SyMenu Forum

chef

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01/07/2019 Topic: How to know when to use builtin update? chef	Gianluca wrote: You should never use the build in update feature of a program unless the SPS editor decides that it is so pervasive and reliable that the SPS doesn't have to care about it. But in these few cases, don't worry, the build in update feature is so pervasive and reliable that the program take initiative and update itself almost within warn you. Mozilla Firefox is one of these. If I never should use build in update feature of a program unless the SPS editor decides it is so reliable, how may I know this decision? Which flag in SPS package manager tells me how the SPS editor has decided? The case of Mozilla Firefox is the only one reported. And it seems that I accidently found another one where you're the SPS editor and I reported back to you via SPS package manager contact feature. But I couldn't find a corresponding flag if this reported package was already known to be at least currently reliable enough and if you were already aware of published updates as corresponding SPS package editor. And I didn't experience that the program was taking the initiative. I've performed and initiated the built in update check manually before. And I know of another tool inside PortableApps and SyMenu Suite which is not yet reliable enough and had opened an issue to the tool author more than a month ago, so even before learning it included in SyMenu. This tool isn't only freeware. It has a dual use license, a professional one and a freeware one, the automatic built in feature being reserved to the professional use. But the authors implementation of portable isn't distinguishing sharply enough to comply strictly enough with common understanding of portable edition. Another typical tool not expected as portable is LibreOffice, at least for full feature set.
14/07/2019 Topic: Minor Bugs in SPS Package Manager Reporting ? chef	Hi, I've about two weeks only of experience with SyMenu and its SPS package manager. I'm still learning some not so obvious and interesting features. But it seems that I stumble on bugs of time to time. Thankfully, what seemed to be blocking, these tools provide work arounds to prevent it remaining blocking. So now it seemed to me I either didn't find correct configuration or found a non-blocking minor bug in SPS package manager. When I don't filter the list of packages (all packages), I discovered that it is possible to sort the columns in that list of packages. When I wanted to sort according to package size, the result seems to sort something similar to numbers instead of sizes, see attached screenshots for largest package size top and for smalles package size top. For packages larger than about a Megabyte, the size is displayed in Megabytes while smaller packages are displayed in kilobytes. So while 91 Megabytes is larger than 993 kilobytes, it is displayed as smaller when sorting the column package size. I would expect the largest package on top when sorting according to size and the smallest on bottom resp. the other way when reversing sort order of package size. And it seems that the largest package is displayed shortly after the middle (with 255 MB) when having the largest numbers on top (998 kb). What did I miss to get the correct sort order for package size in SPS package manager? Do I need to export that list and sort it in some spreadsheet instead? And is there another bug seems to be present too. Its the abbreviation for package sizes. While MB is the correct abbreviation for Megabytes, there appears the abbreviation kb instead of kB. KB or kB mean kilobyte while kilobit may have kb or kbit. And how does it happen that SPS package manager doesn't display the whole SPS package definition for installed packages, see screenshot for smallest packages ? It displays then only SPS package name and installed version, keeping package size, category, tool release date and VirusTotal field empty! This seems to happen when these packages are installed and probably later removed of the online repository while still being installed locally. So that information should be present locally but not used for display. (I know that there may be other reasons for empty VirusTotal field though.)
23/07/2019 Topic: Unhandled Exception of SyMenu chef	This crash happened the first time. It entered a strange mode with two windows when I entered the settings menu, keeping two windows instead of turning to one window with the settings form. The other window was the submenu to enter the settings form. Even when finishing a configuration setting session and closing that settings form normally, the other window remained some time and then turned into that unhandled exception reported by SyMenu in the non-resizeable window which you may find in the attached screenshot .
