[Petr]

Drugwash, on Dec 12 2006, 12:58 PM, said:

Also a good idea might be upgrading RichEdit (riched20.dll) to 5.30.23.1226, as it may be needed by recent applications. Personally I tried to use a more recent version of it (5.40.x.x and 5.50.x.x) but I found them to be faulty regarding a few functions while testing in Miranda IM, so I had to downgrade to 5.30.x.x, which is working fine for me.

Really? That's very bad, Riched20.dll 4.0 (5.40.x.x) is required for Metapad and many other programs to work with non-ASCII codepages, like East/Central European codepage 1250.

This topic was alaredy discussed here: http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=72448 and the conclusion was that it is safe to use riched20.dll version 5.40.11.2218 because it does not break anything.

Here you can see the difference:

Richedit 3.0 (all versions):


Richedit 4.0 (all versions):


This is also noted here: http://www.liquidnin...ad/faq.html#Q18

This problem si common for Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and even Windows Vista.

Therefore I have opened the incident # SRQ060526601424 with Microsoft and asked them to correct this bug but after several months of e-mailing and phone calls the result was:

Quote

After a long time with testing and conferencing with my colleagues from the US and also discussing this with our Unit Manager regarding this issue here I am to give you an update and some more info:

I regret to inform you that Peter Constable, Program Manager for Windows Globalization maintains that this is a “by design” behavior. Here’s some more info from Peter:

Please note some things regarding versions of the RichEdit control:

- When you see “5.30.23.1221”, ignore the initial “5.”; this is version 3.0.

- The system has never shipped version 5.0 of RichEdit. RichEdit is developed by Office, and they are currently developing version 6.x for Office 12. Version 5.0 would only have shipped with Office.

- Version 4.0 of riched20.dll has never been shipped by the system; it has only been shipped by Office. The system ships version 4.x of RichEdit using the file name msftedit.dll.

Furthermore we have discussed the possibility of msftedit.dll being used instead of riched20.dll when building a new application.

For this issue to be further pursued I will need you to send me a business impact plan so that Microsoft can decide whether this should be pursued or not.

I’ve already arranged to have a conference call with my manager to discuss this issue if you’d like and I’m also fully available and happy to help you with building the business impact plan if needed.

So Microsoft will not correct any bug without "business impact plan", even if you have paid for the support.

Quote

As agreed your existing support case SRQ060526601424 will now be closed. Customer Satisfaction is very important to us and we would like to be sure that you are very satisfied with the management of this case.

Therefore, if we can be of any further assistance on this case or if you have any suggestions for improving our service please do not hesitate to contact either myself or my manager Bruno Ribeiro on brunor@microsoft.com so we can ensure you receive our immediate attention.

As discussed with Bruno, I have forwarded the info and documentation regarding riched20.dll you provided, plus your workaround suggestion, to the program group in order for them to further study the issue and come up with a KB article. This, unfortunately, might take a couple of weeks.

As this case was related to a design issue, I have closed this case as non decrement for you.

It was a pleasure working with you. I only wished all our customers documented their cases as well as you did. Thank you!

Should you need any further assistance with this matter, please feel free to contact me directly and I will be happy to assist.

Very polite response - but nothing was done yet, even the bug was not documented in MSKB yet.



Back to RICHED20.DLL. Are you able to document your problems with Richedit 4.0 and Miranda? I don't use Miranda so I'd like to test them. The serious problem with Richedit 3.0 and 3.1 and Windows with default codepage 1250 (defualt in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian versions of Windows 98) has to be solved some way. Maybe there is some other workaround? Or someone will be able to patch riched20.dll 3.0?

My understanding is so that Richedit does a test if the character is supported in the currently selected font. If it is missing, then it switches to different font that contains it - just to be able to display the character and not empty rectangle only. Unfortunately there is a bug in Richedit 3.0, 3.1 and even 5.0 that causes font switching even when the character is supported by the currently selected font.

Regards,

Petr

[Petr]

note: RichEdit 6.0 (12.0.4017.1003) does not work on Win9x - there is unresolved dependency to GetGlyphIndicesW in GDI32.DLL

This post has been edited by Petr: 16 December 2006 - 06:03 AM

[Drugwash]

Not being a programmer but merely a tester/user, I couldn't offer specific technical details, but during testing one of the plug-ins created for Miranda IM - namely spellchecker - I noticed that the wrong words that should have been marked with red wave, dotted, thick or other kind of underscore were only marked with thin line having the same color as the font. Replacing RichEdit v5.50 with v5.40 exhibited the same behavior. Downgrading to v5.30, the underscore immediately started to behave normally as selected in the plug-in's options. So this is not a problem of wrong characters being displayed, but rather one of missing/wrong features.

One other issue that I noticed was in the official eMule client: on the Servers page, at the bottom, there's a tab called "Server info". In there it's a link called "Click HERE to check for a new version" (or similar). With RichEdit v5.40 or 5.50 installed, the link was not clickable, there was only a line of simple text. Downgrading to RichEdit v5.30 fixed that issue too - the line became a link again, that would open the project's main page in the default browser.

