UNC pathnames as UDFs?

Hi there.
We're adopting ZAM 7.5+IR1 internally as to keep track of HW & SW assets
in our company.
Our auditors asked us to keep tracks of every maintenance operation
performed on a given PC (eg, clean the fan, clean the floppy and what
have you).
We'd like to keep track of the above using an Excel (or whatever) file.
I had a check under the "Contract Management" option of the WEB Console
but I did see that, yes, you can add files to the database but once they
get uploaded, you'll have to upload 'tm again for every change you're
going to make.
So we decided to add a ned User Defined Field (TEXT) for every PC and to
assign it the value of the pathname which holds track of the maintenance
operation; if we used an UNC path (eg, \\SERVER\MAINFILES\FREDPC.XLS),
the idea would be that by simply clicking over it we should be able to
fire up Excel as to amend the file itself.
We tried but the UNC pathname is not "hyperlinked" (in the sense that,
even when using iExplorer on a Windows PC), you cannot follow it (and
thus fire up Excel).
We also tried by entering an URL HREF text (eg, <A
HREF="...">filename</A>") hoping the browser would catch it but
unsuccessully (when you explore the details for a given PC, you're
presented with the "<A HREF"...">filename</A>" string.
Do you think there's a way to accomplish it?
Thanks,
Rob
Roberto Zini - r.zini<@AT@>strhold.it
"Has anybody around here seen an aircraft carrier?"
(Pete "Maverick" Mitchell - Top Gun)

[email protected] wrote:
> Hey Roberto,
>
> I've never seen this kind of functionality, and I'm guessing the amount of
> testing etc. required would mean it's unlikely it will come in the core
> product any time soon (Of course I can't speak for Novell on this).
>
> I'm no expert at the Tomcat or database areas, but the following should be
> pretty straightforward for someone who is...
>
> You have a known UDF for each workstation record, so a web guy can put
> together a simple web page where a long list of hyperlinks is created by
> reading the workstation names from the database via ODBC/JDBC (just as the
> web console does).
>
> In this case if the hyperlink name (ie. the text that you see & click on)
> is the workstation name, and the actual hyperlink is read from the UDF (so
> it links to your spreadsheet URLs) you should be able to do a simple text
> search in the browser to find the correct workstation you are interested
> in. Click on it and you get the spreadsheet.
>
> Ok, so this is a little clunky and you need to open a new browser tab for
> this custom website, but it's cheap & simple and keeps your ZAM system
> officially supported. (and it uses ZAM's authentication security to access
> the database fields - you could set it up to use Domain or Enterprise
> Analyst credentials so it has read-only access to the ZAM data).
>
> Hope this helps - I held back a few days in case anyone came up with a more
> elegant solution.
Hey WoofaJB (assuming this is your name/nickname :-)
Thanks for your pointer.
Yeah, I think a guy with some dbase + web expertise could arrange things
as to have the scenario.
Anyway, I think it would not that difficult (from Novell, I mean) to add
a new UDF type filed (eg, WEB) so that whatever you type into that field
will be presented as an URL HREF.
As an example, if I put
http://mypc/location
exactly as typed before (ie, a string) into a WEB UDF, then the Tomcat
engine should depict the above as
<A HREF="http://mypc/location"> http://mypc/location </A>
so that any web browser should be able to pick it up.
Just my 2 Eurocents, of course.
Thanks,
Rob
Roberto Zini - r.zini<@AT@>strhold.it
"Has anybody around here seen an aircraft carrier?"
(Pete "Maverick" Mitchell - Top Gun)

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PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8

