Resourcer 0.8 Beta, and an update on xpize 5 Options

[W3bbo]

Now that Resourcer has reached beta status I can work properly on getting the xpize 5 Beta out. Yes, you read that correctly. Everyone who signed up to be a beta tester will get the xpize release first; it won't be public until all the initial bugs are ironed out. You can still register as a beta tester on the signup thread. You'll receive a PM with further instructions when I've cranked a release out.

Resourcer 0.8 Beta is an incremental improvement on the 0.7 Alpha, but the main thing is now proper support for replacing resources in files, especially icons.

Download it and spread it around: http://www.codeplex.com/anolis/Release/Pro...ReleaseId=23186

In related news, I've opted for LZMA compression for the package system xpize 5 will be using, which yields 50% better compression ratios compared with PKZip, but there are speed problems with compressing things, however since this only affects people who make packages and not the end-users I don't think it's a major problem.

Anyway, expect to see the xpize 5 beta sometime next week. Watch this space.

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Feb 12 2009, 02:28 PM

[Dumpy Dooby]

Awesome. I would love to get in on the beta testing. I'm still using an ancient single-core 32-bit processor (to be precise: Athlon XP 2600+). It's a sluggish little fella, but it gets by. I'd enjoy throwing some XPize 5 at it.

[bledd]

msfn members never cease to amaze me

awesome work mate, will test it out in 'work' tomorrow , all going well, i'll have new 7zip icons for everyone

[W3bbo]

So bledd, how are you finding it?

[W3bbo]

I said I'd have the xpize 5 beta this week, well I've been hit by a mountain of coursework again, I did an all-nighter last night and I'm already hallucinating (in a class on Discrete Cosine Transform the girl in front of me had hair that kept on turning red in color, creepy).

I'm aiming for this weekend, which is still technically this week.

[janrockt]

do not rush yourself!
some people do not even believe in a new version of xpize so you have all time to get your work done
i do not think that anybody will be dissapointed if it comes out some weeks later.

[sld]

I said I'd have the xpize 5 beta this week, well I've been hit by a mountain of coursework again, I did an all-nighter last night and I'm already hallucinating (in a class on Discrete Cosine Transform the girl in front of me had hair that kept on turning red in color, creepy).

Gosh, don't force yourself, betas can wait even a month or 2, like Firefox. Don't trade your health for a non-life-and-death deadline!

[W3bbo]

I said I'd have the xpize 5 beta this week, well I've been hit by a mountain of coursework again, I did an all-nighter last night and I'm already hallucinating (in a class on Discrete Cosine Transform the girl in front of me had hair that kept on turning red in color, creepy).

Gosh, don't force yourself, betas can wait even a month or 2, like Firefox. Don't trade your health for a non-life-and-death deadline!

Yeah, well, whatever

I had to cancel saturday because one of my servers died (again) so I had to migrate everything off it and onto another server, fun times. The migration still isn't finished. Don't worry though, the server with the xpize/Vize/Anolis websites on wasn't affected. Although I'm thinking of putting some non-obtrusive adverts on the websites. I average about 60GB/month bandwidth usage from xpize downloads alone, good thing my colocation provider gave me a sizable transfer allowance. I imagine it will go way higher once I release xpize 5.

Sunday was bad too since I was called to a bocking meet in Birmingham city centre today (lasted from 1200 through 1600), unlike yesterday these were actual fun times. The friends I was with haven't posted up vids or pics yet. One guy snapped his right spring which is a shame since his replacements are like £90 each. Ouch. I've been back home for 4 hours and I'm still sore all over. And then I have to get round to doing some Computer Science homework due tomorrow which I've been assigned to since a fortnight ago. Whoops.

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Feb 22 2009, 04:39 PM

[bledd]

replace is working perfectly, once it's commandline i can use it full time

awesome work mate

[W3bbo]

replace is working perfectly, once it's commandline i can use it full time

awesome work mate

Are you after 100% reshacker compatibility, or just any kind of command-line switch?

ResHacker's command-line switches aren't very intuitive and their behaviour changes unpredictably unless you read the documentation through like 5 times over. It seems geared for use with RC/RES files rather than one-off operations. That's why I forked that off into the Anolis.Console project (the method stubs are done, I just haven't implemented them yet).

I can easily add a simpler switch set to the main resourcer program. What kind of functionality are you after?

