Allah_Sulu's

Windows installer

ZIP archive

• The "Links" tab on the "Preferences…" screen (from the Edit menu) now contains data elements for entering and enabling proxy settings. Currently, this is only relevant for the "Update Icons/Tags" button on the "Post to LiveJournal…" window, the "Poll Results…" function on the LJ Menu, and some commands in the internal FORTH language that directly access the internet (such as the LJ Latest Images.RIM macro).
• The "Reference Pages" tab on the "Preferences…" screen (from the Edit menu) has been removed. Some of the items from that tab have been relocated to the bottom of the "Links" tab, and the others have been eliminated. (To see all of the background graphics currently loaded into the Massive Tool, you must now run the Backgrounds.RIM macro.)
• The "Images…" screen on the HTML menu now has the ability to create the code for my browser trick for you. There's a pull-down menu on the third line with "mouseover" as the default value; if you change that to the other option, "IE/FF layers", you'll be able to create the browser trick simply by entering the "IE URL" and "non-IE URL" values for the two images. Several of the other options on this screen are disabled when you're generating the latered image browser trick, but the others (such as "Alt/Title Tag" and "Border") are still available. Remember that both images should be the same size!
• The "User Tags…" screen on the HTML menu has an additional option called "HSpace" (it's just to the left of "Height" and "Width"). This can be used to add one or more pixels of empty space to either side of the user icon, in cases where the icon is right up against characters on either side of it. For instance, in this post, I added an extra pixel to either side of the user icon for my sister since it didn't look good with the parenthesis right up against the left side. At some point in the not-so-distant past, I noticed that LiveJournal had started doing something similar to this, adding a blank pixel to the right of the user icon in between it and the user name – however, the method which they use to accomplish this doesn't work in Internet Explorer (unless they've fixed that in IE8); my method works in IE and in Firefox (and presumably in other browsers as well if it works for both of them). I also chose to add the extra pixel(s) to both sides of the icon, not just the right, for the reason given above. The default, of course, remains zero.
• The "Alt/Title" field on the "User Tags…" screen has been renamed "Title Text", and is coded slightly differently.
• The "Post to LiveJournal…" screen (from the LJ menu) now has a pull-down menu for the new pingback feature (although only Paid and Permanent accounts will actually recognize/support this feature).
• Also on the "Post to LiveJournal…" screen: I don't think I've mentioned this before, although it's been a feature for a while; if you right-click on the "First Line" button next to the "Subject" field, the text in the subject field will be converted to Title Case.
• The "Break at EOL" (that stands for "End of Line") option on the Window menu (and the toolbar) has been modified. Previously, it ignored blank lines and just put a <br> at the end of each nonblank line (that wasn't inside an HTML tag). Now, it will replace two (or more) carriage returns in a row with a <p> tag.
• For the sake of consistency, I'm trying to get the Massive Tool to put quotation marks around all parameters (e.g. border="0" rather than border=0) – just as, in the past, I've made sure that all of the HTML tags are in lower case and provided the option to insert closing tags for HTML codes that don't normally require them (</p> et al.) This doesn't affect the functionality of the code generated; it merely makes it more consistent with some established standards… Although some sites (like LJ) can be fussy about code that isn't formatted "properly". Way back, I discovered that LJ doesn't consistently recognize hexadecimal color codes without a pound sign (#) in front of them (for backgrounds, for instance). And I just noticed now that Firefox doesn't render borders when the color is missing a pound sign – but has no problem with missing pound signs for text and background colors… Anyway, all hexadecimal color codes generated by the Massive Tool have had a pound sign ever since then; and I may have missed one or two, but I'm trying to enclose all of the parameters within quotes.
• I've also sped up some of the code used by the internal FORTH language in such macros as the batch download, although the major limiting factors for that program are still your connection speed to the internet and the bandwidth of the site from which you are downloading.
• There several new icons (including but not limited to the Doctors Who in Allah_Sulu.TMI and some more smilies in Dopple.TMI) and also a few new backgrounds.

There is no progress to report (yet) on increased DreamWidth compatibility, although I have done a bit more reading in the DW FAQs for relevant details. If anyone wants me to make this a higher priority, please say so.