Since PSE 6 was released, I’ve tracked all the reproducible bugs I’ve encountered and reported to Adobe. I’ve tested these problems in PSE 8 and listed the results below – problems that appear to have been fixed in PSE 8 are marked [F], and problems that remain unfixed are marked [U].
Overview
There’s good and bad news. Adobe has fixed a number of serious bugs in the Organizer, but it has left most unfixed, even though they’ve been present since at least version 6. Even worse, the two major features introduced in the PSE 8 Organizer, face tagging and the keyword-tags text box, have show-stopper problems. And even worse yet, Full Screen view is now painfully slow with large catalogs.
The most important fixes address serious problems with PSE’s handling of drives that were introduced in version 6. PSE now notices when a drive’s letter has changed, a problem that has bedeviled many users upgrading or rearranging their drives. Also, PSE now ignores the case of UNC pathnames (network drives), no longer creating duplicate volumes for the same network drive. Unfortunately, one serious bug remains: PSE still gets horribly confused when there are two drives with the same volume serial number, and it still doesn’t even issue a warning.
But many long-standing problem areas remain: The Map View is an unusable toy. The handling of metadata is riddled with bugs. Folder Location view shows the wrong contents of folders. Searching has numerous bugs making it clumsy and confusing.
Overall, of all the bugs I’ve reported, PSE 8 fixes 8 of 46 major ones and 8 of 28 minor ones:
Major
Minor
Fixed
Unfixed
Fixed
Unfixed
File Management and Tagging
4
6
2
Integration with Photoshop.com
2
5
Map View
6
Color Management
1
Metadata
10
2
3
Searching
8
5
User Interface
1
1
5
9
Slide Shows
1
1
Editor
1
1
Total
8
38
8
20
I’ve reported all of these problems to Adobe. Almost all of them are in the Organizer. Based on all the reports on the forums, it appears that the Editor has far fewer problems than the Organizer.   Perhaps that’s because the Editor shares the same code with the professional Photoshop, while the Organizer appears to be an orphaned consumer product whose development Adobe has moved offshore.
For reference, my computer is a midrange Vista laptop with a dual-core 1.9 GHz processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 7200 RPM disk (the same speed as desktop disks).
New Problems in PSE 8
[U] PSE 8 crashes or gets intolerably slow after using the new Keyword Tags text box a small number of times.
On my 4 GB Vista 32 system, PSE crashes after tagging 41 photos.
[U] If you use the new Keyword Tags text box to apply an existing tag name with a comma in it, PSE will silently create two new tags instead.
Apply the existing tag “San Francisco, CA” will create two new tags, “San Francisco” and “CA”.
[U] After applying a tag, the Keyword Tags text box loses keyboard focus and you need to mouse-click in the box again to enter another tag.
Forcing the use of the mouse defeats the purpose of the Keyword Tags text box, which is to make tagging much faster.
[U] The Find > Find People For Tagging command locks up the Organizer for about 30 seconds after you click Done (even if you haven’t made any changes), when using larger catalogs.
On a catalog with 10,000 thumbnails showing, the cursor spins for 30 seconds after clicking done. But you can work around this by doing a tag search or setting a date range to have only a small number of thumbnails showing before you invoke the command.
[U] In the Find > Find People For Tagging command, when you select Add Missing Person, you usually can’t resize the selection box by grabbing the lower-right or lower-center handles, which are the handles that most right-handed people are likely to use.
If you move the mouse very quickly so that it is over the photo before the selection box appears, you can usually resize the box with those handles. But you have to be very quick.
[U] The Find > Find People For Tagging command doesn’t do auto-complete on pre-existing People tags, making it very hard to use with existing catalogs.
I have over two hundred People tags in my catalog. Because the command doesn’t auto-complete on pre-exisiting People tags and will silently create new tags, and because I don’t remember exact spellings (that’s the point of auto-complete!), I found myself creating duplicate tags (e.g. “John Ellis” instead of “John R. Ellis”, “Bob Smith” instead of “Robert Smith”). It’s painful to clean up such a mess.
[U] Full Screen view (F11) is much slower than in PSE 7 on larger catalogs.
With a 14,000-file catalog and all thumbnails visible, PSE 7 takes 6 seconds to invoke F11, while PSE 8 takes 13 seconds.   With just 20 thumbnails visible (e.g. when working on the most recent import batch), PSE 7 takes 1 second, while PSE 8 takes 7 seconds. This makes selecting the good and weeding out the bad significantly slower.
[U] PSE doesn’t remember the settings if you toggle the Full-Screen Quick Edit Panel and Quick Organize Panel to disappear completely.
On 4:3 displays, it’s desirable to hide the panels completely in full-screen view, so you see the entire image without the panels overlapping them (that’s the point of full-screen view, no?). But PSE forgets the toggle settings, even in the same session.
[U] The keyword tagging in the Quick Organize Panel doesn’t auto-complete tags you type, making it useless with more than a dozen or so tags.
It’s worse than useless, since it will silently create a new tag if you mistype the name of an existing one. And the “tag cloud” is a silly toy that doesn’t help with hundreds of tags.
File Management and Tagging
Major Problems
[F] After reconnecting a file on a network drive, PSE will let you import the file a second time, failing to recognize it as a duplicate. The catalog is left in an inconsistent state, with two entries in the volume table for the network drive, one upper case and one lower case.
[F] The Reconnect command fails to reconnect when: you move your photos to a new drive, assign the drive the letter of the old drive to the new one, and leave both drives connected to your computer.
[F] If a hard drive containing photos in the catalog gets its drive letter reassigned by Windows, then the left-hand folder pane of Display > Folder Location view shows the old drive letter, not the new one, as containing the photos.
This sounds innocuous, but it led a user on the forums to select the wrong drive when dragging and dropping a folder, permanently deleting some files. This bug and the previous one with Reconnect had the same underlying cause – the Organizer didn’t update drive letters in its catalog. Fixed in PSE 8.
[F] The Restore Catalog command puts the wrong path into the restored catalog for folders whose name starts with the catalog name, and it will mark files in those folders as missing. For example if the catalog is named “houses”, and a folder containing photos in the catalog is named “houses photos”, files in the restored catalog will have the path “houses\ photos\” instead of “houses photos\”.
[U] Folder Location view shows incorrect folder contents when more than one keyword tag is selected in the Keyword Tags pane.
Based on reports on the forums, there appear to be other situations where Folder Location view shows incorrect folder contents, but they haven’t been easy to reproduce.
