PlaceMint is a tool that will allow you to arrange windows into defined slots based on window title. Slots are configurable by the user to ensure the windows are position to each users specific needs. There is also the ability to drag and drop a window over to a different slot and have the windows swap slots. (If you used the program Poker Aide in the past, you will be able to use PlaceMint with ease.)
[IMG]http://****************/dbimage.php?id=179693[/IMG]

Download the program from the project page on SourceForge.

This release is the first public beta. I can answer some questions in this thread, however if you can report things in the project forums and bug tracker it will mean I am less likely to miss an issue. If you need some help setting up the program, there is documentation in the wiki section.

I hope you all enjoy the program and find it helpful.

Looks good, downloading now!

Wow, very nice IrishThug, will definitely be using. A suggestion if I may that I had a go at once before- join a hotkey to a 'host slot' and then the hotkey when pressed makes the window that the mouse is under switch places with the window in the host slot.

any chance you will be posting the source code?

You mean like http://placemint.svn.****************/viewvc/placemint/ ?

█████ is right, I specifically made it a project on sourceforge so that if i disappear somewhere (like with PokerAide), the program can still exist if someone else picks up the development. At some point might consider making a source zip file, but right now my focus is on fixing bugs (and maybe adding features) that come in. As of right now, I haven't changed anything in the trunk, so the download can be built off the trunks head. When I start changing things, you want the source used in the v.02 beta, you can grab revision 140 with a subversion client.

HighSteaks,
Can you clarify exactly what you are requesting? Are you thinking something like slots 1-10 are assigned hotkeys 0-9, and pressing the number would send the window under the mouse to the specified slot? Would you want this to only work with windows that are already assigned to a slot or be a way to switch an unassigned window with the window assigned to the host slot? The only issues I see with something like this is if you have more than one group, you would need a way to differentiate between hotkeys for group 1 and 2. I could see this being worked around by making the hotkeys user defined and it would be your responsibility to make sure there is no overlap. You also might have to get creative with your hotkeys if you have more than 10 slots per group.

I would only use two keys in my case and I 8 table. I set up Placemint like below(24 inch monitor). So what I do is use the 6 smaller windows to fold and when I get in a hand I drag the table to one of the two large slots replacing what was there. So I would want one key for A and one for B to exchange any of the 6 smaller tables by placing the mouse over it and hitting the hotkey.

Ok, I see what you are trying to do. I'll look into seeing how I could make that work and let you know when I have something.

v0.3 is now available for download via the PlaceMint project page.

This new release has the feature HighSteaks suggested, being able to swap windows based on a hotkey and the mouse location.

If you are using the supplied Slot Template or Regex list files and have made changes to them: The release has these files in their original form, so be careful not to overwrite your changes.

I hope that silence in this thread means that no one is finding bugs and is happy with the program.

Wooow, incredible. I've always used Xanderz table rotation script to play SNG's on FTP but it's no good for a HUD with all those tables flying all over the place- a HUD will handle only two tables moving around pretty easily. Will try tonight and give TR, thanks bro

Please do, and provide instructions as to how to use this, cuz I got no clue. Do you use any other scripts such as stars planner??

I keep getting a message:

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.

Details:

See the end of this message for details on invoking just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************Exception Text**************
System.ArgumentOutofRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.

Parameter name: index
at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutofRangeExceptio n(ExceptionArgument argument, ExceptionResource resource)

But if I can get this to work, I'll be extremely psyched as it may save me about $2,000 by not getting a new computer w/30" monitor. Then again, even if I get the 30" and everything, I'll still use this program if I can get it to work.

Nice avatar.

This is #%$^ incredible. Got it humming nicely. Nope, no other script needed, it does everything. Setting up takes patience, not because it's not well done, on the contrary, it's just a pretty comprehensive programme and takes a moment to get to know. Load the 'regexeg list_poker' at first- put the path to that in the second edit box under-tools options. That is a list of words that your site has on it's windows. Design your plan on paper, then decide how many different size windows you will need, make a template for each size, or alternatively do one and then clone it as you go along.

