PureBasic Forums - English

If you like to tweak gadget positions to make your GUI just right, then a screen rule measuring pixels might be useful. I use it every day.

Also, if you have some kind souls that do language translations for your apps (Unicode), then a helper tool that makes the task as straight forward as possible might also be of use. It may or may not be your cup of tea but I can say that the people who translate for me do like it.

You will find the apps here: http://www.professorcad.co.uk/prof_gadgets_pb. Free for PB Users. The screen rule is Windows Only, XP and up, sorry. The Translation Helper exe download is for Windows too, but I think it should be easy to edit the code for Linux/Mac and so I have made the source code available too.

Hi IdeasVacuum,

thanks for sharing

The Desktop-Ruler won't install because:
********************
The following minimum system requirements for this setup were not met:
RAM: 1024 MB
Click OK to continue or Cancel to abort the setup
********************
so I'd rather not force to continue. (Can't you supply a standalone version as well ?)


Translation Helper
The movie doesn't show (flv is unknown on my system) and I think, on the long it's not funny to have to cancle the movie every time you want to use the tool. (To my taste this help is heavily overdone )

Nevertheless - I like small tools like these, though I hoped it could regard ini-like preference files as well.
Thanks for the sources. This way I could have a closer look how this is done (first time I came across gnozals resize lib) and if I could enhance it - which I already started.

Somewhere you wrote, you couldn't get the return key to work. It's because it's part of the menu event not gadgets. If you supply the following it'll run smoothly:

Add to:and: Then ENTER will work on both windows: either jumping into the string for editing or submitting the string entry to update. This makes scrolling and editing very quick.

greetings ~ Vera

Hi Vera, Happy New Year

so I'd rather not force to continue. (Can't you supply a standalone version as well ?)

Sorry about that, it's a default check defined by the installer creation software. I have removed that alert and replaced the download with the modified one -there is no need to worry about the alert at all, the app will not eat all your RAM

A standalone version is not viable on most PCs these days because Prof Rule can launch copies of itself (for example, you will very often want to have a horizontal rule and a vertical rule on screen at the same time). That kind of behaviour is treated as suspicious if the app is not formally installed on the system.

Thank you for the return key tip. I will mod the translator helper code to use it - my daughter requested that feature

The help movie is there in that way by popular request. There are a lot of people out there who are only very occasional users of PCs. If you add that to them very rarely using the app ('once in a blue moon'), it equates to the need of a 'memory jog' each time they use it. The movie is short and one click cancels it at any time so it's not too inconvenient for the computer savvy. I have found that PB sometimes does not load any type of movie format quickly, yet on other occasions it is very quick on the same PC. I do not know why this occurs - it's intermittent. For my larger projects, I use self-contained exe files (avi) for the help, produced with BB FlashBack - totally reliable.
http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/Products.aspx

Hi IdeasVacuum,

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you ------> and some more!
I really appreciate your sharing that ruler program with us, and it works really slick.
Both horizontal and vertical, and you can have both at the same time!
I've wanted and needed something like this for a long time.
That will really come in handy for helping with component placement during code development.

...

.....The Translator Helper downloads have been updated to incorporate Vera's Enter Key improvement.

Hello,

thanks for the adjustments

hihi ~ now I know why your ruler is PBmembers only ~ I like that part
and afterwards it'll work peacefully as standalone tool as well, and in as many instances one might need.

I like your ruler as it is basic and straight forward supporting the elementary needs. Still I must say, it can't compete with the one I've been using for years, doing the same (plus a handful of other features) but being very discreet (slim & none-glary) which is important to me.

Your ruler doesn't switch into a transparent modus but toggles between yellow and blue. Is this on purpose or does this transparency depend on the local theme setting ? (old classic style on my side)

greetings ~ Vera

Hi Vera

Your ruler doesn't switch into a transparent modus but toggles between yellow and blue

.....certainly should be transparent, and it isn't theme dependent. Perhaps the issue is screen colour resolution? Not sure, just played with that on my machine and it's ok.

Just to give you input. The switch between opaque and transparency works fine here on my XP pro system.
And I really like the ability to use two at the same time. One as a vertical and the other as a horizontal ruler.

The only thing I could suggest would be, is that it would be nice to add possibly a small number tick every
5th | to give a little more visual help. Because although the cursor will indicate the distance. Adding those
marker numbers would aid to it in a visual way, so that you don't have to keep moving the ruler as much to
measure something. Especially if you have problems counting several |'s between two points because your
eyes don't work so well.
eg:
present appearance:
l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l

with markers added:
0 ______________50______________100_____________150______________200____________
l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l....l
(added _ because the text entry here on this forum removes any extra added spaces)

Just a thought and suggestion.
Again, thank you for sharing your tool.

IdeasVacuum wrote:Perhaps the issue is screen colour resolution?

XP SP2, 1024x768 True Color (32 bit), 60 htz, Intel(R) 82852/55 Graphics Controller, 64mb memory

I don't know eather and trancparency works with other applications.

Trying to pick up the two showing colorvalues, which might be of interest, I found that the ruler is transparent in that sense that you can't pick on it's appearence (you grab the values below) and it's nearly uncapturable. Still one tool would capture the ruler, so I could get the two colors: blue/transparent: #0000FF , Opaque: #FBED21

greetings ~ Vera

Hi Vera

Ah, I do of course know what the colours are

I have made a tiny tweak in the code, I don't think it will make a difference but never say never. Uninstall the original before installing the new download.

Hi yrreti

An alternative to fixed numbers might be to toggle a marker along the rule, such that the marker becomes the zero point. I'll take a look at improving the rule at some point in the future but I'm up to my eyeballs on other projects at the moment.......

Hi IdeasVacuum,

my idea was not that you wouldn't know what colors you supplied, but a possible difference between the supplied and the appearing ones could have given a hint.

Thanks for your effort but untortunately it didn't bring a change. Don't worry about me. If in any future, a next version is on, I'll try it again.

greetings ~ Vera