Request a tiny custom app again

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Request a tiny custom app again

Snalson: Apr 4, 2007; deep roller

Ramzi posted:

I would like a soundboard generator. Something that will let me specify an audio file, then provide a label. A button for each sound will appear in the window. When I push the button, the sound is made.

I just added this one to the wiki as my first tiny app: http://tinyappz.com/wiki/SoundBoard. Kaniff fulfilled this request earlier than I did, but it was never added to the Wiki (plus his supplied download link was down). So I did it anyway.

First thing I did in C# (and for tiny appz), so feedback is very welcome.

Edit: I am a retard.

Snalson fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Sep 24, 2007

# ? Sep 24, 2007 14:30

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 01:15

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

hyperborean posted:

I posted this in the original tiny apps thread, but it did not seem to grab anyone's interest; trying again. Also I'm not sure how "tiny" this is. It seems to me it would be at least three parts.

Request: Image to Sound Translator

Platform: Windows

Description: Program will open an image file and read the pixels line line (scanning as a CRT does). Each pixel is read as a note. The color of the pixel determines the pitch of the note, based on the wavelength of light used to create the color; a red pixel is a low note, and a purple pixel is a high note. Using a ROY G BIV color scale and notes A-G can make this manageable; if the pixels can be read as their HTML color codes (red=FF0000; yellow=#FFFF00, etc), those could be corresponded to the seven notes. A tone generator can then translate the sequence into audio.

Bonuses:
-If the program can save the audio output as a midi or WAV file.
-I imagine this would be easiest using only 7, or 8, colors and notes. If code can be written such that it will read all 216 web safe colors and correspond them to a much larger scale, (without having to manually enter all 216 colors/notes) that would be incredible. Otherwise I could translate images down to the limited color scale, or only create images with a limited palette.

This is not really what you asked for, and it's still a very very rough draft, but I wanted to play around with it.

http://www.tinyappz.com/wiki/Sound_View

# ? Sep 24, 2007 20:38

nail: Jul 15, 2005

Neurozys posted:

This is not really what you asked for, and it's still a very very rough draft, but I wanted to play around with it.

http://www.tinyappz.com/wiki/Sound_View

It seems to me to be quite similar to what I asked for! It merely selects audio based on a different parameter than I specified, which isn't so important if I can figure out how to paint/compose for it. One thing I would like to ask for, if you keep working on this, is an indicator that shows which pixel is being played. Any way, this is very cool, thank you very much!

# ? Sep 25, 2007 00:25

Taco: Feb 22, 2001; My God ...
It's full of pubbies!

wrok posted:

Okay, here's a request of my own that I'm too lazy to figure out:

A Firefox extension that gives you the ability to drag a tab out of the current window to spawn a new window with that tab. Simple enough?

I would install this so fast it might break the sound barrier.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 01:43

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

I am wanting to have an audio player made. I understand this is not a tiny app, but I figured since a lot of coders are looking through this thread and it's not entirely off topic, I would ask if anyone knows where to point me.
I am hoping to find someone who is interested enough in the project to do it for free. I have designed the interface and know how I want the program to work however I don't know jack about coding. Anyway, heres to hoping someone could help me out.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 03:36

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

tracerbot posted:

I am wanting to have an audio player made. I understand this is not a tiny app, but I figured since a lot of coders are looking through this thread and it's not entirely off topic, I would ask if anyone knows where to point me.
I am hoping to find someone who is interested enough in the project to do it for free. I have designed the interface and know how I want the program to work however I don't know jack about coding. Anyway, heres to hoping someone could help me out.

In my experience coders get a lot of "I have this great idea for a program, it's just like (popular program) but better! I've done some interface sketches, and while I know absolutely nothing about anything relevant whatsoever can someone make this for me?"

So yeah, I don't want to offend you, but that's basically what you just said.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:04

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

pianoSpleen posted:

In my experience coders get a lot of "I have this great idea for a program, it's just like (popular program) but better! I've done some interface sketches, and while I know absolutely nothing about anything relevant whatsoever can someone make this for me?"