Bottom line is that it may be possible to be a bad implementation of some features in certain applications, where programmers have used only RichEdit v5.30 (at most) to test them. But it may also be that RichEdit versions above v5.30 have different implementations of some functions (or even bugs, why not?) that make them slightly incompatible with previous ones. After all, if those versions would have been 100% safe and compatible, I suppose MS would have shipped them as system upgrades. Instead, they preferred to ship them only with the Office suite, which may offer a clue regarding their limited compatibility.

Anyway, this is just a supposition of mine, so if anyone knows better, please disregard my posts on the matter.

Petr: Miranda IM is open-source and so are it's plug-ins (with very few exceptions). You're welcome to test it in any combination you wish, to confirm or deny my allegations. Please note that some of the alpha-staged plug-ins can only be found in their dedicated forum threads. Personally I've used a nightly v0.7 build for testing, available from the Development page.

[Petr]

I'd like to move the riched20 discussion to the proper topic: RICHED20.DLL compatibility

Petr

This post has been edited by Petr: 17 December 2006 - 03:27 AM

[bayou75]

Soporfic:

I downloaded and installed autopatcher 1.6 at least three 3 times all with the same result. When the dos window appeared it gives the message "bad command and or file". What am I doing wrong? Is it my machine? I followed the same procedure with autopatcher 1.0 and had no difficulty when installing your patch.

[soporific]

bayou75, on Dec 20 2006, 07:43 AM, said:

I downloaded and installed autopatcher 1.6 at least three 3 times all with the same result. When the dos window appeared it gives the message "bad command and or file". What am I doing wrong? Is it my machine? I followed the same procedure with autopatcher 1.0 and had no difficulty when installing your patch.

You need to run 1.5 and then run 1.6 over it. Getting a 'bad command and or file' message tells me you are most likely trying to run 1.0 and then 1.6 over it. This won't work, sorry. If you have tried the above then i'm not sure why this is happening. If you ran 1.0 successfully then its certainly not your machine.

I am nearly finished with 1.7 and someone has kindly offered to host it for me so if you have no luck then I would wait until 1.7 is available.

[bayou75]

Soporific:

Thank your response - Let me say that I think that your autopatch system is a great idea. Not long ago I crashed my system and having a clean install I was working with autopatch 1.5 and 1.6. When I opened the 1.5 it apeared to install correctly but when the dos window appeared I received the bad command message. I think I will take your advise and wait until 1.7 is released. Again, this is a great idea it has all of the components and hotfixes needed for the 98 system. I await for autopatch 1.7. thank you

[soporific]

bayou75, on Dec 20 2006, 09:08 AM, said:

Soporific:

Thank your response - Let me say that I think that your autopatch system is a great idea. Not long ago I crashed my system and having a clean install I was working with autopatch 1.5 and 1.6. When I opened the 1.5 it apeared to install correctly but when the dos window appeared I received the bad command message. I think I will take your advise and wait until 1.7 is released. Again, this is a great idea it has all of the components and hotfixes needed for the 98 system. I await for autopatch 1.7. thank you

Thanks for your reply and feedback about autopatcher, its been rather scarce...

Please confirm that you have tried the following:

1) run the autopatcher 1.5 file

2) exit out of an error messages you get and exit out of all DOS boxes

3) run the autopatcher 1.6 file

- the program should now open and run correctly.

version 1.7 will be out very soon and so you can always try that one -- I will release a 1.7 update and also the full file now that I have a hoster so there should be a solution soon!


regarding MS Agent 2.0:

Should I include this in autopatcher?

This post has been edited by soporific: 19 December 2006 - 07:07 PM

[bayou75]

Soporific:

Thank you for your interest and response. Since my system last crashed I haven't downloaded autopatcher 1.5 and 1.6. I will download and follow your instructions. Will let you know how things work out.

bayou 75

[Max_04]

@ Soporific: it's possible to localize autopatcher personalizing, or better, remove some updates in this pack?

Naturally AutoPatcher for windows 98 SE, if you give me permission, will contain all updates localized by me in italian and ufficial patches/components from microsoft.

Unfortunately, some updates aren't in my language and I've necessity to reduce the pack, also for my requirement.

For all testing I've a real machine with 98SE.

Let me know.

Max

This post has been edited by Max_04: 20 December 2006 - 03:15 PM

[soporific]

Max_04, on Dec 21 2006, 05:05 AM, said:

@ Soporific: it's possible to localize autopatcher personalizing, or better, remove some updates in this pack?

Naturally AutoPatcher for windows 98 SE, if you give me permission, will contain all updates localized by me in italian and ufficial patches/components from microsoft.

Unfortunately, some updates aren't in my language and I've necessity to reduce the pack, also for my requirement.

That's fine, go ahead -- I'm sure lots will be happy there will be 2 languages available -- if you need some help with understanding what I've done, just ask.