Start by giving it a title- like stars sng's or whatever and open the dropdown 'regular expression' and select your category, then go into slots. So if you look at that design I did above as an example, I use two hotkeys. Read the discussion we had and you will work out why that plan uses two. First go, tick 'show' when you make a new window- it makes it easier, Lay out your windows. They are resizeable like poker tables. Once you like your plan, pick your 'major' or larger windows, put the cursor in the hotkey box for one of them and hit which key you want that window to use- the same for your other major window/s. Hit 'save as' and give that plan a name. Then hit file-load and pick the layout- you might need to restart for it to catch. You'll get the hang of it- as you do you can put your lobbies, holdem manager and everything else into your design.

If you're looking for ideas I've been using it like this (dragging) so I've added my hotkeys like above. I've got those for a 24 inch if anyone wants them. You could easily make the side colums four each side on the 8 table layout and 10 table like that, fits nicely, I just can't play that many .

/End TR.

I will try to toy with it this week, and let you know how it goes. Thx

HighStakes,
that's a good description of how to set up PlaceMint. If anyone needs a little more help, I wrote some How To's on the PlaceMint wiki.

fozzy71,
If you have anymore questions about setting up a configuration, ask and I can answer them.

GiantBuddha,
What were you doing when the exception occurred? Can you easily reproduce it? There should also be a way to view the Stack Trace when an exception occurs. You may have to click on something like "Details" to see it. If you can do this for me, it should help me figure out what is causing the problem.

So I saw this thread this morning which got me thinking about your neat little program again. Unfortunately when I first tried it, I quickly hit a showstopper problem: whenever it tried to move my OnGame tables, it would throw an exception (failure on API call to SetWindowPos). I put this down to the funky ongame software and moved on.

But today whilst I was playing and I saw this thread, out of nowhere two brilliant thoughts struck:

- OnGame loads up under vispa administrator account. I ran placemint as standard user. That's probably why the API call to move the window was failing.

- PlaceMint was a play on words of "Placement"

So, still chuckling with the punnary of the title, I fired up placemint again, this time under admin control and Hurrah! Finally an ordered poker experience. Many thanks.

Here is my trip report of bugs and wishlists from 1 hour of playing around. It's a long list because you wanted feedback, but really the software works just great for what I need right now.

Bugs:

- If you have "size" unselected, then dragging windows around to new slots is a bit hit and miss. With an empty slot at 0,0, for example, it's impossible to drag a window in to the slot.

- Generally dragging is a little flickery for me, as it tries to jump to a new slot whilst simultaniously jumping back to where I'm holding the window. Perhaps a better system would be to temporarily disable and slot-jumping whilst I'm dragging the window (mousebutton down), then on mouse-up it jumps to the new slot.

- In the list of windows in slots, the window name doesn't update. I have a regex "^(Tournament: |Connecting)" for ongame, that will capture a tourney window the second it pops up (window name "Connection to table balh blah"), and will continue to be "captured" when the game starts (window name changes to "Tournament: blahblah"). However in the window list, it is still called the old name.

- The text on the icon in the taskbar reads "taskBarIcon"

- It seems like all slots need a hotkey, otherwise you get "Hotkey is repeated" warning messages. It should ignore any hotkeys set as "none" - the default.

- I got some whack problems if 2 slots are identical in position, with windows constantly jumping around. This is a common issue - not just a donk user error - because you've got the clone too there. Also the issue is confused with....

- the fact that some changes to "configure" are automatic - the changes are reflected before clicking on "save". This caused big headaches with the problem as above, and playing around regexes etc.


And here's my short wishlist:

- Way to disable/enable placemint without actually closing the program. Would be good to do this from the context menu from taskbaricon. Enable/disable state remembered on shutdown/startup of prgram. That means I can temporarily disable things for a few minutes. Also means I can set the program to launch on windows startup.

- Way to have multiple profiles - i.e. multiple window layouts - that can be easily switched between from the main menu and right-click context menu on taskbaricon. Really this could be as simple as "recently opened config files", or more complex (I can see all profile trees from the main menu). It would allow to quickly switch between, say, "6-tabling poker" profile, and "internet browsing whilst 2-tabling" profile, text.