So yeah, I don't want to offend you, but that's basically what you just said.

I figured this was probably the case, and I understand that I carry that stigma. I wouldn't be looking for a coder (Let alone a free coder) unless I believed my concept was worth it (I believe it is unique enough and would appeal to a large audience).

Obviously this is my opinion and is worth crap. I was just hoping perhaps someone knew of a forum which would be fair to my proposition.
I figure my position is a common one, and would assume something exists.

gently caress, now I feel like I'm derailing.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:18

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

Nah, it's cool, SA's pretty open to this stuff. I think the most important thing you should do is tell us why your project's unique (Don't worry, I really doubt anyone will steal your idea). If it turns out to be an amazing idea you won't have much trouble finding people wanting to help.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:20

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

Is this a good thread to do it, Or should I open a separate thread?

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:26

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

I reckon it can't do any harm to go over it here and see what reaction it gets and whether there's any fatal flaw you missed, and if people like the idea enough do a thread.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:35

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

tracerbot posted:

gently caress, now I feel like I'm derailing.

Is it possible to derail a thread on page 19? That'd be something worth seeing.

It's pretty trivial to add basic audio playback to anything with DirectSound or some other library. This thread might be useful for convincing someone to slap together a prototype, but beyond that I don't know. It might be better to make a skin for WMP or WinAmp.

What does this great interface of yours look like?

# ? Sep 25, 2007 04:59

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

I think the concept art I have created speaks clearly as to what I want to achieve in the audio player as well as giving you something to reference so here it is.

Playlist Building Mode

Art Mode

*"Jet Fuel" is the name of the program for the sake of concept art*

Basic Concept
The idea is this. The player is simple, easy and quick to use. I wanted an audio player that didn't get caught up in things that aren't necessary. I wanted its "Playlist Building Mode" to consist of a library, art, playlist and play controls. From there it only simplifies. "Art Mode" would consist of the album art, your playlist and controls.

"Art Mode" also allows for higher resolution album art to be displayed properly without detracting from usability.
Another important thing I wanted to implement was customized tag display so you can have only the tags you want displayed during playback. If the composer/producer, or featured artist of a song is important to you, you can list that more prominently or in place of any other tag.

My problems and inspirations involving other players. A.K.A. The pretty boring section.
Currently there is no audio player which I am completely satisfied with. Even the players not yet out of beta do not seem to be aimed anywhere near where what I want to achieve with this player. The two players currently available which even come close are Foobar and Windows Media Player 11. I currently use both players alternatively which is ridiculous. I love how versatile, quick and stripped down Foobar is. I have spent more time settled with foobar than any other player because of this; usability is king.

However not having a retarded GUI can do amazing things. Windows Media Player has one of the better GUIs I have seen. It is almost purely for this reason that I am drawn away from Foobar every so often. It also helps that WMP has an (so close to) awesome music library mode. WMP loses in it's playlist building interface, its album art display and the fact that it tries to implement itself into every loving thing even remotely media related on your computer. For this reason, I find it unusable for any real amount of time.

A quick word about iTunes which is pretty popular with the kids these days. I find it unforgivably slow. Tedious to use and suffers from over-implementation as well, though not on the same level as WMP 11.

In Summary
I believe my concept is less complicated than most players, and realizes what many people with digital music collections want; a player that takes advantage of their tagged music without over-implementation. A player that isn't bad.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 05:42

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

That's a pretty interesting idea, but I believe it does have one fatal flaw: foobar DOES support skins. You can get pretty fancy GUIs for it.

(eg, you can write a UI module that looks and acts EXACTLY like that.)
Don't give up though, new ideas are important and sometimes they turn out to be incredibly successful.

pianoSpleen fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 25, 2007

# ? Sep 25, 2007 05:46

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

pianoSpleen posted:

That's a pretty interesting idea, but I believe it does have one fatal flaw: Foobar DOES support skins. You can get pretty fancy GUIs for it.

