Help beta test .9.7 "enhanced"

As many of the old timers around here know, I've had the intention of creating an "enhanced" version of StrokeIt for awhile now. It seems that time has finally come.

The enhanced version will feature lua scripting, mouse commands, and better gesture details for plugins. It will be aimed at power users and, through scripts, will give users a great deal of power and flexibility.

There will be a nominal charge for this version (probably $10), but anyone who has donated or purchased a license for the existing software will be entitled to a free upgrade.

Because this version will not be free, the beta version is limited to users who have:

- donated
- purchased a StrokeIt license
- contributed heavily to the forums
- contributed heavily to the wiki or documentation
- contributed heavily to the StrokeIt community in other ways
- provided a translation

If you're interested in helping to test this new version and you meet any of the above eligibility requirements, please email me the following:

- You Full Name (real names only)
- Your email address
- Proof of eligibility (purchase #, nickname on forum, etc)

Once you've signed up as a beta tester, you'll receive details on signing in to the beta site where you will be able to download the beta.

Thanks,

Jeff

To make it easier for Jeff and saving time and nerves please consider this [url=http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/forum/read.php?2,54671]one[/url]. Thanks



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2009 03:21PM by Leo.

That's awesome news! Just purchased my license right before reading this. Really looking forward to trying it out.

-Dave

I've just purchased too my license, the lua scripting feature sounds too exciting to ignore...
I find $10 very reasonable price that will guarantee success, I think StrokeIt will be massively used in the future by Windows users

I haven't gotten my license yet. I know the transaction went through. Anyone know how long it typically takes to receive your license?

I'm waiting for the license too

The beta site took a little longer than I was expecting, but it should be solid now. I've just sent out beta logins to everyone who requested one.

If you requested access, but did not receive a login, please email me and let me know.

Note: If you have purchased a StrokeIt license, you should have received a confirmation email that serves as your license to use the software. That is not the same as a beta login. You will not automatically receive a login for the beta program (it's probably buggy, and only intended for testers). If you would like to join the beta test program, please email me.

Thanks,

Jeff

I responded via your web feedback form.

Thanks!

Hi,

I signed up for this version and got notified (with license information, etc.) via e-mail for this today, so I gave it a whirl and currently doesn't look good. :p

I had no problem installing it - my license key was recognized fine and everything; it's just after installing that there's a problem. Even after rebooting, etc., StrokeIt is running (I see strokeit.exe in Task Manager), but it's not in the system tray, nor does it seem to be hooking any mouse clicks, since everything is acting as if StrokeIt isn't runnning. Running StrokeIt a second time gets its main interface to show up, but it still doesn't actually work. ;)

To be sure nothing from my normal .9.6 install wasn't interfering at all, I uninstalled, rebooted, made sure to completely clean out all traces of it from my %AppData% folder, and reinstalled, but it's still behaving the same.

Since it's quite possibly relevant, I'm testing on x64 Vista Business N SP2.

@Googer

There was a problem with the key linked to your account. Log in to the beta site and get the new key, then re-install StrokeIt with the new key.

-- Jeff

Jeff,

Looks like I need to do the same thing. I'm having the exact same issue as Googer. Right now I'm on Windows XP 32 Bit, however I'll be testing it later on Windows 7 64 Bit (Primary Machine). I have tried deleting the TCB Networks folder and installing, uninstalling completely (Revo Uninstaller) and reinstalling, rebooting after uninstalling, verifying everyting is gone, reinstalling and rebooting. Still no icon in the systray. If I try starting the program manually I get an hourglass for a second and then nothing. No hooking at all.

-Dave

Thanks Jeff, that's much better. :D I'm having problems with both of the new plugins though - the mouse plugin doesn't seem to actually be sending mouse clicks as far as I can tell when I have that selected as the action, and I can't get the Lua plugin working at all.

The first problem with the Lua plugin is that even with a clean install, there was no Scripts directory created in my %AppData%\TCB Networks\StrokeIt folder upon running StrokeIt, so I had to manually copy over the Default\Scripts folder to get example.lua and the empty bin\ and include\ directories.

After doing that, I still can't get it to work though. When I try the test gesture, StrokeIt crashes with the following error dialog:

Title:
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Message:

Runtime Error!
Program: C:\Program Files (x86)\TCB Networks\StrokeIt\strokeit.exe

R6002
- floating point support not loaded

I tried downloading Lua binaries / include files as you'd mentioned in your initial e-mail (though it's not clear to me if this is actually necessary or not) and placing the contents in bin\ (for the binaries) and include\ (for the .h files) but this did not help. Actually making sure the Lua binaries are in my system path didn't help either (i.e., I can run lua5.1 from a Command Prompt just fine from any directory). Any ideas? :)

-

Other miscellaneous things I've noted:

The mouse and lua plugins are unnamed in the StrokeIt's plugins dialog (I see a pair of plugins with no name listed at all shown as loaded that show 'mouse' or 'lua5.1' if I unload them), and I'm guessing the extra dot in lua5.1.dll is also confusing StrokeIt to an extent because it claims I have an unloaded lua5 plugin that fails to load ("LoadLibrary failed" on "C:\Program Files (x86)\TCB Networks\StrokeIt\plugins\lua5.dll") when I try to. ;)

Your default global commands need some fixing / cleanup. For instance, the Save one, instead of sending the Ctrl+S hotkey combo, is set to run Lua script E:\test.lua. If you want I can find all the other instances of commands not being set as expected, because there's a half-decent number of them. :p



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2009 03:37PM by Googer.