- In the same vein as "minimize" on groups (this option really means "allow the window to minimize", right?), would be an "allow maximise" too.

- Option to "cascade" slots. That's a bad term. Really I mean, say slot 2 becomes open, slot 3 moves to slot 2, slot 4 moves to slot 3, and the next window that comes along takes slot 4.

Bugs:
I can see what you are saying about this. Right now the swapping is done the distance between the center of the window that was moved and the center of all the slots, and then picking the slot with the smallest distance. This means the center of a 0x0 slot would actually be the same as the location. I'll have to think on how to approach this, but for now, just define a size even if you don't plan on using it to resize the window.

That is a good idea to use as a fix, I'll look into it. For now you can increase the update frequency under Options to decrease the jumping.

You are right, these names should be updated instead of keeping the initial window name.

Ok, this is an easy fix.

Simple fix, I should only be checking a slot against a duplicate list if the hotkey is set.

I can add some validation to the configuration window that will stop you from placing two slots in the same place within the same group.

Your running setup should not be affected by changes you make until you click save and close the configuration window. I did noticed this the other day, but it stopped happening when I was trying to track down the cause. I saw this happening with the slot's location, do you know other properties that you have seen reflected in your running configuration while you are making edits?

Wish List:
Wouldn't be too hard to implement. If had PlaceMint running and paused it, would you still want the main window to retain the tree view of slots so you can interact with the windows? It'd be easier for me if I could just clear it and not have to worry about a window closing when I am no longer actively scanning.

You can do this now. When you are in the configuration window, click Save As instead of Save. This will allow you to make as many configurations as you need. Then when you want to switch, click File > Load and you can select one of the configuration files you made. When PlaceMint starts it will load your most recently used configuration file. (You can also change this under Options, but I'll have to check to see if this loads a the new configuration file or if it just sets which file should be used on next start.)

I'll have to look into it, but it would probably work. That being said, if Size is set, you are essentially disallowing maximize. However allowing a window switch between maximized and sized, without it changing slots, might be useful.

You are right, cascade is a bad term because it's already used for something else. That being said, what you described does seem like it would be a useful feature.


Depending on how busy this weekend ends up being, I might be able to get a patch out in a couple of days to correct some of the simple fixes I mentioned. With the easy ones cleaned up, I can then look into the harder bugs and what features to add first.

i really want to try this, but it's not intuitive to set up at all. First thing I did was unzip the 4 files into a folder, and run the EXE. Then I clicked "Tools, Configure". I got an error message:

"Placemint_slotTemplateList.xml was not found, therefore the slot Template list could not be initialized for the sample slots".

Huh?

If anyone has created some data files to run 6-8 fulltilt tables, I'll gladly take them. Alternately, someone can write a step by step guide to getting paste the error/warning messages and getting a "Hello World" example setup going with 2 notepad windows or somesuch.

This looks like an amazing tool.

nevermind, accept my apologies. I tried this right after walking in the door from work, and I was tired. Now I've taken a little snooze and I think I've gotten it going. Will report once I get it set up...

mtagliaf,
Those file not found messages are more like warnings than show-stopping errors. The default file names for the Slot Template and RegEx lists are not the file names of the included Poker files because if some one wants to use PlaceMint for something other than poker, loading in those file initially won't be useful for them.

For any one still needing a better idea of how to setup a configuration, please read:
How to configure window groups?

I really want to use this software. I've spent the better part of 45 minutes trying to figure out how to get it to work. I made all these sample windows and whatever but I cant get it just stop flickering like crazy and not work. I know Im ******ed, but I just want to have a setup like highstakes has pictured above. Help me obi wan.

I'm guessing you haven't put the Poker regular expression list in or changed it to the site you are playing on - I explained how to Fozzy at first in the above post.

IrishThug, I can't get Placemint open at all today (well I only used it once yesterday and then it wouldn't open)- Windows error, Placemint needs to close, sorry for the inconvenience etc. I am going to install it again but I will keep the old one and the config's in a folder- if you want me to upload the whole lot I'll put it on mediafire or something.

HighStakes,
Check your PM box for instruction on getting me some of you config files so i can test them.