Allah Sulu's Massive Tool

• The Massive Tool now comes with a standard Windows setup.exe installer, so that it will extract all of the files and create a shortcut on your start menu for you. Just double-click on the setup.exe file. This should make installs and updates easier.
• I added a "Count…" command to the Search menu. It simply tells you how many times a given text string appears in your document without making any changes. As with the "Find…" and "Replace…" commands, you can use the "Match Case" checkbox to turn case sensitivity on and off.
• The "Date/Time…" option has been removed from the Insert menu. A macro with the identical function (named INSERT-DATETIME) can be found in commands.rim (see below).
• I simplified the "Font Size" options on the HTML menu's "Font / Format…" screen. Now there are only two methods of selection rather than three – there is the pull-down menu (with sizes, superscripts, headline codes, etc.) and there is the numeric selector where you set the size based on a number and a unit of measure (pixels, point size, percentage, etc.) Any selection on the first option (the pull-down menu) overrides the second option (the numeric selection). To use the numeric selector, make sure that the pull-down menu to its left is empty (the top menu item). This is easier than having to click buttons to select which option is dominant, and the number of options was reduced by sticking the headline codes (which were a third, separate pull-down menu option) onto the bottom of the first pull-down.
• The reason I did that was to make room on the "Font / Format…" screen for a new Font Stack option. When you click on the "Stack" checkbox, the two normal font controls (a button and a pull-down menu) are replaced with a single, wider pull-down menu. The menu contains a number of predefined font stacks (either from this page or created/modified by me), each of which starts with a short description (up to 15 alphanumeric characters) of the stack. Right now there are ten stacks available (evenly divided between serif and sans-serif selections, with monospace and unicode options), but you can add more using the "Add Font Stack" option on the "Font / Format…" screen's Edit menu.
• The ability to select monospace font options through the generic font face pull-down menu or the font stack pull-down menu has made the the "proportional / fixed width" button redundant. I removed it from the "Font / Format…" screen (which made the other buttons, "boldface" et al., wider). If you want to do preformatted text, you can still stick in <pre> or <tt> tags manually, or access them through the "monospace" option on the Insert menu's "Paragraph…" screen (depending upon what choice you've selected for "monospc") on the "Document" tab of the "Preferences…" screen on the Edit menu).
• The "Post to LiveJournal…" command on the LJ will now warn you if you attempt to exceed LiveJournal's maximum entry limit of 65,535 bytes. (Thanks to porridgebird and the_stowaway for that one.)
• There's another function which I added an update or two ago, in my continuing effort to more fully tie the editor and macro language together, but hadn't mentioned yet because I was still tweaking it. Assuming you have the "Macros" toolbar enabled (Edit → "Preferences…" → "Program" tab), run the macro named "commands.rim" (Macros → "Run Macro…") and then right-click on the "Run Macro" toolbar button (it's the one with a light bulb in front of a folder). You'll see a pull-down menu appear (but only for ten seconds) listing the FORTH aliases currently defined in memory. (There are normally none when you start up the Massive Tool, but commands.rim holds several common, simple ones.) Selecting any of the aliases causes them to execute and the pull-down menu to disappear; selecting none of them causes the menu to disappear in ten seconds. This is a quicker and easier way of accessing functions such as "uppercase", "rot13", etc.
• There are a few more icons in allah_sulu.tmi, and a bunch more backgrounds in the Massive Tool as well. There have also been additional upgrades to the macro language (new functions include finding the median and standard deviation of a list of numbers – if this is useful to you, let me know and I'll explain how to do it), and new, improved versions of dl-images.rim and search.rim (I added TVtropes.org – a highly addictive site, I warn you).

I haven't done anything else about proxies yet; but then, none of you have said that you were having any problems with them, so it's dropped down on my list of priorities.

Over the weekend, I created a new macro for the Massive Tool at devils_sidekick's request, which I have added to the download archive in case anyone else might find it useful. It's called PHOTOBUCKET.RIM, and what it does is take a Photobucket page like this¹ and generate HTML <table> code out of it for easy posting in LiveJournal, ( like this. )

Oh, and I also fulfilled evilgrins' request for an icon for his zombie community: Marvel Zombies. I'll be following up on this idea for a standalone program next.

¹I don't have a photobucket account of my own, so I selected the example page more-or-less at random.

