WildBill

Has anyone thought about building an updated SP5 once Windows 2000 reaches EOL? Second question: if a critical vulnerability arises after EOL, has anyone thought about making or porting a hotfix for Windows 2000?

Major OOPS! with the last version. Not only didn't I add MDI support properly, it actually broke the Services control panel applet so that you can't stop the service! I've posted a new version 0.0.7 that has the bug fixed, and it includes instructions for stopping 0.0.6 so you can replace it. Here is the link to version 0.0.7: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zq1minhyume And here are the 0.0.6 uninstall instructions: To stop the 0.0.6 service, perform the following steps: a. From the Start Menu, click Run... b. Enter "cmd" and click Ok. A command prompt window will appear. c. At the command prompt, type "net stop daedsrvc". d. Now replace daedalus.dll in your Windows\System32 folder (or WINNT\System32 if that's the case). e. The Services control panel plugin will be able to start. Start the Daedalus service normally. Optionally, type "net start daedsrvc" at the command prompt you already have open.

Another little update...I now have a virtual NT4 installation running on my Win2k box, and this has let me update SmoothText's NT4 support.

I put Virtual PC 2007 on my Win2k box and installed Windows NT 4.0 on it. With this setup I was able to get Daedalus2 running on it. It was a problem with MMX/SSE/SSE2 support. Apparently NT4 doesn't like using those, so if you have NT4 it uses basic 80406 code instead of the MMX, etc. stuff. The only concern I have is that I'm not seeing Daedalus having any effect on my virtual NT4 installation. Would someone with a real NT4 installation mind testing it out? I also added some code to trap DefMDiChildProcA/W, and this seems to fix title bar icons on MDI child windows. The link to Daedalus2 0.0.6 is here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?om2wydxv4wm

I'm doing some digging and it looks like I need to override DefMDIChildProcA/W to get MDI child window icons to render properly. When I override it in SmoothText the icons show up properly, but if I exit SmoothText and only have Daedalus running they get messed up like in your screen shot. Before I release SmoothText 1.0.5, I'll see if overriding it in Daedalus fixes the problem...I want to include Daedalus2 with SmoothText since 32-bit icons in SmoothText skins won't render properly without it. I almost released SmoothText 1.0.5 last night, but I decided to do some taskbar testing and ran into one more showstopper. Still, it's nearly there. I typed up the change log last night and it's just huge.

A little testing with the Uber skin that comes with SmoothText. I still have a couple of issues to work through, but it's almost ready.

Added a new version of Daedalus2 (0.0.5) that has a small enhancement, but one that will be very helpful for SmoothText 1.0.5 when it comes out. http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?m2mutyymzyh

In working on SmoothText 1.0.5 I've uncovered some more bugs in Daedalus2 and have posted a new version... http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yux1wut3thw

Almost there, still whacking bugs. Note the Explorer icons, though...

MediaFire killed the file, so I posted it again and fixed the link.

I tried writing a program that could extend the Windows API *on the fly* instead of by replacing DLL's. It basically does two things: - It intercepts calls to LoadLibraryA/W to redirect API calls - It intercepts calls to CreateProcessXXX so it can patch the DLL imports table when the process is starting (but before the Windows PE loader can process the header). Unfortunately, it doesn't always work, and I'm sort of stumped. Like everything else, it's written in Delphi, and it's actually a pretty small program. Would anyone be interested in taking a look at it? http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nynukoyl5lm From what I'm seeing, the part that patches the DLL imports table might have a problem somewhere, because when I run some programs that look for a non-2k API call they sometimes hang. The only API call I have it adding so far is TraceMessage, and the problem that I see is when I try to run the game Overlord. If I patch Overlord's DLL to redirect TraceMessage it works fine, but if I use ExtendAPI instead it doesn't. So I'm stumped.

I'm currently testing version 1.0.5 for imminent release. There is one intermittent startup bug that I don't care for (when it happens you have to kill Explorer and restart it), but otherwise it's performing very well so far. I've spent an enormous amount of time trying to make it really stable.

Would you mind posting screenshots?