24/07/2019 Topic: Unhandled Exception of SyMenu chef	No, it's the other way round. The situation reported that the 2nd window remained is a consequence of a present bug in SyMenu. Difficulties in reproducing are a hint on probably dynamic race conditions still difficult to identify and reproduce. The unhandled exception comes much later on other action requiring the first bug before. And without following the advice of the exception handler, it may be difficult to identify symptom and cause which are probably different. I worked normally and things became strange. The bugs are already present but difficult to reach. I didn't insert a bug by using SyMenu normally and nevertheless fall once on it. This bug observed, I don't consider major nor bloquing. And if you want to say that you can't do anything on it as long as it does not get identified nor reproduced, then you're probably right too. But this doesn't mean absence of that bug. Which advice do you want to give me? Do you want me to follow the advice of the standard exception handler to enable debug and verbose mode in order to be prepared differently and to get not only stack trace of functions but hopefully also of paramenters, hoping it will not impact too much normal behaviour and focus only on unhandled exceptions? I don't know if I saved a copy of the instruction to enable this mode. I'm sure I didn't save it yesterday. But I remember having seen and reported unhandled exceptions on different bug already before and assume having saved also that instruction then. An independant hint on bugs. Microsoft did break compatibility with its functional update of Windows 10 of this spring. At least some driver publishers and anti-virus publishers were concerned. I don't expect SyMenu to be concerned. So such context changes may change the probability the already present bugs get observed or not. And this has nothing to do if users work normally or not. For this type of change, it's not users operation nor mode, it's the operating system context which may have changed. And Microsoft has rolled out this spring update an my tablet but not yet on my notebook. On my tablet, I don't have SyMenu installed. On my notebook, I've SyMenu installed but Microsoft warns me not to update Windows with that functional update neither by Windows update nor by reinstalling Windows, and will keep me informed when I may consider updateing in the future after they fixed further issues and some cooperating partners too.
05/10/2019 Topic: Extending Desktop Shortcuts chef	No. I disagree. When ThunderBird portable refuses to create a desktop shortcut, then it's no bug. It's a consequence of portable mode. So if you want a desktop shortcut nevertheless, it's your choice. Windows provides the means of creating desktop shortcuts. And it will be up to you to manage that manually created shortcut. What concerns your question on desktop shortcut target, you're right that this will use Symenu as launcher. Don't know if that run context implies also using arguments of SyMenu config form though. Can't tell you about that comment in the shortcuts properties. But I can confirm that it shouldn't be related to ensure the use of arguments.
12/10/2019 Topic: convert 8GB portableapps.com apps to symenu easy chef	sl23 wrote: It's just such a shame that dev's don't get more involved with the sps system to relieve Gian from this burden!!! It's not the developers duty resp. responsibility. They've that option and most even don't know of that option. I'm in contact with one of the developers who has several of his freemium products included here. He learned of me that his products were included. He didn't know before. And as far as I've read, you aren't a developer of any program, nevertheless volunteered to do the integration and update of some packages into SPS. Similar anybody else may volunteer too. That's how I came in too. And with my first few applications integrated, I encounter issues appearing beyond the testing offered within SPS builder depending on feedback by Gian which he is readily willing to provide. The first few integrated applications went fine with no additional issues. After fixing those reported by the tests built into SPS builder, integration into SyMenu did succeed. I've two packages in the pipeline and currently not sufficient time to progress where the built-in tests didn't report an issue but Gian provided feedback of other symptoms preventing integration so far. I've a fundamental issue with such platforms so far. That's their handling of shared resources. I didn't find a way they address an option to provide shared resources not only for one application but for either a group of applications or the whole platform. So the current practice is to address it for every single application. That's safe, reliable and working with little side-effects at the cost of more needed memory resources (RAM at runtime and permanent storage for the framework).
27/06/2020 Topic: What happened to SysInternals? chef	Gianluca wrote: The columns I really want to suppressed are Category, Release date, Virus Total because, IMHO, they represent completely useless information when you read a list. Naturally the detailed information will remain available in the bottom area because they are valuable when you read a detail. But, as usual, if anyone as a different idea, please let me know, we have a lot of time before I start developing these changes. I don't consider these informations useless even for the main grid. But I can continue when release date and virus total remains only visible in details view. For the category column, if you don't want to make the main grid view configurable (i.e. similar to Windows task manager) then extending the result view of search at least by configuration option would make sense.