[U] The Organizer fails very ungracefully when two drives have the same volume serial number, e.g. because of the use of a disk-cloning utility.
I remain mystified that Adobe didn’t add the three lines of code that would have issued a warning when it discovered two drives with the same number. While most people will never encounter this, when it strikes someone, its symptoms are very mysterious (and a lot of people using cloning utilities).
[U] The conversion of a catalog from PSE 6 to PSE 8 doesn’t properly handle photos that are stored within the PSE 6 catalog folder (as occurs when PSE 6 was used to restore a catalog from a backup). As a result, it isn’t possible to save photos in version sets, and PSE 8 will create duplicate thumbnails in the Organizer for an edited file.
[U] File > Backup/Restore Catalog doesn’t backup and restore audio in slide shows.
[U] Using Folder Location view to move a folder containing hidden files imported in the catalog will silently fail to move the hidden files and will leave the unhidden files disconnected in the catalog.
[U] When converting a previous-version catalog whose photos are stored inside the catalog folder, as occurs when you’ve previously used File > Restore Catalog with New Location, PSE 8 needlessly copies all those photos. If you have a very large catalog, this will waste huge amounts of disk space; and if there isn’t enough disk space to do the copy, the conversion will fail instantly with a generic non-explanatory error message.
Minor Problems
[U] In File > Export, the Common Basename can no longer be empty, and a hyphen is added automatically, so you can no longer get files named 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc.
You can get files named 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. but you can’t get files named p1.jpg, p2.jpg, etc. – a hyphen is still added in that case.
[U] Setting the Apply Metadata > Author or Copyright fields or the option Preserve Current Filename In XMP of the advanced options of the Photo Downloader causes duplicate files to be downloaded and imported.
Integration with Photoshop.com
Major problems
[F] Adding a photo to a second synced album will cause Photoshop.com to lose any changes you’ve made with PSE’s Edit > Adjust Date And Time.
[F] If you you rename a file that’s synced with Photoshop.com, Photoshop.com doesn’t pick up the new name (important if you’re using Photoshop.com as a backup service).
[U] Photoshop.com shows an incorrect date/time taken for photos with unknown month, day, or time.
The date/time shows as the the first month/day/minute/second in that time period in UTC that then gets converted to local time; e.g. “7/2/2005” gets shown as “7/1/2005 5:00 PM” for a user in PDT.
[U] Photoshop.com doesn’t obey the EXIF Orientation metadata field and can show photos rotated incorrectly, e.g. if they were rotated with the PSE option Edit > Preferences > Files > Rotate JPEGs/TIFFs Using Orientation Metadata.
[U] Changes to the order of photos in a PSE album aren’t synced to Photoshop.com, and vice versa.
[U] Only the top photo in a version set is synced with Photoshop.com (so you can’t rely on Photoshop.com to backup version sets).
[U] When a stack is synced with Photoshop.com, all the photos in the stack are synced, but the fact that they were in a stack is lost (so you can’t rely on Photoshop.com to backup stacks).
Map View
Major Problems
[U] It takes 4 seconds to assign a keyword tag to a photo if there are 2,000 or more photos with map locations.
It takes 2 seconds with 1,000 photos, 6 seconds with 4000 photos, and 11 seconds with 8,000 photos, and 21 seconds with 12,000 photos.
[U] Map view is unusably slow with more than 8 - 10,000 mapped photos.
When I imported 12,000 photos (the size of my catalog) that had GPS locations, the Organizer crashed a number of times when I tried to zoom and pan the Map view.   When I selected Limit Search to Map Area, PSE took over a minute to respond.
[U] Giving a map location to a tag assigned to hundreds of photos makes both the Keywords pane and the Map view unusably slow.
Giving a map location to a tag assigned to 1700 photos makes assigning any keyword tag to a photo very slow, 12 seconds.    Searching on keyword tags and Show All each take 13 seconds.
[U] Removing the map push-pin of a tag assigned to hundreds of photos mistakenly tries to update the metadata of each photo, which can take tens of minutes and fill up your recycle bin.
The weird thing is that assigning a map location to the tag doesn’t try to write the metadata of files with that tag.
[U] Moving map locations always fails, silently (too bad if you want to record backcountry locations not namable via a place name).
[U] If a photo with GPS coordinates is imported, it doesn’t show as a red push-pin on the map.
Scrolling the map or restarting the Organizer causes the pin to appear.
Color Management
Major Problems
[U] The Organizer considers photos produced by cameras set to the color space Adobe RGB as untagged with a color profile, showing their colors incorrectly.
Metadata
Major Problems
[U] The File > Write Keyword Tag command doesn’t create or update .XMP sidecars for Nikon D300 or D80 .NEF raw files (but it does for Canon CR2 raw files).
The PSE 8 Write Keyword Tag command now gives a warning when you try to invoke it on a D300 .NEF raw file. Why PSE can write sidecars for Canon but not Nikon raw files is a mystery – it’s no harder to handle one than the other.
[U] File > Write Keyword Tags and Properties fails to write the map location (GPS coordinates) of TIFFs (tested with TIFFs produced by the PSE Editor and the Nikon Coolscan V, Nikon Coolscan 5000, and Epson 4490 scanners).
[U] File > Write Keyword Tags doesn’t write the map location (GPS coordinates) into the .xmp sidecar files of Nikon D80 or Canon G9 raw photos.
[U] The Organizer ignores correctly formatted EXIF GPS locations in some files that many other programs can read without trouble; this may be because the EXIF is encoded in little-endian byte order.
[U] New dates set by Edit > Adjust Date and Time sometimes get silently lost.
See http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Date/times_of_files for details and workarounds.
[U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time > Shift To New Starting Date And Time and > Shift By Set Number Of Hours writes the time in UTC rather than local time, as required by the standard, causing other tools to show the wrong date/time.
[U] In Thumbnail View, the Organizer incorrectly orders files that have unknown time. For example, it will show a file dated 12/25/1976 8:00 PM PST after a file dated 12/26/1976 (unknown time) on a computer in time zone PST.
[U] If you set a file's date/time fields to all unknown with Edit > Adjust Date And Time, the value of EXIF:DateTimeOriginal isn't cleared by File > Write Keyword Tag.
[U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time doesn’t properly handle US Daylight Savings Time when setting date/times many decades ago, e.g. October 5, 1961 12:00 PM.
[U] When setting the Organizer’s date/time for imported photos containing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal but not XMP:DateTimeOriginal, PSE 7 doesn’t properly handle US Daylight Savings Time in years prior to 2007, e.g. October 31, 2006 12:00 PM.
Minor Problems
