Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 August 8

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< August 7	Computing/IT desk archive	August 9 >

Photo Album software

Hi, Can anyone recomend good (free?) software for organising digital photos into an album? (I can only find expensive pro stuff on the web). I would like to add metadata such as a title, dates, location, photographer etc to each image and be able to burn to DVD with automatic generation of a hierarchical menu --> submenu structure(or ToC) using specific metadata fields. Searching on metadata would also be useful. Thanks! --138.194.132.196 02:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)RGW[reply]

Most metadata is already included in the file. Picasa + Nero would do the things you ask. To edit all of the photos at once to include the location and photographer just select them, right click, properties, summary --mboverload @ 04:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

make a program portable

I've made a program on my computer with the VC++ comiler but when i run it on other computers it comes up with a dll not found error. How do i make it so that i can run the program on any computer without installing the compiler on every one of them? thank you.

~~http://www.sandboxie.com/ and then just copy and paste the file structure. If you can do VC++, I'm positive you can figure it out =D~~ --mboverload @ 04:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you but the point is that the target audience doesn't need to install anything else, so is there an option or compiler that can create a universal windows program?

Java

"universal windows program" - is a bit of an oxymoran. Universal means "all operating systems", windows is a small subset of them. Jon513 09:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be silly. Universal means nothing of the sort.

Do you also believe Universal Studios is an "oxymoran" (sic) because they only make a small subset of movies? And is Apple's term "Universal binary" an oxymoron because they don't run on Linux? And is the term "multiverse" an oxymoron because a universe, by definition, is supposed to contain everything and hence there can be only one? — Haeleth Talk 16:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It would be good if people choosing to respond on this Ref Desk would leave their OS agendas at the door. People are looking for meaningful assistance, not zealotry. They can go to Slashdot for that. --LarryMac 18:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Static linking is what you're looking for, it means the program is self contained. However not all DLLs are statically linkable and of course your executable size can get out of hand, and you lose the advantages of sharing DLLs. Without knowing which version of VC++ I can't point you to the dialogs or part of the make/project file that you need to tweak though. --Blowdart 11:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just include the DLL in the installer or stop using it. --mboverload @ 10:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Almost certainly he's using VC++ 2005, and the DLL in question is MSVCR80.DLL; for some reason Microsoft decided to stop people being able to link against the standard Windows MSVCRT.DLL that every end-user already has, and insisted everyone use this new DLL that nobody has instead. The solution is to include the DLL in the installer, since this library cannot be linked statically AFAIK.

This is all very irritating, of course. You lose out in every way, since (a) you don't get to share the DLL with any other programs, (b) you lose out on modular system updates, and (c) final distributable size is bigger because no smart linking can be done to leave out parts of the runtime that your program doesn't use. But presumably they had some reason for introducing this strange misfeature. — Haeleth Talk 16:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright you guys I am using 2005, and MSVCP80D.dll is the one that comes up as missing. So what EXACTLY do i do to make my program self-contained? PLEASE you guys i need this tonight and do not know what to do! WHAT do i need to do to make this work?! If I do need an installer then how do I make one?

To simplify, you need to supply MSVCP80D.dll along with your program, and the dll needs to be copied to the same directory as it is in on your development machine, probably C:\windows\system32. This is a simplification because people run different versions of Windows (but you may not be concerned about supporting Windows 98 and its family), different language versions of Windows may differ, and some few people may have Windows on a drive other than c: or in a directory other than \windows.

Since you have to have this tonight, forget learning how to produce a professional installation program. It's not trivial. I suggest you go for the most common configuration only and produce a batch file called install.bat which copies the dll to the appropriate directory, creates a directory called something like "c:\program files\myprog" and copies your exe there, and appends that directory to the path (if your program is ever likely to be executed from the command line) with "path=%path%;"c:\program files\myprog". You might also want to add your program to the start menu and/or put an icon on the desktop, but I think these things might be difficult to do from a batch file.-gadfium 04:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MSVCP80D.dll? Doesn't the D mean "debug?" I think you should be doing a release build, instead of a debug build. --Kjoonlee 09:11, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Problem solved, i made an install with Easy install maker that copied the dlls where they neeeded to go and it works fine, thtanks for the help guys.

