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: 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 threshold.
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.