Version 3.12.0
February 2024
I’ve been trying to pin down a random lockup. I’ve found a few possible culprits but I’m not yet convinced I’ve solved it. I’ll continue looking. There’s a lot of code changes in this release. The following is what I can remember, there may be other changes I’ve not documented. I’m aware that there is some inconsistency in the various align options. I intend to align these in the next release.
NOTE: This release has a lot of code changes. You should perform appropriate testing before deploying to your enterprise.
Change 1: The REGISTRY item now correctly supports the hide-no-result option.
Change 2: Added wow option to the REGISTRY item.
Change 3: Fixed xml error in the DTI item when the http connection times out.
Change 4: Added additional error handling and logging to the collector thread. Added collector option and ui option to application logging.
Change 5: Modified the right click Reload tool so that, in addition to reloading the ini file, it will kill the collector and recreate it. This will be useful in the event the collector has stalled.
Change 6: Added the thread synonym for no-wait. This makes more sense for some.
Change 7: Added the thread-timeout common option. If you set no-wait:1, the item will execute in it’s own thread allowing the GUI to continue on without waiting for that item to return a result. The thread-timeout option controls how long the thread is allowed to run before shutting it down.
Change 8: Removed the code which lowers the process priority in certain situations. I’m not sure how useful it is and it may be causing issues. It continues to have below normal priority. However, you may see Desktop Info show slightly higher cpu usage when nothing else is going on.
Change 9: Added the minpct option to the TOPPROCESSCPU item. This will filter out processes that do not meet your threshhold.
Change 10: Added the group-by-id option to the NETSTATS item.
Change 11: Rewrote the CONTROL code again! It’s entirely possible that the documentation no longer matches the behaviour of the controls. Check with the sample-config\desktopinfo-advanced.ini file. Let me know in the forums what you find.
Change 12: Added option to use a CONTROL to jump to a DTI page. The uri option will contain {page} and the args option will contain the target page number or one of the key words: previous, home, next. The Home page is page 1.
Change 13: Added the hint option to the CONTROL item for a mouse hover hint.
Change 14: Added support for global option to CONTROL item. All items can use the global option now. This provides a mechanism for building your own toolbar. See sample-config\desktopinfo-absolute.ini.
Change 15: Added BUTTON and HYPERLINK items as synonyms for the CONTROL type 0 and type 1. At some point down the track I may remove the CONTROL item and just leave the BUTTON and HYPERLINK items.
Change 16: The hyperlink now supports the align option correctly. Hyperlinks with align center on a monitor above 100% zoom don’t position correctly.
Change 17: Fixed crash in the bar chart when no data is available.
Change 18: Fixed the required form width and height in W mode.
Change 19: I removed the scroll bar from the W mode form, it’s giving me endless grief. I’ve also made the W form non-resizable for similar reasons. I’ll try again another day. So you just need to set the width and height big enough to start with. If you build pages that are too big to display then you should consider breaking them up.
Change 20: The toolbar option in [options-w] is off by default. That may go away in favour of the new global controls.
Change 21: Added a context menu item to switch configuration files. To enable this, add “menu-ini=Select Config” to the [text] section of your existing ini file.
Change 22: More work on the zoom handling. It seems to be mostly working with the exception that hyperlinks don’t center properly when zoom is greater than 100%. It occasionally misses a Windows message but the right click Reload fixes that. You’ll notice a delay after the zoom changes or after you drag to a monitor with different zoom. This is to allow the torrent of Windows messages to finish before doing anything. It also smooths the transition to another monitor.
Change 23: Added the sub string format function. This extracts a sub-string of characters from the given string.
Change 24: I’m experimenting with a new layout approach using absolute positioning. If you’re curious look at the desktopinfo-absolute.ini config in the sample-config folder. There’s some instructions at the top of that file. This is a work in progress and not yet properly documented so you’re on your own. I posted some screen shots on the forum. During this process I broke a lot of stuff and I’ve spent some time attempting to repair the damage. I think it’s all working now and some parts I think are better. Let me know if you find any broken things I’ve missed. If this new approach works out, I’d be seriously considering dropping the old approach. Let me know what you think in the forums. One thing to note is the align options in the new layout behave differently to the old layout. In the old layout, align shuffles the text within the horizontal space available in the column. In the new layout, the align moves the text around the x point. The following changes are all relevant to this new layout.
Change 25: Added the angle item option to produce angled text. This is only available in the new layout. See desktopinfo-absolute.ini.
Change 26: Added CHART item to allow positioning independently of the source data item. Data-id is the item id of the source of the chart data. This allows multiple charts from a single data source. This is only available in the new layout.
Change 27: Added the orientation option to the CHART item. Currently only used by the bar chart type. A value of 0 displays the usual horizontal bar chart, a value of 1 displays a vertical bar chart. This is only available in the new layout.
Change 28: I’ve begun implementing a new item align option. Instead of using numbers (which tend to vary), this uses the letters, ‘l’ for left, ‘r’ for right and ‘c’ for center. This makes things easier to remember and read. This has been implemented in all items when using the new layout as well as button, hyperlink, image and nav when using the old layout.
Many thanks for v.3.12 and your great work.
I have tested with desktopinfo-absolute.ini on three computers. On two computers with Bitlocker disabled, the Bitlocker status shows:1.