Remember the Search macro I showed off with the previous Massive Tool update? Well, if you download yesterday's new update, you can check out another macro I've been playing with: DragMe.RIM.

To try it out, select "Run Macro…" from the Macros menu, and choose "DragMe.RIM". You'll be prompted to enter some text; I recommend "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE". The Massive Tool will then create a document containing the text you entered, but each individual letter will be a separate, draggable object. Go ahead and try it – rearrange the letters to spell "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT". This is accomplished by using JavaScript to create a class named "dragme", and assigning that class to each individual latter via a separate <span> command. This code cannot be embedded into LiveJournal posts (LJ doesn't allow that sort of code); but you can create and save documents in the Massive Tool with this code, which can then be used in any browser.

It's not just limited to text, either. You can also apply the "dragme" class to images, and create a sort of Colorforms™ effect by dragging and placing images wherever you want them over a static backdrop. I've whipped up a quick example HERE – note that, as I said, you only need the Massive Tool to create the documents. Once finished, they can be uploaded or exchanged to be used on any browser. (One problem, though – the word balloons I included on the example page only seem to work properly under Internet Explorer. I haven't gotten Firefox to handle them correctly yet.)

(I had originally come across and customized similar code to this when I was working on my Icon Maker page. The first version of that page allowed you to drag and place the various pieces of icons together to construct your own custom user icons. Unfortunately, that didn't really work out well because the pieces were so darned small.)

My wife Q suggested that I create a standalone program, specifically designed to make it easy for anyone to construct their own Colorforms-esque documents, by providing the URLs and settings and letting the program do the rest. At the very least, parents could create some great customized computer toys for their kids this way (I plan on building a few for my son, mixing together his favorite shows/characters along with pictures of him and his friends). I also think I'll expand on the example given above, and make a page with images based upon myself and my LJ friends (and another for some other groups).

Poll #1314065 Colorforms
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should I create a standalone program like that?

What double-entendre name should I give the program?

Allah Sulu's Massive Tool

• The "Replace…" window on the Search menu has a new option: "Fast Search/Replace". This speeds up the search and replace routine by deactivating the "Match Case (for Replace)" option, and by not counting how many replacements/deletions were performed. This option will probably only make a noticeable difference if you are working with a large document and/or will be making a great deal of replacements/deletions. As a side benefit, however, Fast Search/Replace operations can be Undone by closing the "Replace…" window and either pressing Ctrl-Z or selecting "Undo" from the Edit menu. Previously, none of the search and replace operations could be undone.
• The "Lists…" window on the HTML menu has more formatting options for the "Table (Two Columns)" list.
• The "User Tags…" window on the HTML menu has been made wider, for increased visibility of icons with long descriptive names, as has the selection screen (used when selecting which icons to load from an icon file, or which icons to include on a Reference Page).
• The "Create Poll…" window on the LJ menu only displays four questions at a time, with navigation buttons to allow access to all sixteen possible questions. Trying to put all of them on one screen just made it too big and unwieldy.
• The program has gotten a little smaller and faster, as I'm continuing to find places where I can tighten up the code to eliminate redundancy and make it more efficient (I reduced the executable's size by about 10%).
• As usual, there are more icons and backgrounds, and expansions to the built-in programming language.

Allah Sulu's Massive Tool

• The LJ menu has a new option, "Poll Results…" (described here). Some of the other elements on the LJ menu have been renamed or reordered (for instance, the old "LJ Poll…" option is now called "Create Poll…" to distinguish it from the "Poll Results…" option).
• Also, in another Poll-related update, you can now get a rough approximation of what your poll will look like if you have <lj-poll> codes in your text and you turn on the "Display LJ Tags" option on the LJ menu. It is, as I said, pretty rough (since a more accurate preview would have required more code and significantly slowed down the preview window¹); but it's better than the Preview option on LJ's posting screen, which doesn't do anything with the <lj-poll> codes at all. (A much more accurate poll preview is available within the "Create Poll…" screen.)
• You're probably sick of hearing about the differences between the <nobr> and <span style="white-space: nowrap;"> codes; so now you can simply select both on the Edit → "Preferences…" → "Document" tab. I figured that was only fair, since the HTML → "User Tags…" code is already using both because of the inherent differences and advantages.
• There is a new option on the Window menu (with an associated toolbar button) called "BBCode". This allows you to work in Bulletin Board Code and have the Massive Tool's preview pane properly display the results. (The functionality of these codes vary from forum to forum, so I included just the basic set outlined in the Wikipedia entry.) Also, just as with the Wikipedia Code toolbar button, if you right-click on the BBCode button it will convert the codes in your text entry window from BBCode to HTML.
• As discussed here, I've added a Title Case function to the Massive Tool. One way to access it is with the TitleCase.rim macro file.
• As usual, there are more icons and backgrounds. Also, I've added instructions to the Reference Page.

