Archived News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages, 2018 Q4

• By special request: the first public beta version of DialogBoxes DLL for COM scripting.
This first beta has only the MessageBox and DropDownBox dialogs available, and limited documentation.
The ZIP file does contain a batch file to register the DLL and typelib, and a sample VBScript script to examine and test the DLL.

• Just to find out if it would be possible at all, I rewrote CapsLockIcon in PowerShell.
Not quite as good as the C# version, but adequate, and a welcome PowerShell exercise.

• CapsLockIcon.exe and NumLockIcon.exe have been updated: they can now store their settings in the registry.

• CapsLockIcon.exe and NumLockIcon.exe are two new GUI tools that will show the CapsLock and NumLock status in the System Tray.
Right-click the indicators for a context menu: Settings and Exit.
In these first versions, for now, settings are restored to default when the programs are loaded.

• SystemTrayMessage.exe has been updated: the tooltip message is no longer mandatory; if not specified, no tooltip will be shown and switches /I, /L and /T are ignored.

• KeyLocks.exe is a new batch tool to return the status of CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock and Insert keys.
Unlike the separate utilities like CapsLock.exe, KeyLocks.exe can (optionally) run continuously, and it can show its result on screen, in the window title, as return code ("ErrorLevel") and for Windows 10 it can even generate an ANSI sequence to help you display the result at the right hand side of the console.
Unlike the separate utilities like CapsLock.exe, KeyLocks.exe can NOT manipulate the keys.
Insert the following code at the top of your batch files to display the live status of the keys in the window title bar:

START /B KeyLocks.exe /L /T

Unless closing the batch file also closes the console, you may want to terminate KeyLocks when closing the batch file by appending the following code to those batch files (provided only one single instance of KeyLocks.exe is active at any time):

TASKKILL.EXE /FI "imagename eq KeyLocks.exe" /F

• Oops, I forgot to add a required DLL and the accompanying credits to WQLEdit beta 1's ZIP file.
In WQLEdit, multiple properties can be selected by Martin Lottering's marvelous CheckBoxComboBox (dropdown with checkboxes).

Thanks Martin

• I am working on a new feature in WMIGen: a simple WQL Editor.
Because testing the interface takes a lot of time, it is not integrated in WMIGen yet.
You can test the "sneak preview" WQLEdit beta 1 as a stand-alone program.
Have patience when starting the program, it may take up to a couple of minutes to load all available WMI namespaces, classes and properties.

• WANIP.bat and WANIP.vbs have been updated too, to cope with the new secure connection.

• WANIP.exe has been updated: it can now handle the secure connections.

• Likewise, WGetLite.exe has been updated: it too can now handle secure connections.

• I grouped some collected C# code snippets on a new page: C# Code Snippets.

• While testing the "Copy" buttons on the new C# Code Snippets page, I wrote MonitorClipboard.exe to monitor the clipboard in real time.
With text in the clipboard, that text is shown:

MonitorClipboard screenshot with text in clipboard

MonitorClipboard screenshot with text in clipboard

With other clipboard content, the registered content types are shown instead:

MonitorClipboard screenshot with other clipboard content

Press F1 for help:

MonitorClipboard help

• A bug in DateDiff.bat has been fixed: the subroutine calculating the Julian date was too eager to strip leading zeroes without checking if there actually was one.
It took a bit of debugging to find the error, so the updated batch file has a number of new features, including verbose output and debugging.
I also added the option to specify an alternative date format, instead of the computer's local date format.

• WMIGen.exe has been updated:

search functionality has been improved, and has been added to the code view and query results windows as well
the program now uses a secure connection for the update and license checks

• A minor update for BirdName.exe:

improved detection of the required .NET Framework version in Debug Mode
the program now uses a secure connection for the update check

• As of yesterday, this site supports secure connections (https://www.robvanderwoude.com/) besides the "classic" unsecure connections (http://www.robvanderwoude.com/).
So far, most pages seem to work fine with a secure connection, but I haven't finished testing, yet, if all images and scripts and stylesheets and iframes still work.

