Compatibility Sword

Well... like it? I'm having trouble finding any bugs. I guess thats a good thing . Time to start working on some videos for it I think.

Yeh, its working good.

Here's a couple links I thought you might find useful. They concern UAC:

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/user_account_control.htm
http://huddledmasses.org/vista-setuid-how-to-elevate-without-prompting/

Thanks for the links. CSword is UAC friendly though, so not quite sure if there's any use for these.

kairozamorro wrote:Thanks for the links. CSword is UAC friendly though, so not quite sure if there's any use for these.

Right. I wasn't implying that it wasn't, just found those links, and thought you might be interested, is all.

2.2 released. Some other major improvements and U3 package is now available.

2.3 released. Added a few new features (/hide and /savelog mainly) and hopefully fixed runtime messages popping up on the screen in Windows 7/XP.

Downloads are now zip files so no 7-zip required. Compatibility Sword's page also now contains complete documentation of using CSword in scripts/from the command line.

2.4 released. This release has been targeted at .net 2 rather than 3.5 so it can be ran on older machines like 98, 2000, and XP. In addition translation supports been added and a translation file may be generated using the new /translate switch.

Cool, cool. Pretty sweet...
Keep up the good work. Say, how much have you studied the C# language? Are you still coding more in VB than C#? How much difference is there between the two languages?

Is Compatibility Sword written in VB or C#? I seem to remember you mentioning on your site that you went back to VB for FileDir2Prompt, because C# was a little difficult or something...

Its VB. I can program in C# but I'm more comfortable with VB. That's going to change though as I'm taking a C# class in school fairly soon

Is the .Net Framework for only VB?

Nope, its a development platform for VB, C#, and J# programming languages.

Compatibility Sword 2.5 has been released. As always you can get it here: http://bit.ly/csword

Changes from last release:

Fixes
Input argument "/" used to cause an error. Now its simply considered invalid.
Input arguments for an application specified with /param switch couldn't exceed 2 parameters or the 2nd parameter was repeated for the remaining parameters. More information about this bug can be found here: http://kzorro.webs.com/apps/forums/topics/show/2211621-solved-2nd-parameter-repeated-using-param
Fixed main window not getting back focus in Windows 7 when selected application has finished (hopefully anyway)

Enhancements
Exit button added to title bar
Runs application or directory automatically after selection if user failed to provide it orginally before hitting run in the user interface
In addition to giving focus clears password field for you whenever you select a new user
/savelog copies over the perserved log to the user's documents directory when the session is finished
Interface is translated before /translate is processed if an existing translation file exists, so most translations are perserved and the translator only needs to translate remaining items in the file to update it for use with a new release. For more information about translating Compatibility Sword into another language see the following topic: http://kzorro.webs.com/apps/forums/topics/show/1769474-translating-compatibility-sword-into-another-language
When you add files/directories in arguments to the application you want to run in the user interface, Compatibility Sword automatically removes dobule spaces in case you had put in a few yourself to help prevent passing of invalid arguments to the application.
Previous behavior of drag/drop of applications on Compatibility Sword was to only assuume they are command line applications. In addition to this, Compatibility Sword passes "/?" as an argument automatically which is typically used by the majority of command line utilities as the command to get and display the application's available options (help) to the user.

Features Added
4 new compatibility modes added for use with Windows 7 or later: Windows XP Service Pack 3 ("xp3"), Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1 ("srv081"), Windows Vista Service Pack 1 ("vista1"), and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 ("vista2"). Vista without any service packs is still specified with the osmode command "vista"
Run a proccess with a different date from the system without changing the system's date. Best of all it doesn't require admin rights, making Compatibility Sword's main features 100% accessible in locked down Windows enviornments. This of course couldn't have happended without the great work of Nir Sofer at nirsoft.net, where the RunAsDate utility is free to download separately along with many other great sysadmin utilities.
/dateps and /datepsimmed added for command line use of process date change.
/uacdir added. This is the same as /dir except its elevated. No more having to accept prompts a million times in explorer in certain directories where you default to limited ready only access like system32 for example when you're trying to move around and modify some files
Compatibility Sword well assume an applications location to be the working directory if custom work dir is specified with /workdir before the parameter specifying the application to run. For example, sample.exe would run without error regardless of current working directory from m:\apps with the following: csword.exe /workdir m:\apps sample.exe (This only kicks in when it can't be found anywhere else in the other various places CSword checks)
/syscommand added. Its now possible to make Compatibility Sword a system command from a batch/script.