On one computer with Bitlocker enabled, the Bitlocker status also shows:1.
What could be the cause?
I have another question.
I use Desktop Info with WinPE and it is very helpful to have an overview on other people's computers.
It works well but for example only the graphics driver is displayed and not the graphics card type, the network card is not displayed.
Is it possible to change the parameters for use with WinPE?
Many thanks for v.3.12 and your great work.
I have tested with desktopinfo-absolute.ini on three computers. On two computers with Bitlocker disabled, the Bitlocker status shows:1.
On one computer with Bitlocker enabled, the Bitlocker status also shows:1.
What could be the cause?
The CMD items should have %4 in the display. %1 is the process result code.
I use Desktop Info with WinPE and it is very helpful to have an overview on other people's computers.
It works well but for example only the graphics driver is displayed and not the graphics card type, the network card is not displayed.
Is it possible to change the parameters for use with WinPE?
desktopinfo-absolute.ini is just an example. it is not complete.
the
We have been using Desktop Info in our school and it has been a great tool for our support personnel. Thank you for making it!
When updating from 3.10.2 to 3.12.0 we noticed a change how it handles scaling. To demonstrate the issue I'm running two separate instances of DesktopInfo64.exe. Both have the exact same config file apart from the top value from [options] so that they would not overlap.
I'm running the test on a Dell 3420 Latitude, Win11, 1920x1080, 150% window scaling (recommended). 3.12.0 has a larger font, the box doesn't autogrow and the text items are align a bit differently. If I set the window scaling to 100% the fonts are the same (intended) size. See attached image.
Have I missed something about the changes in scaling?
Here's the config file for our little info box:
[options] # size and position top=10 right=10 width=240 column1width=0 auto-scale=0 # font font-face=Segoe UI font-size=8 font-quality=5 # interface formcolor=000001 transparency=40 allowdrag=0 contextmenu=0 [text] noresults=n/a error=[error] [pages] 1=Main Page [items] COMMENT=font-size:4 IMAGE=file:logo_dti.png,align:1,offset:8 HOST=font-size:9,display:%1,style:wb WMI=namespace:root\cimv2,query:Win32_ComputerSystem,display:%Model% OSBUILD2=display:%1 %18,regex:\Microsoft ,regexr: NETWORKINTERFACES=interval:120,operstatus:1,iftype:6 71,descfilter:-virtual,display:%8 [%4],regex:\-,regexr:: USER=display:Username: %1 OSBUILD2=display:Installed: %5 %6 COMMENT=font-size:4 # font-size 4 empty comment items to add a little extra padding, looks nicer this way
@mugbaz i can see the problem. I'll look at it today. Meanwhile you can set the height in the options.
@mugbaz the problem appears to be the missing image file is confusing the height calculations. Fixed in the next release.
@glenn I omitted the image file (official logo) from the screenshot, my apologies. Here's a new one with a mockup logo. It doesn't seem to affect the end results. 3.12.0 appears to add some empty space under the image file as well.
there are two issues here: the first is the gap between the bottom of the image and the following item text, the second is cropping the last item. they are both caused by the v3.11 change to pad out the image space to full text rows so that text can be displayed beside the image. the second problem is resolved by correctly calculating the form height after the image padding is applied. the first is a little more complicated.
a text row height in pixels is determined by the font and font size. you can set font-size on the image item and see that gap change. you can add rows of display text to see how it works display:ROW ONE|ROW TWO|ROW THREE
currently, the number of rows will always be at least enough to contain the image height but there may be so many pixels more than we want because of the text height granularity.
I think the solution is to set the number of text rows to the image height minus one. This may or may not result in the text height being too little and the following item overwriting the bottom of the image but this is easily resolved by adding blank rows of text to the image item thus:
display: | | | |
@mugbaz You can also adjust the height of the image using the height option in the IMAGE item. You'll see that gap change according to how close you get to a multiple of text row pixels. eg. text row height is 14 pixels, image height is 46 pixels, therefore make the image height 3x14=42 pixels
So i've ended up doing a combination of these things:
1. Fixed the form height calculation to account for total image and image text height. (Used to assume the exact image height or one row of text.)
2. Modified the padding code: the total height will be whichever is greater of image height or image text height (but may overshoot). (Used to cap it at the image height.)
3. Added an IMAGE option called 'height-round' which can round up or down the image height to be an exact multiple of the text row height. (This removes the gap between the image and the next item.)
@glenn Thank you for the fixes! Any idea about the scaling behaviour? It seems to work in 3.10.2 with auto-scale=0 in options, but in 3.12.0 window and font scaling seems to be applied regardless of the auto-scale setting.
Pour ma part, j'utilise votre outils en mode préconfiguré mais j'ai du rester en version 3.11 car votre version 3.12 extrait le fichier ini à côté de l'exécutable.
Malheureusement, le dossier n'est pas accessible en écriture et je ne veux pas que les utilisateurs puissent aller voir la configuration.
En tout cas, votre outil est bien pratique et modulable et je vous en remercie.
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For my part, I use your tools in preconfigured mode, but I had to stay with version 3.11 because your version 3.12 extracts the ini file next to the executable.
Unfortunately, the file is not writable and I don't want users to be able to view the configuration.
In any case, your tool is very practical and modular and I thank you for it.