[F] The Properties – Metadata window shows the wrong value for Date Time Original when the month, day, or time is unknown.
[F] When you save an edited photo as a new file but not in a version set, the edited version picks up the date/time and caption of the original but not the keyword tags, star rating, or notes.
Now, the edited version picks up date/time, caption, notes, and keyword tags, but not the star rating, which could be charitably interpreted as a plausible design decision.
[U] Deselecting the option Use “Last Modified” Date If EXIF Date Is Not Found does not work – the last-modified date is always used for an imported file that doesn’t contain an EXIF date.
[U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time applied to a file with time “unknown” decrements the date by one day.
[U] With the Import EXIF Caption option turned off, captions pre-existing in a file’s EXIF:ImageDescription metadata field reappear in the Organizer after invoking the Full Editor.
Searching
Major Problems
[U] The timeline doesn’t correctly display date ranges spanning many years.
[U] Using the Keyword Tags pane, you can no longer exclude a parent category from a search, e.g. exclude all photos tagged with any tag in the People category.
The User Guide gives two examples of how to use category exclusion that just don’t work in PSE 6, 7, or 8. Interestingly, you can almost work around this by doing a text search of “not <category tag>”, e.g. “not People”.   But this will also exclude photos that happen to have the word “people” in their filenames, captions, or notes, probably not what you want. You can also use the text query “not tag:<category tag>”, .e.g. “not tag:places”, but this will exclude all tags containing “places” as part of their name – there is no way to get an exact match of a tag name.
[U] Find > By History > Imported On sorts the photo dates alphabetically, rather than by date/time.
When the results first display, they are now sorted by Imported From then (correctly) by Date/Time. However, if you click on the Date/Time column header to sort by that column, the dates are sorted alphabetically (incorrectly).
[U] Find > By History > Imported On takes a couple of minutes on a large catalog, making the command almost useless.
[U] Find > By History > Imported On shows a scary message “Deleting Keyword Tags” that is apparently harmless.
[U] Searching with the Find Bar for “1 star and lower” doesn’t show photos with 0 stars.
Find > By Details > Rating Is Lower Than 1 Star does work.
[U] Searching for “0 stars only” doesn’t work for photos in a catalog converted from PSE 5.
[U] Searching with date ranges doesn’t properly handle time “unknown”.
Minor Problems
[U] The Show All button sometimes doesn’t appear if you quickly type a query into the Search text box and hit Enter.
[U] Setting a date range and then excluding two tags from the search clears the date range.
[U] Show All doesn’t clear a date range set by Find > Set Date Range (can be very confusing).
[U] Save Search Criteria As Smart Album isn’t available if a date range has been set but no other search criteria have been.
[U] When searching, you can exclude a keyword tag and then include an album, but you can’t do it in the other order.
User Interface
Major Problems
[?] On 1024x768 displays, and sometimes at higher resolutions, the Editor Print window is positioned to perfectly obscure the scroll bar of the drop-down list of printer profiles, leading people to think their printer’s profiles aren’t available.
I can’t reproduce this in PSE 8. The Editor’s Print dialog is all rearranged. But this bug struck some people and not others, so it may be still lurking.
[U] The menu bars don’t display if you have changed the screen DPI to be larger than 96 (as many people do on today’s ubiquitous high-res displays).
Adobe should be embarrassed about this, given that more and more computers are shipping preconfigured with higher DPIs. See http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#The_Organizers_Menu_Bar_ doesnt_show for a workaround.
Minor Problems
[F] Copying a paragraph from Microsoft Word and pasting it into the Notes field of a keyword tag causes some of the spaces between words to be deleted.
[F] In the full Editor, if at least one open photo is minimized to the Project Bin, Ctrl-Tab no longer cycles through the open windows.
[F] The Editor window can’t be resized the standard Windows way by grabbing any edge, just the lower-right corner.
Well, almost – you can grab the left, right, and bottom edges but not the top.
[F] Alt doesn’t underline the shortcut letters of top-level menu items in the Full Editor (but it does in the Organizer).
Both the Editor and Organizer don’t show the underline until you let up on the Alt key, whereas other Windows program show the underline when you first press the Alt key.
[F] The width of the Editor's Palette Bin can't be adjusted by dragging the left edge, as you can with all the other similar panes (Project Bin, Organizer Bin, Map View).
[U] In the Properties window of Full Screen mode, if you click in the Notes field and do Ctrl-A to select all the text, then click in the Caption field and do Ctrl-A to select its text, the notes remain highlighted.
[U] In the Organizer, Help > System Info reports the wrong amount for “Built-in Memory” on computers with more than 2GB of installed memory. (The command reports the correct amount in the Editor.)
[U] The setting of View > Show Borders Around Thumbnails isn’t remembered after you restart PSE.
[U] Ctrl-A to select all text doesn’t work in the text fields of the Properties window.
Interestingly, you can use ctrl-A in the text fields of the full-screen mode Properties window.
[U] Dialogs in the Editor sometimes bounce back when you try to move them.
[U] Dates are shown by Display > Import Batch as 2\20\2008 rather than 2/20/2008.
[U] In Create > Slide Show > Slide Show Preferences dialog, you can't use backspace or delete to clear the text in the Static and Transition Duration fields -- you need to select the text and then type over the selection (non-standard Windows behavior).
[U] Escape doesn’t close the full-screen-mode Properties dialog.
[U] You can’t use the Windows Explorer Tile command to tile the PSE Organizer and Editor windows.
The Editor can now be tiled by Windows Explorer and other window managers, but the Organizer still can’t.
Slide Shows
Major Problems
[F] The duration of a video clip included in a Slide Show is set to the default duration, not the length of the video clip, and right-click Edit Duration doesn’t change the clip’s duration.
PSE now sets the duration to the length of the clip. You can’t edit the duration, though – you can invoke Edit Duration, but PSE ignores the new value.
[U] An audio caption attached to a photo isn’t imported into a slide show even though the option Include Audio Captions as Narration is selected.
For an individual slide, you can give the Use Existing Audio Caption command to import that photo’s existing audio caption.
Editor
Minor Problems
[F] The Editor crashes if you invoke Quick Fix and use just one Touch Up tool (e.g. Whiten Teeth) and then save the file (but your changes are correctly saved).
[U] The File > Save For Web command doesn’t remember the last settings (e.g. file format and quality) after your restart the Editor.
For a workaround, see http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Allow_Save_For.