Latex: Putting pictures into headers

I am currently writing a document in Latex. I would like to put a file into the header on each page. I have converted the file to a .eps file and am using the fancyheader package, but I cannot workout how to get the picture in. After searching the net I am not sure if it can be done. Does anyone have any ideas? --Me22ac 07:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think if you've got \usepackage{fancyhdr} then all you need to do is iclude the line

\pagestyle{fancy}

in the preamble and then something along the lines of

\rhead{\includegraphics{../Path/To/Graphics/MyHeader.eps}}

(also in the preamble) which will put the file MyHeader.eps in the top right hand corner of every page. I think the other commands are \lhead{} and \chead{} for the left and center headers respectively although I'm by no means an expert on fancyhdr, I'd never done this before but it sounded like a nice idea so I had a play.

One last tip is that you can do

\rhead{\scalebox{0.5}{\includegraphics{../Path/To/Graphics/MyHeader.eps}}}

which will scale the image to half it's size (or whatever you replace 0.5 by) if it's too big and you don't want to mess about editing it to exactly the right size. You could also scale an image up this way but I doubt you'll need to. --Bdgoddard 22:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Largest (dot-com) corporations outside U.S. or in Singapore

What are the largest dot-com corporations outside the U.S.?
What are the largest corporations in Singapore?
What are the largest corporations in Singapore in the computing/IT industries, particularly dot-coms?

Here, size is defined both by revenue and how famous the corporation is.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

slapt-get

I just built a machine with Slackware 10.2 and am in the process of virtualizing it (with my VMWare 30 Day eval license). I have not been able to find friendly, functional documentation on how to get slapt-get and then use it to install VMWare.

-- Brie Aleida

Thanks anyway, everyone. In case anyone else had the same question, it's quite a jackass one, I've found. Or at least, the solution is simple. use pkgtool (from the command line) or KPackage from the System menu.

--Brie Aleida

CD/DVD drive problems

I have a _NEC 3520AW CD/DVD burner. My problem is that although it's rated 48X CD/6X DVD, when I use it to read CDs, my read speed never tops 10x, and on DVDs it stays at 1.3x. Write speed is the same. What could the problem be?--Frenchman113 on wheels! 14:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What program are you using to write? How are you determining the read speed?

With decent error checking (in EAC or cdparanoia, for example), it's normal for the speed to be lower than the maximum speed. --Kjoonlee 08:21, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using DVD decrypter, CD burner XP Pro, Alcohol 120% and a couple others. Normally, I calculate read/write speed with the reported speed from the programs. --Frenchman113 on wheels! 13:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have all error-checking off, and I don't notice an improvement. Any other suggestions?--Frenchman113 on wheels! 22:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest you keeep error-checking on. ^^; ~~How fast is EAC in burst mode, on non-scratched CDs?~~ --Kjoonlee 23:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've tested my 20x10x40x CD burner, and my read speed never tops 11x either, using EAC's burst mode. --Kjoonlee 03:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still tempted to say this is a drive malfunction. I don't think I even had error checking on in the first place.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 19:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is filed under "solved" already, but I just used the disc drive that came with my PC (no dvd or write capabilities) and got a 20x read speed (still below par, but the disc was 24x). However, with the drive I installed (the NEC), I got a 10x read speed. Perhaps I installed it wrong? What do you think?--Frenchman113 on wheels! 20:32, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

YAY! I found out the problme was that I didn't have an ASPI layer.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 00:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image editing

I want to replace one specific colour in an image but I don't want to do it manually. Is there a way I can do this on an image editing program? --Thorpe | talk 22:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gimp allows you to select by color and then fill in only the selected areas. Also, if this a GIF (which has an indexed pallete), you only need to change the color at that index. Since Gimp can do it, I'm sure the infinitely more expensive Photoshop can do it too. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, with photographs and some other images, there may be very few pixels in the image which are exactly the same color. So, what you would need is the ability to specify ranges for R, G, and B values that would be replaced by a new color. I'm not sure if any software currently does this, but I imagine redeye reduction uses a similar approach. StuRat 22:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GIMP has a "Threshold" setting in its "Select By Color" tool's options. You can try increasing it or you could do multiple additive selects, by Shift-Clicking. --Kjoonlee 05:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PaintDotNet (however that it spelt, it's also free) would work as well as Gimp, if you are on Windows. But if you don't have .NET 2.0 it's a much bigger download that The Gimp. You are looking for a "Color Replacer" tool, and when you use it, you usually select a color in the image using a dropper tool, then select the new color as background color, then adjust the tolerance or threshold of the replacement tool until you get what you want. --Seejyb 01:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]