CHM of Pricelessware, here

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Btw, I was happy to have discovered that there's now a compiled helpfile.
I've not spotted links to it from the webpage, but rather, found it
referenced by the author in a couple of newsgroup posts.

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy.chm

Great! On my todo list I had: save all xxcopy technical bulletins and
merge them into a chm. And now he did it for us, or rather - one of
his "happy users" did it for him (see about page nice!

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[omega]

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse):

Have run into a problem using PL.chm. When accessing the program home
sites using the the links in the chm file, I can't find any way to
save the displayed page, as there's no File menu with "save as".

Is there any simple solution?

It is unfortunate that the HH viewer has no Save As command available.
You can still save web page content - but essentially need to launch
another program to do it. Three types of strategies that come to my mind.

A. Copy the URL, then load the page you want to save into another
progam, such as a web browser.

or

B. Save the raw html (no pictures).

or

C. Install an add-on for your global MSIE context menu, one that
is designed for saving web page content.


............................................................................
A. COPY THE URL

Places to get the URL of the page that's loaded in the HH viewer.

1. The "Properties" dialog.

Right-click on the web page, choose Properties. Copy the URL
from there.

2. The "Jump to URL..." dialog.

Right-click on the CHM titlebar; or on its toolbar, or on a blank
area of its Contents Pane. Any of these bring up the "Jump to URL"
menu item. Copy the URL from that dialog.

So once the URL is copied, paste it somewhere else, such as into the
Explorer addressbar, or the Run menu on the startbar, or into a web
browser that you've already got running. Then after loading the page
with the different program, do the Save As.


............................................................................
B. SAVE THE RAW HTML (no pictures), Using View Source

Right-click on the web-page, and choose View Source.

This loads the page in raw html source, from your cache, into
Notepad. Or into another text editor, if you've customized the
applicable registry entry on your system.

From the editor's window, save with an *.htm extension.

The disadvantage is that pictures will not be saved. (And the paths
to them will be such that they won't even resolve to load from their
original online server).


SAVE THE RAW HTML (no pictures), using another editor

You can also select all, or select some, of the web page content from
within the CHM viewer, copy to clipboard, and then drop that into an
editor that supports "Paste as HTML." Such as Mercury Editor.

As well, there is a script that was created by an ACF poster, which
gives you a context-menu option on the global MSIE menu: It auto-loads
all the html content you've selected into your chosen editor, with
the source URL inserted. (If interest in this script, I can look up
the original posts where he'd published it.)


............................................................................
C. INSTALL A THIRD-PARTY ADDON, INTO YOUR MSIE CONTEXT-MENU

There are a few MSIE add-ons, so that you can save web page content to
their database. Pictures support is pretty rare, though. The one that
I have installed that does this, it is an OT payware.

Cognitum Co-tracker, freeware, it's relevant here, but I'd need to
reinstall it before being able to summarize how useful it might be.
Going on ~memory alone, I think that it unfortunatley does not do
picture support as part of the web page saves.

Other freewares, related to this function. Others here might know...
(For example, maybe one of the Bookmarklets?)

And if found any that are useful, installing them means you get their
functionality anywhere on your global MSIE context menu, including
to supplement the missing functionality in the HH viewer.



............................................................................
SUMMMARY

If there is some main thing that has escaped my awareness, I'd appreciate
if it were posted. In the meantime, I'd say that the /primary/ answer to
the original question, about how to save web page content that's been
loaded with the HH viewer: it's to copy the source URL, and then load
the page externally.

 

[ms]

I know you just said, "select a bunch of files." Yet I am wondering
if I can interpret this in a certain way, to fit it to the only solution
I am familiar with for this. My needed interpretation would be that you
do a path at a time. For instance, everthing under "D:\stuff\2003\."

I think you won't like the sound of my solution, a batch file. But really,
it's not so bad. You don't type at the DOS prompt. Instead you use a text
editor (like Win32pad) to load the batch file, and choose Execute from the
editor's menu when you're ready to have it run. snip
I don't doubt that GUI tools for this exist, since your request must be
reasonably common. It's just that I don't know of them. (Not to mention
I'm influenced by my interest in XXCopy's flexibility.)

Karen, thanks for that work. I saved it for next time. A little more
than I want to do now, probably easier to install/uninstall sizeem and
then clean the residue out of Registry.