John,
Firstly, my apologies for the length of this post – it has been fermenting a while. For those in a hurry I have split it into two sections – the first contains some general comments on the situation with PSE (v 7 in my case) and Adobe (as I see it) and the second contains a list of issues that I have encountered and some suggestions for improvement. As with you, my comments are largely directed at the Organiser module within PSE.
Part 1:
Before going any further I’d like to say what an excellent job you’ve done in cataloguing, understanding and in many cases providing solutions to a number of bugs. Adobe should be paying you a hefty sum for doing this work. It’s a welcome change from a large percentage of what you read in blogs and forums to see things dealt with systematically, objectively and in an informed way.
I’m less impressed with Adobe’s approach. In my opinion, if you choose not to provide program updates to your customers (i.e. you get what you bought in the box and that’s it) then you have a moral obligation to make sure that what you sell is as robust and free of bugs as possible.
I would be very surprised if they were not well aware of the comments you have made (if they aren’t then that would indicate an appalling failure of their ability to process feedback). The fact that they have not, in subsequent releases, dealt with all of the issues that have been highlighted is not good. I would go further and suggest that it is actually a breach of fair trading practice and disingenuous to sell the product as “fit for purpose” knowing these bugs are still in place.
It’s unreasonable to expect software to be absolutely faultless, and this is why the issuing of updates is a much “fairer” system. The problem, I think, with Adobe’s approach is that to entice new customers to each release they need to provide new features. A natural consequence of this is that there is a temptation to prioritise development of new features rather than providing solutions to existing issues. There is no incentive for Adobe to change this state of affairs for as long as customers are purchasing their products. In this respect one of the problems is that many of the reviewers to whom prospective customers go will rely on first impressions and will not uncover many of the issues. Adobe may be comfortable with this situation (and on relying on the reflected aura of Photoshop) but their product is not cheap and there is plenty of scope for competitors to provide a more robust, dependable product at cheaper price. With free applications like Picasa they will need to be very careful they don’t drop the ball.
Don’t get me wrong I think the concept of PSE organiser is excellent (I actually prefer it to my experience of Lightroom), it is the quality of execution that I have issues with.
My first experience of PSE was version 3 and this was positive enough for me to purchase PSE 7. However, my biggest disappointment with PSE 7, because to me it is fundamental, has been the quality of rendering images in full screen mode. Yours is the first comment I have seen that comments on the appearance of “jaggies” when displaying images in PSE. My understanding is that this relates to the anti-aliasing which is carried out when converting from image to display resolution and the level to which this smoothes out gradients in hue, saturation and luminance. I never observed this problem is PSE 3. Although the degree of anti-aliasing is a subjective preference, I was deeply disappointed and still find it hard to believe that free or bundled software (picture manager, windows picture viewer, etc) can manage this when PSE 7 can’t.
Anyway, I’m not sure how to illicit a change from Adobe. One way is to write the sort of rant I have above although I doubt this will make much difference. In any case keep up the good work and hopefully something will come of it.
Part 2:
Some issues I’ve encountered:
Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 – change in directory structure means that the “documents and settings” part of the user directory path in XP (i.e. c:\documents and settings\<<username>>\etc.) is now a shortcut which redirects you to the new location for user files which is c:\users\<<username>> \etc. If you are migrating from an old XP machine to a new Windows 7 one, you’ve kept your username the same and you have tried to retain the same directory structure then PSE 7 will still find files in your catalogue with the old style path. However, it will not recognise duplicates if you accidentally re-import the same files now they are on your Windows 7 machine. My workaround for this is to use an external file manager (e.g. windows explorer) to change the name of the directory that contains all of your photos. This causes PSE 7 to fail to resolve the path locations. You can then can select the relevant files and reconnect using the reconnect facility (File-Reconnect-Missing Files);
Watched folders are lost for any drive other than C when PSE 7 is closed and then reopened;
Duplicate files are not recognised and can be imported if they are not on the C drive (i.e. on an external drive);
Selecting a category selects all of the keyword tags/subcategories beneath it but excluding it does not exclude all of the keyword tags/subcategories beneath it; however, both selecting and excluding a sub-category selects and excludes the tags/sub categories beneath it;
Searches bring back the entire version set or stack even if only one of the files within meets the search criteria;
The instant search facility will sometimes decide that a number typed in is a date and will not find some files you would expect it to e.g. those where the number typed in is part of the filename rather than a date;
Anti-aliasing is insufficient – jaggies appear on jpegs displayed at certain zoom level. Interestingly this does not seem to occur if a jpeg has been created from a raw file through PSE 7 rather than an external application (at least for the camera I have).
Some suggestions:
Find duplicates facility;
Sort by filename and other file data;
Hide directories in the folder directory pane of the folder view if they contain no imported files – in PSE3 this was the only option and was actually quite useful to confirm that there were no imported files in a certain location (e.g. if e:\...etc was not in the list then you knew that you had no imported files located on the e:\ drive). It would be good to have this a display option.
Allow filters to be applied only to selected files;
Allow files to be rotated in the organiser without actually resaving them as a rotated file.

