Parks Computing
Pedagogy for the Autodidactic Programmer
Welcome to the personal web site of Paul M. Parks. This is where I keep my web development skills current while sharing snippets of code, utilities, libraries, and what little development wisdom I've gathered in my career. It's also where I show off my family, talk about my hobbies, or just pontificate from time to time.
If you find the articles interesting, or if you'd like more information on a particular topic, let me know [paul@parkscomputing.com].
A New Article Series: Ripsaw
Several years ago I wrote a Windows application called "Ripsaw" that implemented the basic functionality of the Unix tail utility in a graphical application, with a few twists of my own. I had intended to release the application as an open-source project, and although I still use the tool quite a bit I never got around to giving it the necessary polish for a public release. I've only shared it with a few friends and co-workers.
I've just downloaded Beta 2 of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and I've decided to create a new version of Ripsaw from the ground up so that I can become familiar with the new IDE and compiler. Besides being a chance to finally get Ripsaw right, this will also be an opportunity to create a series of articles on how I develop a complete application, from the first ideas through design, implementation, testing, and release. I'll walk you through all of the design decisions and trade-offs, the problems I run into along the way, and the development methodologies I use.
I would really appreciate your feedback, ideas, suggestions, and criticisms. This is going to be fun!
I've just downloaded Beta 2 of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and I've decided to create a new version of Ripsaw from the ground up so that I can become familiar with the new IDE and compiler. Besides being a chance to finally get Ripsaw right, this will also be an opportunity to create a series of articles on how I develop a complete application, from the first ideas through design, implementation, testing, and release. I'll walk you through all of the design decisions and trade-offs, the problems I run into along the way, and the development methodologies I use.
I would really appreciate your feedback, ideas, suggestions, and criticisms. This is going to be fun!
Labels: C++, ripsaw, software, utilities, visual studio
Posted October 26, 2009 0 Comments
Windows Drag Sensitivity Utility
Inspired by an article by Raymond Chen about how to correctly change the Windows mouse drag sensitivity, I wrote a quick utility called dragsens. It's a small command-line utility that will allow you to change the number of pixels the mouse has to travel before a drag operation is initiated. Just download and unzip the utility, then run it at the command line, supplying a single parameter that is the number of pixels for the mouse to travel.
In Raymond's honor, I'll provide my own pre-emptive snarky comment: "That executable is 164KB! I could write that in only 4KB!"
Of course you could. So could I. I linked in the C runtime library so you wouldn't have to install the Visual Studio 2008 distributable package just to run a simple command-line utility. I don't normally do that with typical desktop applications, but for small utilities like this is saves a lot of trouble.
If you'd like modify the utility, or examine its source, you may download the Visual Studio 2008 project. If you just want the utility itself, you may download a ZIP of the executable.
It would be fairly simple to modify the application to set the width and height independently, if you so desired.
In Raymond's honor, I'll provide my own pre-emptive snarky comment: "That executable is 164KB! I could write that in only 4KB!"
Of course you could. So could I. I linked in the C runtime library so you wouldn't have to install the Visual Studio 2008 distributable package just to run a simple command-line utility. I don't normally do that with typical desktop applications, but for small utilities like this is saves a lot of trouble.
If you'd like modify the utility, or examine its source, you may download the Visual Studio 2008 project. If you just want the utility itself, you may download a ZIP of the executable.
About the Utility
The utility is actually very simple. It accepts a single parameter, which is the number of pixels the mouse must travel with a button depressed before the motion registers as a drag action. Rather than separate out the width and height, I just set both to the same number since this is generally all that's necessary.BOOL success = FALSE;
success = SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETDRAGWIDTH, numPixels, NULL, SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE | SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
if (!success)
{
DWORD error = GetLastError();
std::wcout << L"Error " << std::hex << error << std::dec << " while setting drag width." << std::endl;
return 1;
}
success = SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETDRAGHEIGHT, numPixels, NULL, SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE | SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
if (!success)
{
DWORD error = GetLastError();
std::wcout << L"Error " << std::hex << error << std::dec << " while setting drag height." << std::endl;
return 1;
}
It would be fairly simple to modify the application to set the width and height independently, if you so desired.
Update
I'm already at version 1.1. I decided to add a version resource and support for a "/?" parameter.About the Snarky Comments
Please see the entry entitled Pre-emptive Snarkiness for my response to the comments about my utility that were posted on Raymond's blog.Labels: C++, software, utilities
Posted April 10, 2009 3 Comments
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