Allah Sulu's Massive Tool

• I added a line on the "Properties" window (from the FILE menu) listing the number of lines in the document. This value may change depending upon whether or not you have "Word Wrap" (on the WINDOW menu) enabled.
• There is a new command on the EDIT menu, "Paste Special". Use this if you want to paste Unicode text (such as this) into the Massive Tool. The Unicode characters will be converted into ampersand tags. This command will also strip control characters (such as tabs) out of the pasted text, and correct for line breaks that aren't in the CR-LF format. The "Paste Special" function can also be activated by right-clicking on the Paste button on the Edit toolbar.
• There are two new buttons on the Edit toolbar with arrows on them. If you click on the up arrow, it moves the cursor to the top of the document; and if you right-click on it, it selects all text from the top of the document to the current cursor/selection location (the latter is functionally identical to the "Select to Top" command on the EDIT menu). If you click on the down arrow, it moves the cursor to the end of the document; and if you right-click on it, it selects all text from the current cursor/selection location to the end of the document (the latter is functionally identical to the "Select to End" command on the EDIT menu).
• Updated the "Find…" and "Replace…" commands from the SEARCH menu. I don't know if any of you ever edit megabyte-sized files in the Massive Tool; but I do, and some search-and-replace operations can take forever. Every now and then I manage to tighten them up a bit more.
• I've added new functionality to the "Horizontal Rule" screen on the INSERT menu. In addition to creating <hr> tags, the Massive Tool can create simulated horizontal rules using <table> tags with background images, allowing you to have patterns, animation, and so forth in your dividers.
• The "Images" window (from the HTML menu) has a new control – a sliding bar that lets you set the opacity/transparency of the image (see this post for more information).
• There's a new option on the MACROS menu which provides a "Command Line" at the bottom of the screen.
• I've changed the format of the reference pages generated by the Massive Tool (see this post for more information).
• I corrected some minor issues (I won't call them bugs, because they're not all my fault) with the userpic names (loaded on the "Post to LiveJournal" screen) because they got confused by apostrophes and ampersands (I'll keep an eye out for other characters it might have difficulty with) and with the code for lists (which didn't work properly in someone else's journal because of their style, for some godforsaken reason. I know LiveJournal was the culprit, because as soon as I added ?style=mine to the URL, the problem went away).
• As usual, there are more icons and backgrounds (including Q*Bert), and the internal scripting language has undergone a major revamping – many of the old macros won't work anymore, since I've changed many commands to make the whole more logical and consistent; but I've updated the macros that I include with the Massive Tool, and I can help with any others that may or may not exist out there.