I've started work on the essential 3rd party apps module that will contain things like 7-Zip which i consider to be an absolutely essential installation on any Windows OS. The question then is: what else should go in? The size of the app is quite important ... i'd say over 10 mb would disqualify it...

And I know its the bloody silly holiday season but no comments on MS Agent?

UPDATE: just finished coding 7-zip into autopatcher --- i'm now using LOCATE.COM which finds a file anywhere on the system, so autopatcher should be able to determine if:
1) you have 7-Zip installed anywhere on your system (ie if its not in the default location) and
2) if you have the latest version.

This might sound like a no brainer, but trying to do it all in DOS was not that easy. Anyway, i'm quite happy with the functionality !! Just thought i'd let you all know...

This post has been edited by soporific: 20 December 2006 - 05:42 PM

[MDGx]

soporific, on Dec 20 2006, 04:13 PM, said:

... no comments on MS Agent?

Sorry, mate, I'm not using it, so I don't need it.
But I'm only 1 person, I can't speak for anybody else.

HTH

[soporific]

MDGx, on Dec 21 2006, 09:54 AM, said:

soporific, on Dec 20 2006, 04:13 PM, said:

... no comments on MS Agent?

Sorry, mate, I'm not using it, so I don't need it.
But I'm only 1 person, I can't speak for anybody else.

Fair enough, its gonna be hard to speak for other people ... i suppose I'm after opinions about its usefulness -- if its a complete waste of coding space, then i definitely won't bother. It sounds like its one of those Apps for Newbies things that most people avoid like the plague ... but having said that, its not very big in size, and there's a hotfix for it as well

[Eck]

Licensed user of WinZip and WinRAR here, with WinRAR associated with 7-Zip files. So I hope the Autopatcher would be set to not install this unless a user manually runs the modules and specifically selects it.

I'm just too used to those 2 programs. And especially since I bought them I'd rather not have another utility installed in an updater program.

Just an opinion, but I think including programs would be beyond the scope of an operating system patcher. Might even be considered an annoyance if one wouldn't be able to click to run the whole Autopatcher without getting someone's personal favorite programs installed with it.

If anything, make those that want these things run the seperate modules to get them. Let most users just click "Go" and get all the OS, IE, WMP, Direct X, Optimization's. 3rd party programs should be the ones to need the extra choosing to get them installed.

[soporific]

Eck, on Dec 21 2006, 10:39 AM, said:

Licensed user of WinZip and WinRAR here, with WinRAR associated with 7-Zip files. So I hope the Autopatcher would be set to not install this unless a user manually runs the modules and specifically selects it.
If anything, make those that want these things run the seperate modules to get them. Let most users just click "Go" and get all the OS, IE, WMP, Direct X, Optimization's. 3rd party programs should be the ones to need the extra choosing to get them installed.

Yep, I definitely agree with your approach here ... it is definitely an optional install, and can be easily avoided. I was going to include it as a default install but I'll bow to your comments about giving users the option to easily just install the essential OS file updates, and if people want it, they can set it to be installed through the options function.

There's 2 main menu pages in autopatcher and I've tried to keep them separate --- page 1 has all the essential hotfix updates, etc, and page 2 has all the optional stuff. So all these extra optional stuff will be tucked away in page 2 which you can just ignore if you don't ever want to visit it.

This post has been edited by soporific: 20 December 2006 - 07:18 PM

[bayou75]

Soporific:


Just a final note: I followed your instruction and installed autopatch 1.5 and the same message appeared "bad command of file" I then closed the dos window and installed 1.6. I'm sorry to say that the same message appeared in window. One positive note - I opened the temp file and the autopatch components appeared. I could have installed manually, however I decided to wait on 1.7.

I was wondering if the tweak package is installed would the 386 updates be observable in the system.ini or would they be hidden?

bayou75

[soporific]

AutoPatcher for Windows 98se v1.7 alpha has been released... see the first post

[Drugwash]

Thanks, still downloading; low bandwidth now, during holidays. One suggestion, though: could you somehow add an eD2k download link for the package? Personally I'm sick'n tired of all the advertising choking this world. Besides, the download page requires javascript enabled - which some people might not like - and a certain amount of time to wait until one can actually start the download. As I run eMule almost 24/7, it'd be much easier to add the package to the downloads list with a single click, than go through all that - let's say - trouble.
Thanks again and have a Merry Christmas (or what's left of it, considering timezones).

[soporific]

ed2k://|file|Autopatcher_for_Win98_v1.7_update.rar|32507679|4F018E44BE91794B841AD9D28B6D7B2A|

ed2k://|file|Autopatcher_for_Win98se_v1.7_Full.exe|207043044|E727A0593ACC10520AEB3442191DDFA6|

Powershared on release

This post has been edited by soporific: 25 December 2006 - 12:02 PM

[Drugwash]

Excellent! I hope those links will be useful to more users, not only me. Thank you!