Foobar supports plugins, which in turn then support skins. Unless you mean changing text/highlighting formatting (which is not enough to cover how hideous the player is). If not, then I contest that the plugins I mentioned are not implemented well enough to create the sort of interface I am proposing.
I am not saying this out of devotion to my player, I would be extremely happy to find that skins were available for Foobar which were not simply nice looking graphics with no real usability.
Believe me, I have spent large amounts of time trying to make Foobar look decent while still maintaining a standard of usability. I do not believe it is possible with what is available currently.

tracerbot fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Sep 25, 2007

# ? Sep 25, 2007 05:59

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

I'm not too experienced with Foobar customization, but doesn't that mean you can just write a plugin that does the UI stuff? Of course that would be a LOT less work than a whole new player.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 06:03

Taco: Feb 22, 2001; My God ...
It's full of pubbies!

itismejs posted:

A program that initiates a .bat file when opened, unless the bat file was run in the past X minutes.

http://www.tinyappz.com/wiki/Request:1186117977

Well ok

Edit: I guess I should point out that I didn't test this even a little, so if I managed to screw it up let me know

Taco fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Sep 25, 2007

# ? Sep 25, 2007 06:08

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

pianoSpleen posted:

I'm not too experienced with Foobar customization, but doesn't that mean you can just write a plugin that does the UI stuff? Of course that would be a LOT less work than a whole new player.

Here are the problems with doing that. To my knowledge, the best way to customize Foobar would be to install Panels UI and use the Album Art plugin. The problem with Panels UI (besides being buggy) is that it allows you to create an interface that looks nice, but doesn't act like an interface. You are right, you could make it look exactly like my concept, but half of the usability aimed features could not be expressed.
The library and playlist building specifically, and I'm not sure how it would handle flipping between two modes.

Anyway, if you feel this is something that could absolutely be realized with simple Foobar customization point me in the direction of someone who understands how to code a Foobar UI. Otherwise I feel my points are valid in the necessity of a new base for a new sort of interface.

Also, I would like to have something made that is available to everybody. I am not viewing this as a completely self-serving project. It is difficult to recommend someone a player which you then have to install plugins which you then have to skin in order to have the interface work properly. I would like to create a self-contained application that installs and works easily and doesnt gently caress with you.

tracerbot fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Sep 25, 2007

# ? Sep 25, 2007 06:17

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

Nono, I was talking about creating a whole new plugin like PanelsUI or ColumnsUI.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 06:24

KingEup: Nov 18, 2004; I am a REAL ADDICT
(to threadshitting)

Please ask me for my google inspired wisdom on shit I know nothing about. Actually, you don't even have to ask.

PREG. MOM 2.0 posted:

Presumably, this seems like it should be done with GreaseMonkey, or even a whole extension although I doubt that's necessary.

Try userstyles.org

They already have some custom gmail interfaces:

http://userstyles.org/styles/96
http://userstyles.org/styles/search/gmail

Ask in the forum if you want someone to make it for you:

http://userstyles.org/forum/

They are very helpful.

# ? Sep 25, 2007 06:40

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

So is nobody able to help me out here? It would be nice to have any sort of lead, but as of right now these forums are the best that I know.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 00:25

Lanky Dude: Oct 26, 2005

http://www.tinyappz.com/wiki/Request:1190767356

Basically similar to my earlier request. I don't mind if you can't get the icons from the bookmarks, but just linking the names and the url's in this format would be highly useful, as it would basically allow you to interact with firefox's bookmarks from an external program.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 02:07

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

tracerbot posted:

So is nobody able to help me out here? It would be nice to have any sort of lead, but as of right now these forums are the best that I know.

Those are some fancy pictures there. Did you actually use an interface designer of some sort, or just photoshop them?

