SyMenu Forum

Gianluca

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5 days ago Topic: Adding other repositories? Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: 1. Well, I see the point is well made here wrt the SPSSuite of apps. Would you consider adding the other option, ability to drop apps into a User Suite contained within SyMenu/ProgramFiles/ e.g. SyMenu/ProgramFiles/MyApps/ so any apps dropped here are auto added? Yes it could be a good feature. What I have to understand is how this feature should work. For example, what if SyMenu finds no .exe files but only folders inside the main program folder? Should it analyze every subfolder to find anything? I think it shouldn't, probably in this case it should do nothing. What if it finds more than one executable? It probably has to create one logical item for every executable found. How should the found logical items be named? Is it good to adopt the same PA strategy using the .exe property Product name? Where do the found logical items have to be placed in the contextual menu? A special SyContainer maybe? From that container they can be moved in the right container by the user and in the meanwhile they don't crowd the menu root? Probably a lot of other questions will arise when I start studying this feature but, as I told you, it's a good one. Well, for your second point I'll go a bit random. sl23 wrote: Due to many Sy apps "poor" construction, many apps are portable, but not stealth. I say "poor" but I mean the SPS lacking in detail about files being left anywhere they please. You probably know better than me how complex it is to track what an app touches during its execution. When I need to find it out, I use Sysinternals Process Monitor and DevEnterprise Software Directory Monitor but it's a really time consuming task and probably not worth it. So if an SPS is not so accurate on this aspect, I think it's not a drama. Our users want the apps, a lot of apps, a mountain of apps, and if some of them leave tracks behind, it's not a problem for them. sl23 wrote: I've been testing a couple of PA.com apps to see how the launcher fair in certain circumstances. [...] There are actually several faults with the PA launcher I can't abide. Report to John, he'll be happy to help you sl23 wrote: I actually just been through my entire collection of apps and tried switching all common apps to PA.com versions. I then remembered why I disliked their apps so much. The main reason I tried to switch is for point one above. I have archived all rarely used apps, keeping only essentials. When I need an archived app, I unpack it into the PA.com directory and it is automatically recognised and then updated. When finished, it is overwritten in the archive. I've tried all sorts of ways to reduce clutter without getting rid of many essential but rarely used apps. So far this is my favourite solution. Time will tell how good this method is. I understand what you are trying to do but IMHO it's a cumbersome solution. And you can't find all the apps in PA format. And PA is buggy (you told that, not me ). And you have several manual operations to do. Maybe I have an idea for you: why won't you go with OS virtualization instead? You can create a virtualized Windows that has access to your local PC apps folder, document folder, and, if you really need that, to the entire real data disk. When you launch an application, you'll do that from the virtualized PC. This way everything the app writes on the registry will be on the virtualized one. And the same happens for the AppData folder. Plus if the app is portable, your settings will be written on the hosting PC app folder that is a desired behaviour. You can even create associations among apps and extensions in the virtual PC if your working files are available there. This is the reason for which I thought the entire data disk should be shared. And finally when you want to clean up the virtualized environment you can restore a previous snapshot in a blink but, what is really important, is that your hosting PC will stay clean and untouched. sl23 wrote: As such, I have tried every launcher around. [...] Well I don't agree with you here. You made a list of portabilizer tools and added SyMenu. SyMenu with its SPS technology has never been intended to be a portabilizer tool but a launcher and a portable freeware hub. It's true, SyMenu has the skill to rewrite some environment variables and this is enough for some apps to become portable and, in some cases, even stealth. But it's incidental because the purpose is different. sl23 wrote: [...] all SPS Authors now use this SyLauncher to create stealthy apps, but also mainly so that non-stealthy associated apps aren't launched without bypassing this portablisation process that is currently built into SyMenu Again, SyMenu has no real and solid portabilizer skills so it's not correct to demand too much from it. Well you probably now understand why a SyLauncher is not in my list. Anyway SyMenu is open and can include programs with any kind of portabilizer technology so if someone wants to create a portabilizer system and, above all, include it in some programs' original package, well I'm more than willing to include these programs in the suite. But, you know what...? It sounds like another PAF system that, I think, it's the last survivor of this species. So probably the best thing could be to revive one of the others and drag it to the present day. What I'm really sure of is that it's not my mission.