Allah Sulu's Massive Tool

• Beneath "Open File…" command on the File menu is a new option, "Open URL…" This will allow you to open a web page directly into the Massive Tool for viewing or editing. It can also be used to open a directory, such as http://www.holyducttape.com/stuff/asmt-icons/, to easily peruse some or all of the files within (by using the "Open Links" command on the Window menu; more on that below).
• There have been two changes related to the Edit menu. First, the Edit Toolbar has a new button (bearing a red asterisk) which will activate the "Select All" function (or, if you right-click it, will activate the "Select a Line" function, which was just added in the last update). Opening the "Preferences…" screen from the Edit menu will reveal a new tab for customizing the "Open Links" command on the Window menu – when you use that option now to simultaneously open all of the links in a document (or in the section of the document that you have selected), you can specify where the links are to be opened (into separate tabs in Firefox seems to be the best choice, at least for me).
• The LJ user tag code created by both the "User Tags…" command on the HTML menu (and associated toolbar button) and from the Reference Pages has been expanded. I was torn in past as to whether I should use <nobr> or <span style="white-space: nowrap;"> tags around the user tags to try to keep the icons and usernames together on the same line, as each has its advantages and disadvantages. <nobr> is smaller, but for whatever reason is not supported by Firefox. The other method, however, doesn't work on LJ's User Profile pages; since LJ removes the CSS "style" commands from the HTML you post in your bio (leaving only "<span>" behind). After using one, and then the other, I decided to simply go with both henceforth. This means that you should be pretty much covered in your journal posts (unless there's some wacky S2 style which also strips out the CSS from the user tag), but you may be out of luck viewing a bio page in Firefox.
• The "Post to LiveJournal…" screen on the LJ menu has been further expanded. In addition to the list of accounts that you can post from, you can also store a list of communities to post to. All other options for posting are made available to you, although some of them (like the Userpic selection) require you to enter your password in order to post with them. If you don't enter your password, this option works as it did before, sending all of your selections into the LJ post screen. If you do provide a password, then the Massive Tool can post directly to LJ without the need of using that intermediary screen. There is also a button which will read the list of icons and tags associated with a user or community into the Tool, to allow you to select them from before posting. (A few words on the passwords: the passwords are encrypted before they are used, or saved if you press the floppy disc button next to that field. According to LJ, this method of encryption is "Not perfectly secure, but defeats the most simple of network sniffers." In other words, don't use this method when you're unsure of the safety of your connection. I use the password for posting sometimes from home or work, but not on other people's systems and definitely not over wireless from my laptop. The most secure method of posting to LJ is with "challenge-response authentication", which I should be able to include in a future Massive Tool update. If you do save the passwords, they are saved in your ASMT.TXT file. Do not let anyone else get access to that file or they can use it via the Massive Tool to post under your name – so you also want to be sure of the sanctity of any machines that you save your password to. This is a useful option, but necessarily the best one in all circumstances.)
• Also on the LJ menu is the "LJ User / Links…" screen which allows you to generate a number of different user-based LJ URLs. I have added the new "Send a Message" URL to the list of options, but I have not added the "Flag Journal" URL (for philosophical reasons).
• I have updated many of the .RIM macro files, which you can execute with the "Run Macro..." command on the Macro menu. Some of them no longer functioned correctly given the constant changes and expansions I'm making to the scripting language, and others have been made better by the inclusion of new features in the language. Most of the macros function on whatever text you have selected when you run them (or your entire document if no text is selected) and perform various functions. I don't know how much (if at all) any of you employ the macros; but some of them are fairly easy to modify (and even have comments explaining how they work) if anyone wants to look "under the hood" (for instance, if you really wanted a blink command, you could make one very easily by modifying the overstrike.rim macro. Another macro to look at, if you want to see some of the things the Massive Tool's scripting language can accomplish, is quotes.rim.
• A number of minor changes have been made to the Window menu. The "Tile" option has been changed to "Tile Horizontally", and a new "Tile Vertically" option has been added. (I generally use the Massive Tool with the Text and HTML Preview panes tiled, Text on top; but my new monitor at work is a 1920x1200 resolution widescreen monitor, so I figured I might want to tile the two panes side-by-side for some uses.) "Close Links" has been changed to "Close Internal Panes" to be more consistent with the choices listed on the Preference tab described in the second bullet above (since not all links are opened into internal panes); also, not all internal panes are from opened links (some are from the "Post to LiveJournal…" command). Finally, I added a "Reload / Refresh" option, which can also be activated by pressing F5 (which is the IE Refresh key; I couldn't assign the Firefox Reload key, Ctrl-R, because that's being used elsewhere).
• There are, as usual, more backgrounds included in ASMT.INI and more icons in ALLAH_SULU.TMI – however, I have not yet made usericons of the Village People.

I just uploaded the latest version (3.3.5) of Massive Tool. For the most part, there are just a few months of minor enhancements, bug fixes, and additional icons … But I did some major work on expanding the built-in macro scripting language.¹ There's a new macro named pretzel.rim that shows off some of the new functionality; just run it and enter some text when prompted.²

¹ I don't know if anyone other than me writes macros in the Massive Tool, but I know that some of you run them.
² I did not create those character graphics; I just made the macro as an example for someone.