From my original post, I have a pretty good solution for listing the
files in Directory Lister. I have Karen Kenworthy's Directory Printer
but need to get it to show files.

Mike Sa

 

[ms]

snip
Karen, thanks for that work. I saved it for next time. A little more
than I want to do now, probably easier to install/uninstall sizeem and
then clean the residue out of Registry.

From my original post, I have a pretty good solution for listing the
files in Directory Lister. I have Karen Kenworthy's Directory Printer
but need to get it to show files.

Mike Sa

Amended: It sees my CD drive, but I can't get it to list the contents or
save to disk.

Mike Sa

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse):

It is unfortunate that the HH viewer has no Save As command available.
You can still save web page content - but essentially need to launch
another program to do it. Three types of strategies that come to my mind.

A. Copy the URL, then load the page you want to save into another
progam, such as a web browser.

or

B. Save the raw html (no pictures).

or

C. Install an add-on for your global MSIE context menu, one that
is designed for saving web page content.

Thanks Karen. Have tried strategies A and B.

B is not too bad, except (in my vanilla W98SE Notepad) for having to
rename the file, add the extension, and scroll down to "all files"
format. Still a bit faster than the equivalent in IE5.01, where one
has to pick out "html text only" on the drop down menu (a major daily
annoyance for me). Most of the time, the text version is all I want
anyway.

"A" is workable too, although adding another two steps to the tedious
navigation of IE menus. I just tried this with the Filezilla site, and
soon wished I had opted to use WinHHTrack instead (except I don't seem
to have it installed anymore), as all of the pages present the same
name in Notepad and must be renamed, and despite using IE's "save
complete..." option, one page "could not be displayed", and another is
missing three out of four image files.... arghhh!

Too many things on my plate right now to try option "C".

Can't understand why so many developers don't bundle all their
documentation into a single file for download.


Achim



axethetax

 

[omega]

This is only a partial response...

Here I wanted to indulge into a tangent on text editors, and a certain
msie config option.

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse):

B is not too bad, except (in my vanilla W98SE Notepad) for having to
rename the file, add the extension, and scroll down to "all files"
format.

The "notepad.exe" that I have in my windir is a renamed executable. It's
the tiny, adept Win32pad. Its appearance is quite close to the MS notepad,
transition feels seamless. The difference is that MS notepad is like a
pre-alpha prototype, with famous limitations. While Win32pad, it adds
those essential, basic things that we should expect from a notepad.

The way Win32pad does Save As. If you create a new file, and then do not
add an extension to the name, it automatically adds *.txt. OTOH, for when
you have a new, or an opened, file that you want to name with a special
extension: You type in the extension as part of the filename, not needing
to bother with quotes and the "Save As Type *.*" hassle in that dialog.

.. . .

Another type of option, separate from notepad.exe replacement. We can have
a specific editor configured to respond to the View Source command.

You create the registry keys, then name the path to the editor to use for this.
.........................................................................
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name]
; don't let the line between the brackets wrap
; the subkey name "Editor Name" needs to stay that way. not meant to substitute anything there.
;
@="c:\\programs\\text editors\\editor.exe"
; !! replace the above with the path to your editor
;
.........................................................................

Create the keys with your registry editor. Or you one can use the registry
file above. The routine: Copy the text between the dots into a text editor.
Making sure REGEDIT4 is the top line and that there is one blank or commented
line at the end. Modify applicable paths, keeping the double slashes. Save
with a .reg extension. Merge to registry with explorer's context menu command
"Merge." Or an Execute command from within your editor if it has this feature.
(If you want to delete the whole key later, using the same .reg file, put a "-"
immediately inside the left bracket and a ";" commenter in front of the value
line.)

.. . .

Now, the question. Who to choose for this role?

For my system, I haven't decided. I would want very lightweight, and probably
SDI. No Save As hassles like with the MS Notepad. Also, I would like syntax
highlighting. Synnote has been serving me in a similar circumstance, for the
MSIE add-on script for "Save Selected to HTML File." I chose it because it was
not too much on resources, and is very pretty. All the reqs I had there.