3 days ago Topic: Adding other repositories? Gianluca Administrator	Still speaking about the massive import feature, I'm trying to figure out a real life case. You have your, let's call it, "folder based suite" (so nothing to do with the SPS suite). The first import has been done and you made some modification through the configuration form. For example the folder 'MyFirstProgram' has two executables but 'start.exe' is the good one while 'uninstall.exe' is the bad one and, obviously, you deleted the logical item related to the bad one and preserved the good one. Now you added some other programs to the suite folder and want SyMenu to scan it again. But SyMenu needs to do a lot of consideration about the old folder 'MyFirstProgram' that is still in its place. It's true, it has been already scanned but it contains an executable that has not been converted into a logical item. Has it been deleted by the user? Is it a new exe for the program (a new version of it)? Is it the reason for which you are asking to rescan the folder because you mistakenly delete it? SyMenu is entirely based on files... not database... so it preserves no tracks of your previous actions. I would have to understand what happened without a clue of the previous history. Plus I hate this kind of synchronization analysis... it's difficult to manage, complex to project, prones to errors, slow. If I have an alternative it's more than welcome. And probably I have one. When you create three new folders in your folder based suite, you, as a user, know perfectly what you are doing, so do that all the way: you can explicitly add the new folders to the import function. We already have an import function. It's the drag and drop over the floating icon or over the configuration form. What this feature is not able to do is the scanning thing... if you drop a folder over it, it adds the folder as a SyContainer that it's a bit pointless. When you drop a folder instead SyMenu could scan it to find executables inside it. So if you drop three folders SyMenu could scan all of them. If you drop a folder and a file SyMenu could scan the folder and add the file. It seems very flexible, easy to implement, and consistent with the current working. Even if you want to add 100 programs at one time, you can select all the folders from FS and drop them on SyMenu. What do you think about it? sl23 wrote: [...]a much more complex solution, which I could help with, is to create a database of all portable-freeware apps. [...] it may just be simple as extending the SPS library, but without the version/update info. The file system documentation for every program could be a great solution but we have no resources to accomplish that. And even if we have plenty of people helping in this huge work I doubt it's worth it. The only use of this amount of data would be the automatic recognition of the files that have to become logical items. Consider that the import of a new program is a thing that happens once. And above all consider that the preferred way to do that is called SPS: add a program with SPS and you'll have no problem at all, do that by hand (or with the auto import) and you will have to manage it by yourself. So I think it is an over engineered solution for a problem like that. sl23 wrote: As for the SyLauncher idea, I see you aren't bothered by apps not being Stealth, but many users are. I respect and understand that you are the developer and it's your choice, maybe if other users chime in? Well it would demonstrate interest in this topic but still it's not my interest for the reasons I told you. BTW it's a perfect side project to be integrated in SyMenu without my help. Exactly as you can integrate a PAF program or any other kind of portable program. sl23 wrote: Ok, so another solution is to provide a central database online, that can be edited, but when checking for updates, SyMenu looks for updates to this central database and downloads for local use? To be clear, this database is for any and all apps, not just SyMenu SPS, it also MUST be monitored for changes and abuse and personally I recommend it be used with a preference for creating stealth apps by default. It would be terrific. A sort of wiki DB containing the details of any programs available on the Internet. You are right, with a tool like that SPS will become obsolete and probably a lot of other features will arise: it could be a safe place to download the programs, to interact with the programs' authors, to allow authors to earn something with advertising, it could collect statistical data, suggestions.... well... isn'it an app store like Google Play or Apple App store? Yes, it is. As usual we always end up there. You know how many years I've been dreaming about that. I don't care if it could be born from SyMenu/SPS or any other technology, if it is a collaborative thing like a Wiki or an authoritative place. If something like this needs to be built I want to be in. But before that, let's find the money for this because it's huge. To understand the size, let's consider SPS as the first stone for this building... well, here we are speaking of a 100 story skyscraper...
3 days ago Topic: Adding other repositories? Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: The import feature seems a good call, except i do not use the floating icon. Well the drag and drop action works on the floating icon and on the configuration form. So there's no need to activate the floating icon only to get this feature. You select your 100 folders you want to import and drop them onto the configuration treeview. There's an advantage in doing this: you can decide in which SyContainer to drop the 100 folder to scan while dropping in the floating icon puts your items in the menu root. It's even better this way. I think I'm quite convinced about this approach. sl23 wrote: But I think it first needs permissions from Andrew at PortableFreeware. If you wish, I can make contact on your behalf? Let me know if you like the idea. I just think it would free up your time from manually updating this stuff when it's already done on their site. You're only using what's already there. It just means designing the SPS system to parse the news pages for updates. Well you know I'm always opened to any collaboration so if you want to try feel free to do it. I only ask to myself what would be the benefit for PF? The website scraping would take their content without crediting them in any way. Even if Andrew Lee accepts to consider this collaboration, what can SyMenu offer as a counterpart? A back link put in some SPS field would be enough for him? The other problem is technical. Scraping a website is a nightmare and even if you succeeded this method is not reliable over time. If PF has a sort of web API to publish its data it'll be fantastic but I never find any of that. There are several doubts but, as I told you, if you think it's a good idea, go for it. If there's an interested on the other part I can contribute.