As far as help goes, you probably aren't getting a lot of exposure in this thread. You could try making own of your own to see if anyone will come on board.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 02:56

Lanky Dude: Oct 26, 2005

tracerbot posted:

Design concept (insert snarky comment about how I think it looks here)

Most of that would be extremely doable in panels ui (under foobar), just would take a couple of days (at least) to do. I might have a go this weekend.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 03:06

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

Neurozys posted:

Those are some fancy pictures there. Did you actually use an interface designer of some sort, or just photoshop them?

Thank you. When you see the PSD it's not as complicated as it seems. Just shapes and gradients.

Lanky Dude posted:

Most of that would be extremely doable in panels ui (under foobar), just would take a couple of days (at least) to do. I might have a go this weekend.

Without doubting that this could be done, and with much less work than actually programming from the ground up, I am not yet ready to give up on the idea of there being a programmer out there who believes in my concept enough to work with me on it. I don't feel I have put enough effort in yet to justify compromising the integrity of my initial concept. I do appreciate it though.

I think I will take a shot at making a thread and see what happens.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 05:05

DLCinferno: Feb 22, 2003; Happy

tracerbot posted:

Thank you. When you see the PSD it's not as complicated as it seems. Just shapes and gradients.

Without doubting that this could be done, and with much less work than actually programming from the ground up, I am not yet ready to give up on the idea of there being a programmer out there who believes in my concept enough to work with me on it. I don't feel I have put enough effort in yet to justify compromising the integrity of my initial concept. I do appreciate it though.

I think I will take a shot at making a thread and see what happens.

Before you do so, you should know that it is definitely pretty much exactly feasible in foobar to do this. Go to the foobar thread and find fofr's configuration.

The biggest problem with your concept is that it introduces absolutely nothing new...it's basically a skin. Not that it's worthless or anything, but I would find it hard to believe someone would put the effort into creating an entire audio player just to match a UI that is so similar to many other players.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 06:09

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

tracerbot posted:

Thank you. When you see the PSD it's not as complicated as it seems. Just shapes and gradients.

Without doubting that this could be done, and with much less work than actually programming from the ground up, I am not yet ready to give up on the idea of there being a programmer out there who believes in my concept enough to work with me on it. I don't feel I have put enough effort in yet to justify compromising the integrity of my initial concept. I do appreciate it though.

I think I will take a shot at making a thread and see what happens.

Here's an idea - your design seems like it might be a good fit for WPF. Why not download the Microsoft Blend Trial and putting together the design with that tool. At the very least, it will take a lot of the work off the shoulders of your vict <cough> programmer.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 12:59

tracerbot: Jul 23, 2004; Tracerbot

This is a fantastic idea. I just read up on WPF (I didn't know it existed) and it looks extremely promising. I am going to do my best to put together a more compelling prototype out of their tools. Thank you again.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 20:41

Super Delegate: Jan 20, 2005; ƃɐlɟ ǝɥʇ

Taco posted:

Well ok

Edit: I guess I should point out that I didn't test this even a little, so if I managed to screw it up let me know

Thanks.I just happened to check the this thread today.

I ran the command

batman c:\work\Project.bat -h 0 -m 5

I thought it was going to run the .bat the first time it ran, and then deny requests for the next 5 minutes. Right now, it just keeps opening the .bat no matter what.

# ? Sep 26, 2007 23:27

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

itismejs posted:

Thanks.I just happened to check the this thread today.

I ran the command

batman c:\work\Project.bat -h 0 -m 5

I thought it was going to run the .bat the first time it ran, and then deny requests for the next 5 minutes. Right now, it just keeps opening the .bat no matter what.

Fun fact: Running a .bat file does not update it's Last Accessed timestamp

# ? Sep 27, 2007 00:55

Super Delegate: Jan 20, 2005; ƃɐlɟ ǝɥʇ

Neurozys posted:

Fun fact: Running a .bat file does not update it's Last Accessed timestamp

Same thing happens with an .exe.