However, for the View Source command, Synnote fails me. It does not colorize
the text at load time, because of the lack of an extension. Often when doing
a View Source, one does not want to save, just needing to take a passing look.
So it is not enough that this editor will colorize for me once offered an
extension. I tried to tell Synnote that *. is an html file, and to use those
highlightings when it sees one. At least in my initial attempt, no success.
So I will be on lookout for whether there is an editor that fits my requirements
best for this role.

.. . .

A general note, for anyone creating the reg key and assigning a chosen editor
for the View Source role. There is talk about some editors not being able to
handle it; it's those that have problems with spaces in the argument. I don't
think that applies to the majority... But if one really wants to assign an
editor here who does in fact have this difficulty, there is a fancy hack. A
VBS file provided by David Candy:

http://www.mvps.org/serenitymacros/ie5.html
Click the link (msie + scripting on): "Changing the View Source Program"

.. . .

One final thing that I want to mention of, regarding the View Source command.
You can do it independently, from the addressbar of an MSIE browser or the
addressbar of Explorer. The syntax is view-source:<URL>. Eg,

view-source:http://www.mvps.org/serenitymacros/ie5.html

I wonder if there might be any potential here, where view-source could offer
any uses by those who write scripts to customize actions on their systems ?

http:// msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/predefined/view-source.asp

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

However, for the View Source command, Synnote fails me. It does not colorize
the text at load time, because of the lack of an extension [...]
So I will be on lookout for whether there is an editor that fits my requirements
best for this role.

I don't know about best, but PSPad handles it. (I like SciTE as a
source viewer for Opera, but it does not handle without extension, so
PSPAD for IE/CHM) URL: <http://www.pspad.com/index_en.html>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Another type of option, separate from notepad.exe replacement. We can have
a specific editor configured to respond to the View Source command.

Not so much related to the chm issues here perhaps but,thinking about
what other possible alternative viewers I know, I think I just came up
with a good idea(?)... for anyone who just wants to copy som text off
a page, but are having problem grabbing the text only.. use Lister as
a source viewer It strips hmtl tags, leaves only text and
links...About lister, see a previous post of mine about it:
<or at google:
<http://google.com/groups?&[email protected]>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

use Lister as a source viewer It strips hmtl tags,
leaves only text and links.

And you can still view the source if you want, just choose plain Text
from the Options menu in Lister. No syntax highlighting though

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Thanks Karen, Bjorn.

Will have a look at both PSPad and W32pad. It's high time I replaced
MS Notepad, but have been deterred by the problems I had with the last
replacement I tried.


Achim



axethetax

 

[omega]

Great! On my todo list I had: save all xxcopy technical bulletins and
merge them into a chm. And now he did it for us, or rather - one of
his "happy users" did it for him (see about page nice!

I've found it really convenient. My favorite part is the Index panel.
When reading through his descriptions of features and operations, you
can click the Index panel to quickly look up any unrecognized switches
that are used in the examples.

There is one remaining item that I've craved. The author writes great
articles when he is posting to usenet, in answer to some operation to
perform with XXCopy. Very clear, and it's nice reading -- to see real
examples in action.

I've always felt he should compile all those responses to a single file,
for download by interested readers. Don't know whether it will ever happen.
So I've started the process of making myself a file (Keynote) containing
everything I could find, pulled off groups.google.com.

I also pointed httrack at a google:cache results hits list, to get some
of his postings from his yahoo discussion board. Those are files I haven't
even started to clean up yet though, much less read...

My one New Year's resolution had been that this year I finally get serious
about learning XXCopy better. There is a great deal to learn there. I
figure that I'll consider it a casual year-long+ project, for stage one.
As you said, the number of options is very great...

 

[ms]

Not so much related to the chm issues here perhaps but,thinking about
what other possible alternative viewers I know, I think I just came up
with a good idea(?)... for anyone who just wants to copy som text off
a page, but are having problem grabbing the text only.. use Lister as
a source viewer It strips hmtl tags, leaves only text and
links...About lister, see a previous post of mine about it:
<or at google:
<http://google.com/groups?&[email protected]>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

You seem familiar with Lister.

Lister seems to open large files instantly and has some nice features.
Find works fine, but I don't see Replace anywhere?

Comment?

Mike Sa

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Lister seems to open large files instantly and has some nice features.
Find works fine, but I don't see Replace anywhere?

Lister is file *viewer*, not an editor.

All the best
Bjorn Simonsen