparent dialog, with a Toolbar and a Statusbar. Images under the open dialog client area are captured and merged into a horizontal image.  This will be used by my next app to scroll the horizontal image - corresponding to my post about breaking vertical sheet music into scrollable horizontal music.

Discussion is here.

Toolbar buttons:

1. Exit - close gbClientCapture

2. Copy - captures the desktop below the transparent dialog client and saves it as a BMP. each capture is merged with previous captures to form a horizontal image (first captured image on the left, last captured image on the right)

3. New - deletes all images, including the merged image

4. View - opens the current merged image in the default image viewer

The Statusbar keeps track of how many images there are in the image folder.

Here's a picture of the app, with some desktop showing through the client area.



Code and images are here:  https://www.garybeene.com/files/gbclientcapture.zip

I want to move all DOCX files from an old PC to my new PC, preferably by first putting them all on a flash drive which I use for the transfer.

I've posted code before that would capture a list of files anywhere on the PC that match a filespec such as "*.docx". I can use that to copy files to the flash.

But because some files have the same name, I can't just fill the root folder of the flash with all the files by their original name.  To do that I would have to rename files - such as with a simple prefix of "00001", "0002", etc.  Or, I could prefix the original folder name onto each file name, substituting the \ characters with an underscore.  That won't recreate the old folder structure on the new PC, but will at least capture all of the files.

Better yet, I could use something like Beyond Compare to find only DOCX files and replicate the original folder structure onto the new PC.  That's the most "exact" approach, but I'd have to be careful not to inappropriately overwrite any files on the new PC.

As best I know, the command line xcopy can do a similar thing but doesn't as easily et you pick and chose which files to copy.

Anyone use a better solution?

I'd like to display DOCX and XLSX files with their full visual content.

But, I need for the solution to NOT require Word/Excel be installed on a user's PC.

Is that possible?

From talking with a friend, I got the idea of writing a tool to convert music sheets from a portrait format to a scrollable, horizontal format.  I went looking on the web, thinking there must be one already, but did not find anything.  I have the basics working, but before I spent more time on it, I thought I'd see if anyone here knows of such a thing.

Here's an image showing the idea.  A vertical page of music, with multiple rows of content, would be converted to a horizontal image that can be scrolled at a specified rate.  There might be several pages to convert.



My approach is to have a transparent, resizable dialog that the user places over a row of music and takes a snapshot of that row, then moves the dialog over the next row of music and takes another snapshot - repeating until all rows over multiple pages have been captured. All images would be the same size. gbScroller would merge the images into a single image, which could then be displayed and scrolled within the same app.

I had a bit of a 'carrry on' creating post #2. I couldn't figure out the difference between 'Quick Edit' and 'Full Edit'. On one occasion, I got post #1 merging with post #2. On another occasion, I got post #2 being duplicated within itself.

Would someone explain the difference?

Anyway, the question is whether to use SleepX or SleepXX. I cannot answer that - only you can by trying the two source codes. On my Windows 10 machine with a Performance Counter Frequency of 10MHz and a CPU Base Frequency of 3.5GHz SleepXX is the more accurate.

If you have the time, would you let me know what your Performance Counter Frequency is, your CPU Base Frequency, and a console output of the more accurate.

Ta much. 

This thread is for discussion of gbLocator - a file and folder search utility for blind and low vision users. I posted it a few days ago in the Source Code forum.

Same links ...
Web Site: https://newvisionconcepts.com/gblocator/gblocator.htm
Installation File:   https://garybeene.com/files/gblocator_setup.exe
Source Code File:   https://garybeene.com/files/gblocator.zip

There's even a short video:  https://garybeene.com/files/gblocator.mp4

ver 4.1 is now available - these new features:


1. F1 shows Settings Shortcuts and F2 shows Actions Shortcuts.
2. When Ctrl-F1 is used to start a browser, the BigX toolbar is shown - literally a big "X" over the small browser "x". (optional)
3. Folders now have "(f)" in front of them in Column 1 and when spoken, is spoken as "folder"
4. When opening a file/folder externally (browser, default client, or File Explorer), user can choose between opening the BigX toolbar or Windows Narrator (or neither)
5. A variety of changes to the text spoken when an action is taken - generally more informative but sometimes shorter
6. The Ctrl+Mouse fontsize change now works over the RE and the LV
7. When Expanding a folder, the folder name is now NOT shown in the RE.  Having that long a visible search string was annoying. 
8. As searches are made, the last 5 search terms are kept. To see them, press the up/down arrow keys when focus is on the RE (for my low vision users, I avoid dropdown combobox solutions).
9. Previews of image files (I don't think this was in the previous version)

Howdy, Mike!

Thanks for that post.  I'm glad to hear it was ok at 1920x1080.  I tried the newest version on 3840x2160 and it seems to draw correctly.  If you would, please try the latest version on your 3840x2160 again and let me know if it look ok for you too.

In the latest version, I can't repeat the problem you mentioned, about ESC. As you noted, ESC is supposed to stop talking and exit only if talking is stopped.

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There are currently a number of threads in gbThreads that contain a Shell to WMIC  (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line), including some from the last few years.  

If you are currently using an application that Shells to WMIC, it will not work in Win11 25H2 (coming very soon).  It is being removed (along with PowerShell 2.0).

One thing I learned from this, for absolute speed, you can’t use normal WString comparison. Also, Equal is faster than Comparison if that’s all you need, which is the case with a hash table. Comparison requires two comparisons to determine if it’s less than or greater than. For absolute speed, you can’t use; If A$ = B$ Then.
In the Equal callback, testing the lengths first immediately eliminates some values. Passing a pointer and the length to the callback eliminates that overhead in the callback.
I could get this faster, about 0.095 seconds to find 1,000,000 keys, by writing the code inline instead of using callbacks, but the complexity isn’t worth the benefit.