I'm still working hard on SmoothText 1.0.5, but in the meantime I got a new laptop. It came with XP Pro, but since I still do a lot of developing specifically for Windows 2000, I bought an extra hard drive and put 2k on it. One thing I ran into was that the best driver I could load for the Synaptics touchpad can't automatically disable it if a USB mouse is detected. The Dell laptop I use for work can do this, and I find it to be really indispensable. Long story short, I spent a day and a half and wrote a little app that can do the job. It lives in the system tray, and like SmoothText you can right click on it to configure it. Right now there are only two options, whether or not to disable the touchpad and/or joystick if either are detected. The link for it is here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?uxl3jhr6de8le4i You have to have a Synaptics device for this to work, as it uses the Synaptics API to control the device. It's open-source, as usual, with no licenses on the stuff I wrote (I'm old-school when it comes to that sort of thing...I'm a public-domain guy at heart). Anyhow, I hope that someone finds it useful. It certainly is for me. Version 1.0.0 ---------------------- Initial release Version 1.0.1 ---------------------- 1. Improved USB pointing device detection. 2. Added Devices...button that will show a pop-up displaying all detected pointing devices and USB devices. The display automatically refreshes itself. Version 1.0.2 ---------------------- 1. Improved USB pointing device detection. 2. Improved detection of hot-plugging and disconnection of USB devices. Doing so will automatically cause the list on the devices window to refresh. 3. Added a status bar to the devices window that shows whether the Synaptics joystick and/or touchpad are enabled or disabled. 4. Added an "Ok" button to the devices window that will close it. 5. Added a checkbox to the devices window that will cause it to display the hardware ID of all devices in addition to the name of each device. This can be useful for troubleshooting troublesome devices, for example displaying the USB vid (vendor ID) and pid (product ID). Every USB device vendor has a unique vid, and each vendor has a list of product ID's that uniquely identify each device they manufacture. Those lists are typically available on the Internet.

In using it I found myself running into the memory leak that people have mentioned that arises when both Daedalus and SmoothText are running. I made another change to Daedalus that I hope will fix the problem. It certainly sped it up considerably. Here's hoping that the leak is gone for good http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?12jzifkyyjn

I've made another improvement that should fix some issues with 32-bit icons not always showing up. You can get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mizdjzmdzne

I've made a few changes, and have posted a version of Daedalus here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?iywh3dmddav If anyone is willing to give it a try, maybe it will fix some of the outstanding issues.

Just as an FYI, I've found a couple of bugs in daedalus: 1. In the override for ImageList_Create, the line that changes the flags should read: Flags := (Flags And (Not ILC_COLORDDB)) Or ILC_COLOR32; This is because you can use only one ILC_COLORx flag at a time. 2. In TOOLBAR_DrawGrayImage, the line that reads "DeleteObject($FFFFFF);" should read "DeleteObject(timl);". I'm still tracking down other issues, but fixing those fixed some problems with Windows Explorer.

Hello, folks I've been working intensely on the next version of SmoothText, and I've run into a situation where I really need support for 32-bit icons. So, I've download the Daedalus source and after a lot of Googling I've manged to find the files I need to get it to recompile. I have it running, though so far all I've done is perform a MASSIVE cleanup of the code (and add things like try...finally blocks to try to make it more bulletproof). I don't have much experience with Daedalus but I know that there are some issues with it. If some kind soul would care to put together a concise list of the issues and what I would have to do to reproduce them, maybe I can improve it a bit. I'm still trying to understand how the code works, but now that it's all cleaned up I hope to be able to do something with it. Why do I need it for SmoothText? I want to add support for custom Explorer toolbar icons, and the ones I want to test with use alpha blending. So this is something I have to deal with.

It wasn't easy, but now I've got alpha-blended popup menus working too.

Check out the alpha-blended tooltip 1.0.5 will have quite a few fixes and improvements. EDIT: Revised the stretching parameters for the image to make it look a little better.

One question that's been on my mind: is it possible/is anyone planning to try to port XP security patches to Win2k when applicable? I'm planning on keeping Win2k to at least July, and if a cottage industry of porting patches starts up, I don't see a reason to switch just yet.

Oops! There was a bug in 1.0.4 where tasks weren't terminating properly. I've deleted it and uploaded a fixed version. The top post has an updated download link. Since 1.0.4 has been up for all of 30 minutes I decided to just re-upload it instead of making a 1.0.5.

It's only been a day, but this is too awesome to hold on to. I've uploaded 1.0.4, which adds animation support

I've posted version 1.0.3 of SmoothText. It has just a couple of bugfixes, but I recommend downloading it. Enjoy...