Googer:

You've gotten a lot farther than me. I know Jeff is probably a very busy individual, but I'm running 'StrokeIt-Less' right now on my machine and that's excruciating.. lol

Okay, so this launch hasn't gone as well as I had hoped :) There's a new build up there that should at least run on everyone's systems.

The plugin names will still be blank (don't worry about it)

The mouse plugin should be working.

The lua5.1.dll requires msvcr90.dll so you may need to download [url=http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a5c84275-3b97-4ab7-a40d-3802b2af5fc2&displaylang=en]this package[/url] from Microsoft if you get an error.

The global actions should be much cleaner now, and the scripts\ stuff will be created in your profile automatically.

I apologize for any confusion with the "Lua binaries" remark. You do not have to install anything like that. If you want to use a lua plugin ([url=http://alien.luaforge.net/]alien[/url], for example), you can put alien.dll and core.dll in scripts\bin\Alien and alien.lua in script\include\Alien and then in your script you just add "require[[Alien/alien]]" and start calling alien functions.

Thanks for all the feedback so far, let's hope we can get one step further this time.

-- Jeff

Thanks Jeff, this new build works much better though of course still isn't perfect. ;)

+ The example Lua script works fine, though at this time I haven't really tested anything with it beyond that. I expect I'll write some Lua scripts for use with gestures over the next few days.

+ The default actions look fine now; I'll take one more look through them to make sure you didn't miss any in your cleanup and post any issues I see.

- The Mouse plugin still doesn't seem to be sending clicks to me. The move action (as well as where to be positioning the cursor for the click action) is fine, but the actual click part of the action doesn't seem to be occurring. For example, if I create an action to left-click at position [15, 15] relative to the current window (which would be a way of pulling up the File menu in many windows), the mouse cursor is moved there but the menu doesn't show up.

I've also noticed the position relative to window seems to be a bit inconsistent depending on application. In some apps (Firefox, Outlook 2007 for examples), position [0, 0] seems to truly correspond to the true top-left corner of the app's window, but in others (Notepad as an example), position [0, 0] corresponds to the top-left corner of the text area, below its menu bar. I'm not sure how much I really intend on using this functionality anyway since the click action at either gesture beginning or end positions seems far more useful to me but I thought I'd point it out regardless. :)

Hi Jeff, here's my experience to date:

Previous configuration:

Running StrokeIt in "portable mode" in D:\Local\Utils\StrokeIt (which I will call "root") with data in D:\Users\Michael\Data (which I will call "data").

My .ini file included "HideIcon=1" (see below)

Installation:

I emptied root but left data. Installer found root and I installed there with default settings.

Upon running I found (1) no tray icon (2) clicking the shortcut while StrokeIt was running did not bring up the editor as I expected. I shut down and copied my previous ini file into root and reran and it worked correctly; clicking the shortcut again invoked the editor.

I noticed that after the installation I had a set of default action and gesture (and now script) folders in ...AppData\Roaming\TCB Networks\StrokeIt as well as in root\Default. Previously that folder was empty save for CrashRpt (which I see is now in root).

I see there is a Scripts folder in root; its purpose is unclear. I would like my scripts in data of course. I note there is no field in the preferences dialog to locate this folder (yet? :)

Mouse plugin:

As noted by others, the click command seemed to move the cursor to the expected spot but not deliver the actual click. The move command didn't seem to do anything for me.

I also noticed that it was difficult to guess where the window's actual (0, 0) was -- and I needed to get out my pixel ruler as well. Perhaps you have some GUI in mind to fill in those values for us?

Scripts plugin:

Testing with modifications of your example; seems to work fine. I added to the message box the line "HOME: " .. os.getenv("HOME") and I noted it printed as D:UsersMichael. I don't know if this is a result of the MessageBox code or the prior Lua string.format call.

In fact I don't know anything about Lua except what I've read in the past few days. Sheesh, I haven't had to learn a new scripting language since I started hacking in Perl 15 years ago :) :)

I don't use these gestures often so I don't know if this is new to this enhanced version or if it by some chance it affects .9.6 as well but I've noticed that StrokeIt frequently closes on its own or crashes after running the Run Explorer, Run E-Mail, or Run Web Browser actions. It took several tries to not just get an empty (0 KB) crash report but here you go. :)

http://www.pobox.com/~googer/tcb.zip

I've also noticed that sometimes after running one of these actions instead of StrokeIt closing or crashing, it seemingly mostly freezes up my system instead (can't even properly switch applications; most are unresponsive, including Explorer itself, etc.). If I manually kill the StrokeIt process, my system springs back to life.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2009 02:24PM by Googer.