# ? Sep 27, 2007 02:42

pianoSpleen: Jun 13, 2007; printf("Java is for programmers with no %socks", "c");

Add a line to the .bat to dump its own contents into itself?

# ? Sep 27, 2007 07:25

afen: Sep 23, 2003; nemo saltat sobrius

Could anyone make a program that "reserves" a space on the desktop for a program. So when i maximize a program, it just takes up about 200px on the right side of the screen, and any other program just uses the rest of the screen. Does anyone know of a program that will do this? pay or free, doesnt matter

# ? Oct 4, 2007 10:52

Neurozys: Apr 15, 2004

afen posted:

Could anyone make a program that "reserves" a space on the desktop for a program. So when i maximize a program, it just takes up about 200px on the right side of the screen, and any other program just uses the rest of the screen. Does anyone know of a program that will do this? pay or free, doesnt matter

Only thing I can think of is to have a docking toolbar that can somehow assign some arbitrary window as a child. It'd be an interesting problem, no idea if it's possible though.

# ? Oct 4, 2007 14:07

Yoghurt: Dec 18, 2006; We have always been at war with scenesters

ok I've got one:

Can someone please make a program that lets me turn off the LEDs on my tower at night so I can get some sleep and then back on again in the morning?

Piling up clothes in front of it is a cheap second-best

# ? Oct 4, 2007 15:15

Sevets: Dec 23, 2005; o.o merry xmas

This isn't exactly a program but it does involve programming!

I would like to take a csv file, parse it, and put each line into a line of a table. I then want to be able to tag each item (each row of the table) with a standard few tags and then be able to view another webpage that has a table for each tag.

The csv would be a statement from bank of america.

Ideally I would be able to see an overall total of each table and then maybe a total for each month per table. Also, I want it to be as stand alone as possible, ie. no webserver.

I have been looking to use this to learn how to do it myself and barring it being made, suggestions for what language/scripting I would use to do this would be awesome.

# ? Oct 6, 2007 00:39

Sizzlechest: May 7, 2007

It can be done in Perl and I can help. However, I'd need more info, like some examples of csv and tables.

# ? Oct 6, 2007 03:25

Sevets: Dec 23, 2005; o.o merry xmas

I shall have a rudimentary example for you tomorrow! I will post the link and make the css and page and all that even though thats the simplest thing. I will start looking into Perl also. Thanks!

# ? Oct 6, 2007 08:07

naughtysiggie: Feb 26, 2001

Outlook 2007 will not shut down when using Plaxo. After exiting, it continues to run in the background. I would like some kind of a program to run in the background that will sense when Outlook has been exited and then shut it down after so many seconds, or some type of program to allow Outlook some many seconds delay when exiting and then if it does not shut down, then a forced shutdown of the Outlook process is implemented.

Thank you!

# ? Oct 6, 2007 10:31

nail: Jul 15, 2005

afen posted:

Could anyone make a program that "reserves" a space on the desktop for a program. So when i maximize a program, it just takes up about 200px on the right side of the screen, and any other program just uses the rest of the screen. Does anyone know of a program that will do this? pay or free, doesnt matter

There was something exactly like that in the Free ware you can't live without thread like two days ago...

Two of them actually: Winsplit Revolution and
Desktop Coral.

# ? Oct 6, 2007 20:41

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 01:15

NoneMoreNegative: Jul 20, 2000; GOTH FASCISTIC
PAIN MASTER

shit wizard dad

Ok, something that would make my life a lot easier:

I have the following

a folder with subfolders containing PDFs
A CSV file with the following columns: TITLE (Human-readable file name), LOCATION (which subfolder / actual filename), KEYWORDS (space delineated keywords)

What I need is to be able to iterate through each line in the csv and add the TITLE and KEYWORDS into the PDF file metadata (rightclick on a PDF, select 'Summary' to see the meta}

Doable? Seems like a backwards version of the Exif program I got built earlier in the thread, with file writing instead of reading.

# ? Oct 11, 2007 12:38

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