• And as of tonight (20:30 GMT) all HTTP requests are redirected to HTTPS.

• BirdName.exe has been updated:

you van now copy the scientific name or a translation to the clipboard with a single click
you can select to (HTML) escape text before copying it to the clipboard
in debug mode, you are prompted to view the list of supported languages

• MultipleChoiceBox.exe is a new batch tool to present a list of choices as grouped checkboxes.
It was derived from RadioButtonBox.exe, but using checkboxes allows multiple selections, hence its name.

• ConsoleState had a major update:

the new command line switches /MAX and /MIN and /NORMAL can be used to maximize or minimize the console window or restore it to its normal state
the new experimental command line switch /NOACT tells the program to NOt ACTivate the window when restoring it (often ignored)
return codes when invoked without arguments have been modified: errors => -1, normal window => 0, minimized window => 1 and hidden window => 2

• Henrik Jensen sent me a message stating that using FIND to convert strings to upper case still works in Windows 10 (the text on my web page still said it was tested in XP only).
What's more: of the upcase methods shown here, it is the only one that also works for non-ASCII characters!

Thanks Henrik

• RadioButtonBox.exe "final" has been released.
The latest feature is the optional command line switch /DE to remove duplicates from the list.

• A bug in WMIGen.exe's generated batch code has been fixed.

• Check out the (re)new(ed) WMI Queries for Hardware page if you need to collect hardware inventories.

• Besides specifying the number of rows, you can now specify the number of columns too for RadioButtonBox.exe (but not both).

• I added automatic window sizing to RadioButtonBox.exe.

• RadioButtonBox.exe is a new batch tool to present a list of choices as grouped radio buttons.
It is equivalent to DropDownBox.exe, but with radio buttons instead of a dropdown list.
It is still in beta, I will be running more tests to check if the size and location of radio buttons work out for different scenarios.

• A minor update for isDST.exe: it has been recompiled to work with .NET Framework 2.0 to allow using the program on older systems.
There is no change in the program's functionality.

• A bug in InputBox.exe: the /I switch did not make all regular expressions case insensitive as intended; this bug has been fixed.

• Another update of DropDownBox.exe:

with the optional command line switch /S the list items will be sorted.
with the optional command line switch /K the first item of the list (header) will be skipped

So the sample code presented two days ago can be simplified:

WMIC.EXE Printer WHERE "Network=TRUE" Get Caption | DROPDOWNBOX.EXE "Select a network printer" "Network Printer" /K /S

• DropDownBox.exe has been updated: it now accepts redirected input for its list.
This is demonstrated in the following code to select a network printer (enter as a single command line):

WMIC.EXE Printer WHERE "Network=TRUE" Get Caption | MORE.COM /E +1 | SORT | DROPDOWNBOX.EXE "Select a network printer" "Network Printer"

Note: MORE.COM /E +1 is required to remove the first line (the "Caption" header) from WMIC's output; or you can use FINDSTR.EXE /B /L /V "Caption" as an alternative.

• PrinterSelectBox.exe has been updated:

the optional (mutually exclusive) command line switches /N and /O limit the listed printers to network or local printers only
window height and width can be set using the new optional /H and /W command line switches
command line validation has been improved

• InputBox.exe has been updated:

besides its optional /R switch to test the input with a regular expression after it has been submitted, it now also supports on-the-fly regex testing with the new optional /F switch
with the new optional command line switch /I regular expressions will be case insensitive
with the new optional command line switch /U (requires /M) the returned result will be unmasked for masked input (i.e. literals from the mask will be removed from the result)

• SystemTrayMessage.exe has been updated: when using the optional /W switch, the program will wait for the timeout to elapse or for the user to click the message, whichever occurs first.

News Archives 2018 Q4