11 hours ago Topic: Adding other repositories? Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: I can start to create the SPS for every app on here if you'd like, but maybe there are perhaps some that should NOT be included? Maybe include everything after a certain date? Or perhaps, Windows version? Thank you but, don't lose your time. The data needs to be studied beforehand. One of my rules is "never do work without studying it". sl23 wrote: But the SPS system needs updating to auto-update itself via the RSS Feed This is the point! Is TPFC an inspiration, a guide, to find and publish new programs or could it be a data source for SPS? The real game changer is clearly the latter option. I personally don't need a new channel that inspires me and I think the other editors don't need it either. We are already overwhelmed with the programs we manage today. In the same way I don't need a channel that alerts me about program updates because I already have tools to be alerted of new versions. You are talking about an SPS that auto-updates itself so you are exactly on my same page. So let's analyze the second option: an hypothetical use of TPFC as a data source for SPS. As a source Andrew suggests the RSS instead of the website scraping but unfortunately the RSS is a simple list of the latest new/updated programs. If we need the program details - and yes we need them to fill an SPS - it's necessary to follow the RSS link to an HTML page. Well it's the exact purpose of RSS: you read the announcement on your aggregator and then you go to the website to deepen it. We need the detail so the HTML scraping thing comes again to life. Well, scraping is not impossible even if, as I said, it is unreliable and complex. But anyway let's see which data we can find on the program detail page. Or better let's see which data we need that we can't find there. The detail page doesn't contain the program "Author" but, as a workaround, we should use the website URL from the "Publisher website" field. Packer format and Main exe names are information drowned into open text ("How to extract" field), so they are not structured data. It's a big problem because those fields are mandatory in SPS or, better, they are two of the most important data because they teach SyMenu how to manage the program. Probably other fields, not mandatory but useful in several programs, are inside this text too ("Script before install", "Installation arguments", "Create files on install", "Ignore on update" and others). The last big obstacle is the Download url. SPS needs to download a program, TPFC needs to bring you to the download page. Well, when we update an SPS, 90% of the time we need to change the download URL so it's the single most important data we need to automate the process. Want to know what I realized? The TPFC detail page is a subset of an SPS, so it's impossible to use the TPFC page to fill an SPS. What is possible instead is to go the other direction. From an SPS it is possible to fill a TPFC detail page. And this approach could break new ground for a reciprocal collaboration. If the TPFC editors will use the SPS to update the program and naturally TPFC use the updated SPS to publish the announcement page and detail pages, it'll be a win-win game for both our users: TPFC instantly has a desktop launcher for all its program, SyMenu will instantly has a new suite with hundreds of new programs. Anyway this means a lot of changes for me, for Andrew, and for our communities. I don't think Andrew could agree with such a big change but... why don't you ask him to read this post? Maybe if he's willing to speak about that, even if only hypothetically, we can open a new thread on the TPCF forum and see if something arises. What do you think about all the reasoning?
11 hours ago Topic: check for github releases Gianluca Administrator	Great tool. Thank you. So we have: https://newreleases.io SPS Published App Track (PAT) If someone knows or uses other free tools please report them here. And BTW, the SPS Published App Track author, my old and good friend Cesar the Great, gave me permission to use his source code to follow the program's development. If someone is interested, please contact me in private and we can speak about that. PAT is written in .NET.
9 hours ago Topic: check for github releases Gianluca Administrator	ronen1n wrote: Maybe is it best to open source the "SPS Published App Track" if you allowed and it's safe to do I agree and it'll be the best thing to do but only when someone takes care of it. Open source means there's always someone in charge to review the pull requests and accept or refuse them.
8 hours ago Topic: Adding other repositories? Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: I will ask Andrew about reading your post and to see what he thinks. I think I will also create a new post on TPFC forum and get others idea, point to this topic here, that way can gauge others opinions and hopefully Andrew will join in there. Yes but ask Andrew before creating the post. If he thinks that's no space to go further we have to respect his will. sl23 wrote: Also, as a side note, I got stuck on the first hurdle! [...] Perhaps it's a little early for this yet! Yes it is. As I told you, we should study that before going, otherwise it's a waste of time. BTW. I've got a problem in reaching you with your usual email... you know sl....@... Can you please contact me with another email? Because I fear your email provider is going nuts.