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Feb 23 2009, 02:42 PM

[bledd]

reshacker.exe -addoverwrite 7z.dll, 7z.dll, sevenz.ico, icongroup,101,1033
PROGRAM OPERATION SOURCEFILE, DESTINATIONFILE, RESOURCE.ICO, ICONGROUP/ICONDIR

that's what i used in the past... something logical


basically the ability to directly replace an icon from the 'icon directory'

ie..



feel free to pm me test versions etc



i don't know much about programming, but the ability to drag a .ico file directly into that resource to replace it would be a cool addition too if that's possible in the future

This post has been edited by bledd: Feb 24 2009, 03:45 AM

[W3bbo]

reshacker.exe -addoverwrite 7z.dll, 7z.dll, sevenz.ico, icongroup,101,1033
PROGRAM OPERATION SOURCEFILE, DESTINATIONFILE, RESOURCE.ICO, ICONGROUP/ICONDIR

that's what i used in the past... something logical

Sure.

basically the ability to directly replace an icon from the 'icon directory'

ie..



feel free to pm me test versions etc

Just so I know I'm understanding you right, you're saying you can replace icon directories in the Resourcer GUI, but would also like to do this via the commandline?

(initially I interpreted your post as saying you couldn't replace icon directories from the GUI, let alone the commandline)

i don't know much about programming, but the ability to drag a .ico file directly into that resource to replace it would be a cool addition too if that's possible in the future

Right now you can drag files onto the window which it will open as sources, rather than replacements. But I'll look into it for replacing items.

[bledd]

Just so I know I'm understanding you right, you're saying you can replace icon directories in the Resourcer GUI, but would also like to do this via the commandline?

(initially I interpreted your post as saying you couldn't replace icon directories from the GUI, let alone the commandline)

yup, i can replace fine in 0.8b using the GUI, would be cool to automate it using commandline..

basically with each 7zip release i'd have to replace ~20 icons total (32 and 64bit), but they're always in the same iconDir, so simply running a bat file would be far quicker for me

This post has been edited by bledd: Feb 24 2009, 07:22 AM

[W3bbo]

For those of you wondering why I've let another deadline slip, it's because I've hit a snag with System File Protection. XPize does some voodoo with SFP that I haven't quite yet worked out (I've written my own reimplementation that doesn't seem to be working at all). I've dinged my pal Rafael Riverea (of UxTheme patch fame) for some help and advice, I hope for everyones' sake he gets back to me soon with a solution.

yup, i can replace fine in 0.8b using the GUI, would be cool to automate it using commandline..

Whilst I wait for information from my contacts, I'll work on this and sneak out a resourcer update sometime this week.

UPDATE: I've been working with Rafael and he seems just as stumped as me. I hope to get some research done this week and maybe then get back on progress if we're successful.

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Mar 1 2009, 07:34 PM

[bledd]

ok mate

your work is greatly appreciated

[W3bbo]

I'm inching closer to a release date for the beta.

Now I've reached a fork in the road: will the beta testers be interested in having the uninstallation feature done for the first beta?

I'm being serious and honest about me getting a beta out by the end of this week, but it would be missing a few things people might want, like the ability to uninstall (and don't worry, this uses a proper uninstallation feature and not the hackish version in xpize 4.x)

The beta will also miss out things like Luna Blue and Luna Element. The resource set I'm working with is based off XPize 4.6 (not 4.7). I'll recreate 4.7's new resources later on though in time for the big five-point-oh

Certain other things like the configuration of filetype icons will also be absent. So in this regard it's more of a late-alpha or early-beta than a proper beta (so it's certainly not an RC build either).

So basically... would you guys like it sooner with less features, or later with more?


As an aside, Zedox, author of "XPize Darkside" says he can be reached through this forum. I'd like to know how Zedox would feel if I came out with my own black variant. I inherited all the necessary files from XPero so there's no technical reason I can't.

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Mar 3 2009, 08:29 PM

[Dumpy Dooby]

I'll be testing in a VM. If necessary, I can write my own uninstaller. So no, I don't need one and I would prefer to beta test sooner than later without one.

[bledd]

W3bbo, you could release one without an uninstaller, and put a note with it.

Suggest for people to test it virtualbox or something

[W3bbo]

Say bledd (or anyone else who'se willing, has a good voice and a microphone), can you do me a favour to post a tutorial screencast vid to Youtube or something? I noticed ResHacker has a good few tutorial videos explaining how to use it, I feel Resourcer could do with the same coverage Just do a screencast with a voiceover explaining what it does, how to use it, and do something cool with it, like changing the images in logonui.exe or or some control panel wizard's images.

This post has been edited by W3bbo: Mar 4 2009, 11:57 AM

[Dumpy Dooby]

edit- bloops. double post.

This post has been edited by Dumpy Dooby: Mar 4 2009, 10:03 PM