How to open a network file in java ?

File c = new File("directory");
like this ?
but how to define the directory ?

If the file is on a shared drive "mounted" as some local drive letter, you can use that drive letter, or you can use the UNC notation in Java as in any other program.
for Microsoft Windows platforms, the prefix of a pathname that contains a drive specifier consists of the drive letter followed by ":" and possibly followed by "\" if the pathname is absolute. The prefix of a UNC pathname is "\\"; the hostname and the share name are the first two names in the name sequence. A relative pathname that does not specify a drive has no prefix.

Writing files to other computers on network

I'm trying to build a tool that replaces a configuration file on several computers (PCs) on a network. I've been browsing through some documents and it seems like all I need to do is to provide the UNC pathname when I'm reading and writing. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I believe this is correct. But would it possible to run a tool from a UNIX box and manipulate files on PC's on the same network?

If you have a Windows network then JCIFS should work for this. I use it for transferring files between IBM iSeries and Windows machines.
And as for the UNC path idea, that would work provided the user ID on the "central" computer was allowed to sign on to all of the "other" computers. Otherwise you would have to provide a user ID and password, and I don't know if you can do that in a UNC path. However JCIFS does allow for that.

Links to shortcuts not working after applying 8.2.4 update

After the 8.2.4 update was installed on my Vista computer, I can’t invoke links in my PDFs that specify an UNC\\pathname\shortcut.lnk. The hyperlink was originally created in Microsoft Office 2007. The file was then converted to PDF using the Adobe Acrobat add-in “Create PDF”. The error I’m getting is something like “Windows cannot find ‘shortcut.lnk’ could not open file ‘/UNC/pathname/shortcut.lnk’. Please note that these links work as expected on 8.2.3 and lower. Were new registry keys added? Was a bug introduced into the update? I’m lost…

A lot of people have been reporting broken links with the latest update, and it appears to be a bug that Adobe is reported to be working on.

Panther 10.4.11 and active directory

Hello Mac friends,
I am learning IT network as a trainee and in my training company, we are desperately trying to bind a powerbook using MAC OS 10.4.11 to the Active Directory's company. I have gathered some precious information on the subject.
I know (or think so?) how to configurate Directory Access. We have configurated our AD in two ways:
- installing the NetWare client service
- disabling, in the Security options of the Domain Controller Policy, "digitally sign communications"
And we have rebooted the server. But at the end of the Directory access configuration, we still have teh same message "UNKNOWN ERROR" (?!?§..?).
About what I can see on the forums, it seems that connecting a Mac to an AD domain is quite a delicate issue.
I would be pleased to read to any of your ideas.
May the force be with us.

Binding a Mac is quite simple, if you use the correct Mac OS X version. My experience in the last months here is that 10.4.10 introduced an error in binding to ADS which was resolved with 10.5.2. So do not use 10.4.10, 10.4.11, 10.5.0 or 10.5.1.
All versions <10.4.10 worked fine, just like 10.5.2 does.
Create an computer account in AD, activate ADS (Directory services) on the Mac, enter domain name (Netbios will be ok, no FQDN needed), supply domain administrator credentials - and that's it.
Be sure when using UNC pathnames to use the FQDN for the host (not just \\servername\share but \\servername.adsdomain\share). Make also sure that the DNS hostname is exactly the same. If you don't, you will have to supply your credentials a second time when connecting to a share.