There's a new build up that should fix a few issues, notably:

The mouse plugin should "move" and "click" properly now
You can create a new lua script by typing the name in the box and clicking edit (your editor should prompt you to create the new file)

Regarding the 0,0 relative window coordinates. This is tricky. Right now, 0,0 is the top left corner of the window client -- that is, the "main" part of the window minus the window border and the window menu. However, some applications do not use the normal windows menu or borders and instead draw their own controls inside the "client" area.

I could change this behavior so that 0,0 is the top left corner of the entire window, but then again some windows have different sized borders (toolbar windows, for example) and your particular font/size will determine how tall the window title bar and menus happen to be.

I'm open to suggestions on how to handle this. I envisioned it being used to click buttons and then being configured per-application. I don't think it's appropriate to use it for clicking menus, hotkeys should be faster and more reliable for that.

@MKairys

I see there is a Scripts folder in root; its purpose is unclear. I would like my scripts in data of course.

Lua will look for scripts first in you data directory and then in the install directory. This is intended for multi-user systems where a system administrator may wish to create scripts or install lua plugins to be used by all users.

I added to the message box the line "HOME: " .. os.getenv("HOME") and I noted it printed as D:UsersMichael.

The message box is actually a call to the messagebox function in the utilities plugin. That command expects all \ characters to be escaped. You can use this syntax to call any command in any other StrokeIt plugin.

-- Jeff

I haven't tried this new build on my 64-bit Vista machine yet but on a different box (running plain old 32-bit XP Pro w/ SP3), when I run StrokeIt, I get an error dialog -

Title: Error
Message: mhook.dll is invalid.

Obviously StrokeIt isn't working even though it is running after clicking the OK button to close this dialog. ;)

I put up a new build that should fix any mhook problems. If you're still seeing that error, it may be an installer problem.

-- Jeff

What is the difference between lua5 and lua5.1 plugins? StrokeIt seem to fail loading lua5 but succeeds at loading lua5.1. I read there is something I can download from MS's site that should make it work but I would like to know if it is worth installing

There's only one plugin, and it's named lua5.1.dll (for lua plugin compatibility reasons). There's probably a filename parsing bug that someplace that mistakenly strips off the .1.dll, thinking it's the extension. Where are you seeing it referenced as lua5?

If you're talking about the plugins list, then there's a new build (6/26) that should address that bug.

-- Jeff



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2009 12:33PM by jeff.

Yes, it was the plugins list. The new build solved that. Now there is only one plugin, named lua5. And it fails to load :) In spite of that binding gestures to lua scripts works. So what is this lua5 plugin supposed to be? Is there a non-script lua function that can be used when this plugin is loaded?

With the latest build, you shouldn't be seeing a plugin called "lua5" in the plugins list. Look in your StrokeIt install dir for a folder called "Plugins." You should see a file called lua5.1.dll but no other files that begin with "lua". If for some reason you actually have a lua5.dll file, please let me know.

I just installed and am now giving this latest build a shot and now we're starting to get there.

+ No problems with mhook.dll this time around.

+ Mouse click actions now appear to be working. I'll guess you can't easily do anything about this but it would be nice if temporarily visibly moving the cursor to the click position didn't occur. ;)

+ I see the mouse and script plugins are now properly named in the Plugins tab in Preferences. The extraneous 'lua5' entry is still there though as I'd previously (and now gemisigo also now has) noted. Just in case you're not seeing this - http://www.pobox.com/~googer/plugins.png Also to clarify: no I don't have a plugin named lua5.dll in my plugins directory.

- You haven't mentioned addressing this yet so it's not surprising, but the various Execute (E-Mail, Explorer, Web Browser) actions are still problematic with causing crashes, freezes, etc. on my 64-bit Vista box. I updated the crash report log linked in my initial report of this with one generated with the current build in case you want that.

That's all for now; I'll note anything else I find as I play around... :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2009 03:20PM by Googer.

> Regarding the 0,0 relative window coordinates... I envisioned it being used to click buttons ...

When I said something about a GUI I was thinking of a draggable cursor like the one for applications which I could just drag to where I wanted the click to go. Really why should I have to look at the actual numbers?

> Lua will look for scripts first in you data directory and then in the install directory.

Ah. Good idea.

Regarding the lua affair the situation is exactly the same as Googer's. The entry is still in plugins list and there is not any other lua dlls besides lua5.1.dll.

gemisigo: the lua5.1 plugin is loaded - it's just showing its 'clean' name since it is. It's the 'Scripting Engine' plugin. :) The lua5 entry is simply extraneous and shouldn't be there at all. :p

Thanks, this makes things clearer. Or quite the contrary :D
Okay, so the plugin is loaded (it works, so it should be) and the extraneous entry in the list will disappear sometime in the future, right?

> I put up a new build that should fix any mhook problems.

The latest build StrokeIt_0.9.6-Full_Demo-260609 doesn't work at all for me. No gestures received, tray icon never changes color. I went back to StrokeIt_0.9.6-Full_Demo-230609 which works fine.

P.S. please put some build ID in the About dialog if you can.

P.P.S I also noticed that 260609 doesn't remove its tray icon when you "shutdown strokeit" whereas 230609 does.