Tweaks
Any temp files needed by Compatibility Sword are now stored in the user's temp files directory. I noticed under certain circumstances the files were not deleted like they were supposed to when CSword is finished using them. Having them re-located to this location seemed like the most appropriate thing to do so if files do fail to get deleted your average cleanup utility or disk cleanup is well capable of getting rid of them in the process of cleaning this location out.
As promised RunAs option is available even on UAC enabled system or for administrators. Be careful about using it though. For example, never try to elevate and run the process with a different user at the same time... it just won't work.
Elevated option isn't enabled and the option to disable it disabled when custom date in system date change mode is selected anymore. However, it still requires admin rights, so Compatibility Sword regardless of whether or not you optin to elevate the process it well elevate regardless in this configuration.
Listing of available OS modes in the user interface has been reversed so now it shows newest to oldest.
Some messages here and there updated.

Changes to some /osmode commands
With Windows XP and later, osmode commands like "xp" well immediately be followed by service pack number. For example, to use the XP service pack 2 compatibility mode, you would specify "xp2". For service pack 3 it would be "xp3" and so on. Since there isn't a compatibility mode for the orignal XP release the "xp" osmode command from previous versions is no longer valid. The available XP osmode commands now are "xp2" or "xp3".

As you can see, a big release this time. I expect it to be this way for now on with less frequent releass. Work on it when I can and put out a new release every so often.

Kool.
I'll download the newest version to try it out once I've got my desktop computer connected to the internet.

I left a reply here in regards to your comment about translation. Yay or nay?

Affirmative.

Ok, well thats how its going to be. Another release won't be for awhile though. I'm actually working hard on a new program.

New Idea for 3.0...

I've got an idea. I'm of course going to re-write verything from the ground up again... ok maybe not everything but its going to be a big project. I want to overhaul the user interface most importantly, which leads me to ask....

Compatibility Sword was orginally intended for two purposes

1. Make application compatibility accessible via the command line and in scripts for administration purposes and advanced users
2. Provide a simple user interface that could easily be used by the less knowledgeable of computer users without having the user navigate each applications compatibility tab or save the settings permantely on the computer.

While I think goal 1 has been achieved, goal 2 could use some improvement. With all the new features I've been adding the UI is starting to look a little too crowded for comfort. While this might not be a problem for some it may look intimidating to some of the userbase the UI part of the application was intended for.

So, in order to meet goal 2 along with a complete UI overhaul I'm proposing a wizard type UI or the option to pick between a wizard format and the standard UI with all options available.

So what do you think? Wizard only, standard and wizard, or keep it the way it is?

I say do both wizard and standard.

What I'm thinking is it'll be wizard by default, but if /gui is supplied or a new switch (/expert) or something like that it well bring it to the screen with all the options. Or it might be such a good wizard no one well miss having a screen of crowded options?...

What about having some menus like most programs?
That way you only have the most important options on the main page, and everything else can be found in the menus. Much cleaner that way, I think...

I'll haft to think about that. I'm really fixed on a step-by-step approach with a wizard though. After all, the advanced user could script up what they want Compatibility Sword to do if they hate speeding through step-by-step options.

Hey, have you ported the FileDir2Prompt part of it to Linux yet?
I could really use a Linux version of that program, as it would make entering certain directories through the command line easier. And do you have it where you can save certain locations, and pick from locations saved, or create a new one if you don't already have the one you want? I think that would be a good feature too.

It might work as is, have you tried running it in wine/mono?

I'll be putting Ubuntu back on my laptop after 2 years of no linux use here in the next month or so. Due to the nature of Linux I'm actually not sure if its possible.

The good news is I'm going to be taking up mono on linux for development. It allows me to write out .net code for multiple platforms. My future projects might even run on OS X.

No, I've stayed away from Wine since I tried Ubuntu for the first time, because I've read it makes your system vulnerable to stuff like Windows viruses and stuff like that, and I obviously don't want that.

I don't know...maybe I'll try it out one of these days, probably on my 32 bit version of Ubuntu 9.10, instead of the other Ubuntu, which I use most often.

People don't know what they're talking about. Viruses designed for Windows won't work on Ubuntu, the system make up is completely different. In fact, I think wines installed automatically. I remember running a Windows version of unetbootin in Ubuntu without issue a few years back.