Java Default FileSystem Root.

If I want to program file System specifiers in a platform generic way in java, I call
System.getProperty("file.separator");
So I know the correct version of slash to use, wherever my program is run.
On Unix, the root of the file system is /
windows, the root is c: by default.
What is the platform independent way to specify or enquire after the
file system root specifier applicable, irrespective of the Operating System
that the present Java program and JVM is on?

>
What is the platform independent way to specify or enquire after the
file system root specifier applicable, irrespective of the Operating System
that the present Java program and JVM is on?
>
It is not clear what information you need or what you are trying to do.
Can you provide an example of the information you want and how you plan to use it?
Have you looked at the listRoots() method of the File class? That method will return the available roots. If the roots start with a slash you know that they aren't windows.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/io/File.html
>
The prefix concept is used to handle root directories on UNIX platforms, and drive specifiers, root directories and UNC pathnames on Microsoft Windows platforms, as follows:
•For UNIX platforms, the prefix of an absolute pathname is always "/". Relative pathnames have no prefix. The abstract pathname denoting the root directory has the prefix "/" and an empty name sequence.
•For Microsoft Windows platforms, the prefix of a pathname that contains a drive specifier consists of the drive letter followed by ":" and possibly followed by "\" if the pathname is absolute. The prefix of a UNC pathname is "\\"; the hostname and the share name are the first two names in the name sequence. A relative pathname that does not specify a drive has no prefix.

XCOPY and ROBOCOPY hang if file is locked nd Destination is a network drive

This question was first posted to the Scripting Forum. They indcated I should switch to the Plarform Forum. I'm hoping this is the right place. So ...
On my home PCs, when using XCOPY or ROBOCOPY to copy an Outlook .pst file while Outlook is open and has the file partially locked causes XCOPY and ROBOCOPY opertations to abort immediately and report the file as partially locked if the Destination is another
drive on the same PC or a USB drive. That's good, and is as I expect. But if the Destination drive is a network share (e.g.
\\Whatever\Whatever) then both XCOPY and ROBOCOPY hang forever - even when specifying zero retries in ROBOCOPY and even after Outlook is closed and the file lock is released. The old DOS command COPY properly recognizes
the lock and aborts regardless of the Destination location. But COPY won't replicate the file Create/Modify dates on the Destination location as XCOPY and ROBOCOPY do. I'm using straight DOS from a .bat file
Anyone have any suggestions as to how to recognize this condition and avoid or correct it?

Ivan-Liu: Thanks for your input. The thread you referred me to looked promising, but ultimately was not a solution.
It focuses on ROBOCOPY and the use of an elevated command prompt.
First of all, as I initially reported, I found the same “hang” behavior with ROBOCOPY as with XCOPY.
Secondly, I prefer to avoid ROBOCOPY because one of the PCs I am trying to support is still running a version of Windows XP that does not make ROBOCOPY available to me.
I have not yet tried the operation when using “run as an administrator,” but my own login has administrator privilege and still exhibits the problem.
Moreover, the operation (both XCOPY and ROBOCOPY) always completes without issue when the .pst file is NOT locked.
The hang-up occurs only when I forget to close Outlook before initiating the XCOPY or ROBOCOPY operation.
I still need to confirm that the behavior is the same whether using a UNC pathname or a mapped drive name.
But my memory is that the copy operations still hang if the file is locked when the copy operation is initiated.
The two main PCs I use are running Windows-7 (one 64-bit and one 32-bit.)
The .pst file in question varies, but is typically between 100MB and 400MB.
The behavior is consistent, regardless of size. I have not tested the behavior with smaller .pst files or with other locked files of any size.
I’m now of the belief that my issue relates to the specific storage solution I have in place, which consists of an external 1TB Seagate USB drive plugged into a Belkin router, which subsequently makes the drive visible to my Windows home network as a network
drive. I don’t know if it’s a Seagate issue or a Belkin issue.
I’m still working to rule out Belkin by connecting the Seagate drive directly to a PC, but have not had time to complete that test yet.
I suspect Belkin, though, because attempts to XCOPY or ROBOCOPY to a thumb drive will abort immediately and report the file is locked.
Plus, I also have a separate problem wherein certain .xlsm files copied to the Seagate drive (when it is connected to the Belkin router) always report that they are corrupt if/when I attempt to use Excel to open the Seagate copy.
Excel always seems to successfully “repair” the files.
But I’ve been unable to discover a cause for that issue too. Testing has shown that behavior to be consistent with both UNC and mapped drive names.

