some further notes: I also got to a point where Placemint wouldn't start w/o erroring out. Got a windows error. Tried reboot but it didn't help. Eventually deleted placemint folder and started from scratch (my first layout sucked anyway). If it happens again, I will contact you to send config files.

I am a fellow software developer, and would be happy to try any debug/logging versions you might want to send if we get that far.

Hi,

First of all, thanks for making a cool and handy app like this I really appriciate the fact that you share it with us for free.

One future I especially like is the hotkeys for moving windows to differt slots. Since I don't like to use my mouse when playing poker I much prefer using hotkeys over dragging the windows around. This got me thinking however. It would be very cool if I could just use hotkeys to place the windows in slots and turn off the dragging windows to slots future (perhaps even a hotkey to toggle this on and off). This would save computer resources since your tool now doesnt constantly have to monitor if a window is being moved and can instead wait for a hotkey to be pressed and then take action. It's also importent to note that when using the hotkeys in this fashion it is important to move the active window instead of the window in the slot nearest to the mouse as is the case now i believe. You could ofcourse make a checkbox in the option menu to toggle between these to behaviours for hotkeys, to keep Highstakes happy. He díd create a very nice partypoker tool, so thats important

To make myself a little more clear I'll give an example. Say I have set up 4 slots with hotkeys in this fashion:

Crl-1 | Crl-2
Crl-3 | Crl-4

I open my first table, it becomes the active window ofcourse. The window doesn't mvove yet until I pres Crl-1. Your app moves (and resizes) the window to the top left slot. I open my second window I pres Crl-2 it gets moved to the top right slot. say now I open an other table and pres Crl-2 again. It would move the third window to the top right corner and the window that is already there to the next open slot (witch would be the left bottom one), since it cannot switch slots with the window that is not in any slot yet, obviously.

Anyway I hope you like my suggestions and deside to implement them

Yours truly,
EazyDoesIt

EasyDoesIt,
I can see what your saying about the current hotkey functionality and how it doesn't work as well when you are trying to do mouse-less poker. I'll need to think some on how to improve this. This, however, is going to take a back seat to fixing whatever bug is preventing people from being able to open the program.

mtagliaf,
Check your PM box from contact info.

Anyone that is getting this generic windows error message when they try to start PlaceMint,
What OS are you using? 32 or 64 bit? I only have XP 32bit, so I might need some help if it starts looking like this might be something specific to an OS.

I wasn't able to do any work today and I doubt I'll be able to find time to work on it tomorrow. Hopefully things will slow down as the weekend gets started and I will be able to look into what is happening.

I use Windows XP Pro 32bit. I haven't been able to play Poker either so I have no error message as yet, but I will set it up today and see if I can get an error message.

I remember about a month ago a few guys were asking for a mode in the Full Tilt Shortcuts thread that was based on the most recently added window going to the back of the queue. If they got knocked out of a SNG (in the middle of the queue) they wanted the windows behind to move forward one place and the new SNG to go to last place. Not a bad idea as you know where the shorthanded action is taking place.

Thug - I still havent played with this yet, but,..

I wanted to say Thanx for TheOpener. I use it daily and tell people about it all the time. I even install/set it up for people that I do remote support for. I cant believe I used to start 6-8 scripts individually, before I found it.

Is there a thread here currently for it?? If not, you should make a new thread for it, IMO.

I don't use The Opener but have a question about it . I do use a programme to open others but it has a limitation- if I try to open an AHK like FullTiltPlanner.ahk to datamine it doesn't open the plans because they are in an .ini file, it only opens the GUI which is uselss obv. Does The Opener open those kind of AHK's properly? If so, where do I get it?

I use it to launch a ton of AHK that use associated INI files.

http://www.visitthesaint.com/software/the-opener/

This is my current setup.

Cool, thanks Fozzy.

I can replicate one "generic error" on startup. It's due to not finding the confuration files. To replicate:

- Have the exe and all config files in one folder. Make sure you have the options set to those config files.
- Close program.
- Move entire folder to a new location.
- Try running the EXE again.

Hood,
Thanks, when I have the time I'll use this when I test. This might have to do with me trying to force the working directory in PlaceMint. I put this in back when I was just storing the file names and not full paths. Something to think about when I have the time.

HighStakes & Fozzy,
Looks like my Opener thread got swallowed by the archives when the forums updated. If it's not possible to resurrect it now, I can make a new thread later so people will have a place to talk about it and not derail this thread.

No harm in starting a new "The Opener" thread, I will ask if thread transfer is possible if you'd prefer?