Java 6 Desktop open

I want to be able to open files with the default application from java. The Desktop class works for this when using:
1. local filepaths
2. network drives
3. UNC pathnames
but does not when the UNC pathnames have spaces in them!
Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Hi,
I also have the same problem, but with my JNI and C++ expertise, I was able to isolate the problem.
My platform:
- Microsoft Windows XP, Family Edition (French), Version 2002, Service Pack 3
- JRE 1.6.0_21
In the source of the JDK6 (Src/windows/classes/sun/awt/windows/WDesktopPeer.java), the Desktop.open(file) calls the native method
ShellExecute(*uri.toString()*, "open")
For example, if you try to open "c:\helloworld.pdf",
uri.toString() = "*file:/c:/helloworld.pdf*"if I call ShellExecute("C:\\helloworld.pdf", "open"), it works
but if I call ShellExecute(" file:/c:/helloworld.pdf", "open"), it doesn't work on my platform.
In both case, the ShellExecuteW or ShellExecuteA function of the Windows API return the integer 42 (> 32), saying that the functions succeeded. If the file object is not correct, the function should return a value <= 32.
=> The bug is not due to Java implementation, but to a bug in the Windows API.
Other remark:
I also tried the "ShellExec_RunDLL" entry point of the Shell32.dll library using RunDll32 utility. Both commands below are running correctly:
rundll32 SHELL32.DLL,ShellExec_RunDLL "C:\hello.pdf"
rundll32 SHELL32.DLL,ShellExec_RunDLL "file:/C:/hello.pdf"My conclusion:
1) A workaround could be implemented in the JRE: use the file path without the "file:/" protocol prefix.
2) This bug seems to be present only one some version of Windows XP (to confirm).
Rodolphe.

Can't run sidecar AIR installer on Mac OS X from UDF 1.0.2 image

I'm experiencing another AIR installer issue, this time trying to run an AIR 2.5 sidecar installer for Mac OS X that is placed on a UDF 1.0.2 image (created with Toast 10).
The error in the Console when double-clicking the installer.app is:
udf error: errno_t UDFFileNode::ReadPathComponent(uint8_t*, off_t*, bool*): Incomplete path component
Occasionally, I get additional errors reported from AIR:
([0x0-0x223223].com.adobe.air.Installer[10852]) Exited with exit code: 4
Trying to run the installer in Terminal:
sudo dtruss /Volumes/UDFImage/mine.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ AIR\ Installer
results in:
dtrace: failed to execute /Volumes/mine/mine.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe: file is set-id or unreadable [Note: the '-c' option requires a full pathname to the file]
It seems there is some undesired path truncation occurring.
So these errors seem to be path related, and stem from a difficulty running the actual Adobe AIR Installer binary in the sidecar application package (in the bundle at /Contents/MacOS/Adobe AIR Installer. This application installer runs fine from hard drive, I know I've built it properly. It just fails when run on Mac OS X (10.6.4) from a UDF 1.0.2 image. The same image contains a Windows version of the installer which installs fine on Windows XP in my testing.
Is there a known issue with AIR on this?

Hello,
There is a problem with UDF file systems found on DVDs and symbolic links braking. The Adobe AIR installer bundle makes use of a few symbolic links, so this might be related. Could you try navigating from Finder into the installer bundle to this directory:
Select one of the symbolic links and try to resolve it by pressing Cmd + R? Does it resolve to the correct file?
This issue was fixed in Toast 10 Titanium with version 10.0.6. It still exists with Apple's built in tools. When using Disk Utility or the command line hdutil the symbolic link will remain broken.
Thanks,
Chris

Hyperlink (weblinks and UNC-links to files)

Think of links (Hyperlinks - active one's!) in Business partners to their web pages (not just the filed available with the need to 'copy and paste' to the browser - to me this seems like going to use a typewriter to write letters).
Think of links in Items or BOM's to documents and specifications to a already set up file structure on a documentation server. Nobody I know wants to have all these documents copied to a 'one level flat' file structure like B1 does. This leads to a completely unstructured and unusable File structure on the file server. It is just nonsense to believe that the access to these files always happens through B1 and the structure behind is a 'don't care'.
I just want to store the link to the web adress or document (UNC path or with mapped drive) without copying the document to a second place and linking/opening the document from its original place.
Please add this in as soon as possible. I assume its a small change to add a new UDF version based on the current one that copies the file. The rest can stay the same as with the current UDF for links.
Franz

This is must-have feature for any application.
It's hard to imagine that we cannot create any hyperlink in an ERP system. Can't believe this important feature is still missing after about almost three years.

Network UNC paths and SWF files not running.

Flash Player wont run SWF files from a network unc path. A map drive works. How can I resolve this?
Our user profiles in window 7 are roaming and the my documents redirects using a unc path to the my documents area. When the swf file is run, you just get a white background in the player. The standalone player is version 8 . We also deploy the latest flash player plugin for ie9 browser (currently 11.3).
I have tried adding the unc path \\servername\pathname to a .cfg file in C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\FlashPlayerTrust as described in the flash player administrator guide. This did not work.
I have also tried to update the global security settings panel with the unc paths required and copying the settings.sol file to users profiles but this has not made any difference.
Can anyone help?
Many Thanks
Mark

Thanks for replying Jeromie.
After a bit of digging, I discovered that the problem was with the profile path for users. I am not sure why, but when the profile path contains the fully qualified domain name in it , flash player fails i.e \\server.domain.co.uk\sharename\flash.swf. when the path was changed to \\servername\sharename\file.swf , it worked.
I changed all the users profile paths and removed their appdata to and now all users can play flash files with the new profile path.
Regards
Mark

UNC pathnames as UDFs?

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