I was just thinking that if it stays all one thread, people are more likely to read the old post and I won't have to answer questions that have already been covered.

OK I have asked, we shall wait and see if it is possible

Uploaded a patch for v0.3 that can be downloaded from the project page.

v0.3.1 fixes a number of the bugs mentioned by Hood. It also has a fix prevent the crashes caused by attempting to read files from folders that don't exist. If you moved you PlaceMint installation after initializing the settings, the program let you know that the files could not be found instead of crashing. If you were experiencing crashes, but don't think this was why, please check out the patch and let me know if you are still experiencing crashes.

As of the v0.3.1 release, I'm going to release sample Slot Template and RegEx List files separate from the main release because they won't likely change as frequently and might have overwritten a user's changes if they were not careful when unzipping a new release.

Great thanks, I shall have a test run with the new version tomorrow.

Just wanted to add that despite my long list of bugs/wants above, I have been using the software all week and it has worked like a charm. So thanks for all the work you've put in.

No luck for me. I put the New files, along with My existing Regex, slot template, settings and two configs into the one folder, ran it and got the same 'placemint has encountered a problem' window come onto the screen for a couple of seconds and then vanished. I used the same configs that I sent you. Did they work for you on your PC? If not well I will set it up again- if they did then I guess it's something else.

HighStakes,
Sorry I got too caught up with Hood's bugs because they easier. I looked at your files today and one thing i found was that when you changed the logging level manually, you put in "trace" instead of "Trace". This was causing xml reader to fail and I wasn't catching this type of failure. I'm looking into the easiest way to change this so it is no longer case sensitive. The next patch will fix this. After I made this change, I was able to open PlaceMint successfully with your config file.

I changed it to Trace and it opened. I had it open for about two minutes and it generated an error file that is 37MB. I could only get the top peice of the error screen, it was unreponsive so I couldn't stretch it open.I uploaded them both.

Link

Yeah, Trace will write LOTS of information to the log file because it writes a little bit for every window on your desktop every time it scans. Since the default is 10 scans a second and you have lots of windows on your desktop that the user will never see, it gets big fast. You can change the logging back to "Off" for now. I've got working code that will stop the program from crashing if any of the xml files have invalid values.

I'll look into trying to recreate the crash from the link. Were you trying to read the log file when you had PlaceMint running, or did it just crash on it's own?

Right now I'm working to fix the Dragging window into 0x0 slot bug.

After I get through those two, I'll decide if the other bugs look easy enough to work on or if I should release the next patch before taking the others.

It never crashed this time, it was taking 25% of my CPU as you will see in the screen grab (bulldozer computer) and was pretty much unresponsive so I couldn't get started to see if it was working. For instance I grabbed the title bar and moved it and the window would move ten seconds later. I did manage to load my table plan- but not the poker regex so my gut feeling is that it was going to work, it's more a matter of the CPU thing now I think. No hassle on time for me, I'm stuck away from Poker ATM .

Sorry for dreailaing but I too wanted to add to the praise for TheOpener. I have used it every day for countless stuff not just poker since the day you released it. It made it's way into a software vid I made on Stox. tyty,

Now it's time tor try this mint thing.

Uploaded a new patch for v0.3 that can be downloaded from the project page.

v0.3.2 fixes a couple more of the bugs that have been mentioned here and a few I found on my own. Release notes for details.

I changed the default update frequency to 200 instead of 100. This seemed to be much better in my tests. Please make this change in the options window and let me know what you think. If it's acceptable, I can close the bug, otherwise I will look into blocking the swapping when the mouse key is down.

HighStakes,
The picture that you uploaded showed a IOexception in relation to the log file. What do you mean it didn't crash? I did try the program with logging set to Trace, and the program does lag because the desktop scans are doing a lot more work than normal. But I wasn't able to get an exception like the one in your picture. I may put in some handling for this case even if I can't reproduce it, it'll make it harder to crash PlaceMint.

Everlong,
Thanks. I actually did get around to making a new Opener thread. So far, it's nothing but praise post like yours. It's comments like these and the donations I've gotten from a few people that keep me motivated to keep working on free software products like PlaceMint and The Opener.

The last time I used it the GUI stayed up but the programme was unreponsive.

It seems like the problems were associated with having trace on. First time I've been able to have another go at it. Seems to be running fine- I'll leave it run for a while and see how it goes, if anything goes wrong I'll let you know.

I downloaded the placemint zip but it won't let me download the other two files

I'll see what I can do to make the download page bring up the save box right away, but right now you can right click on the "direct link" and click "Save link as..."