Post Build Aggravation on Vista

I really like a lot of things about Vista, and I know when I really start to understand it I will be singing the praises of this new OS. In the mean time I am just completely frustrated. My latest rant happened when I was trying to get my post build events working in Visual Studio. In the past I had always kept a "Projects" folder in the root that contained every project I was currently working on. When I moved to VS 2005 full time I decided to start keeping my new projects in the Visual Studio 2005\Projects directory. This seemed to work fine and even made backups easier as everything I did was now contained under "My Documents". Last week I moved to Vista and as I started getting back into some coding this week I spent a good day pulling my hair out over something really dumb.

I noticed that my post build events were no longer executing, and of course causing my build to fail. The post build events are a must because I was debugging some assemblies in our new Capture product that are late bound. I spent the first couple hours trying to figure out what had changed in my events (shown below).

copy $(TargetPath) "..\..\..\..\Application\bin\debug\Plugins\Win\$(TargetFileName)" /Y

copy $(TargetDir)$(TargetName).pdb "..\..\..\..\Application\bin\debug\Plugins\Win\$(TargetName).pdb" /y

This all seemed simple enough and worked fine with XP, but why did I now error with an exit code of 0? I changed the target directories to something very simple, like c:\temp and still no luck… exit code 0. The error messages were showing the full paths showing me that the directories seemed fine.

c:\users\chris.caplinger\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\KnowledgeLake\Capture\4.0\KnowledgeLake.Capture.Win

I took the commands being executed from the error message and decided to simply drop them into a command line window, and of course the copy failed. This made no sense as the directories were correct. I changed to the source directory and tried it again and Wham!, it worked. I have no idea on why this behavior is happening and figure it's probably a bug or a feature I could live without. After some more experiments I determined that the "c:\user" path is screwing everything up. Maybe this has something to with the new shadow folder since this used be "c:\documents and settings". I have just come to the realization for now that you can't copy stuff from paths in the "User" folder on the command line unless you are in that specific directory. And even then you won't be able to copy to other folders under "User".

The only fix I could come up with was to move all my projects back to "c:\projects", which resolved the problem and got me back on my way. Hopefully you get to read this before you spend several hours in frustration.

Chris

Vista Scanning Frustrations

This is more of a plea than a post. If anyone knows how to make legacy TWAIN and WIA devices work with Windows Vista please drop me a line and let me know. I did a fresh installation of Vista Ultimate and have not succeeded in getting any of my three scanners working. I made the not so intelligent assumption that Windows XP driver "should" work in most cases.

Chris

Snipping Tool in Vista

I made the plunge yesterday into Windows Vista Ultimate. I can't believe how different the UI is. I have found some things I like and hate and I'll blog about them some other day, but if you haven't upgraded yet you may not know that Vista contains an application called Snipping Tool. This is basically a SnagIt type tool that simply allows Free Form, Window, Rectangle and Screen snippets to be captured. I'm sure TechSmith isn't too thrilled about Microsoft including this feature in Vista. At this point I'm not sure whether or not I'll even install SnagIt, as the Snipping Tool is very easy to use. I just dropped in my quick launch where it can be launched easily and when you're done it shuts down so it doesn't eat up system resources.

Have a good weekend,

Chris

KnowledgeLake 2007 Beta Program is on the way…

For those of you who may be interested in beta testing our 2007 software products, we have good news. It looks like the program will kick off on December 11th. We will have a free training/overview class that day. We will have several different ways to participate in the beta, and more information will be available late this week.

What happened to Imaging for Windows

Doing some research for a project this morning, I got completely side tracked and started down the path of the history of Document Imaging inside the Windows platform. This topic is of obvious interest to me because I really feel KnowledgeLake is the new "Imaging for Windows", but in the form of "Document Imaging for SharePoint".

The Beginning

Sigma Imaging Systems was founded in 1988 and developed a Document Imaging and Workflow solution for MS-DOS. Sigma formed a partnership with Unisys in late 1989 that allowed Unisys to OEM the technology into a product called InfoImage. Unisys continued selling its UNIX based InfoImage, based off pieces of both internally developed code and FileNet code. Sigma maintained a separate code base for their product and InfoImage, which continued up until 1999.

Windows 95 and Wang

In April of 1995, Wang Laboratories formed an agreement with Microsoft to supply workflow and imaging capabilities to for Windows NT and Windows 95. Wang purchased Sigma Imaging Systems in July of 1995 for $20 million in order to fulfill this agreement. Sigma's product was renamed Imaging for Windows when released with the new operating systems. In exchange for being allowed to package the software Microsoft purchased $90 million in stock from Wang (or invested depending on how you look at it), as well as allowed Wang to advertise and sell upgrades to Imaging for Windows. Included with Windows 95 was the ability to scan using TWAIN devices, view, annotate and print TIFF, BMP, AWD (Microsoft Fax) documents. The viewer would also show and print JPEG and PCX/DCX images. Microsoft still maintains a web page on Imaging for Windows at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=140980.

Kodak Purchases Wang

In 1997, Wang sold its Imaging division to Kodak for $260 million (no clue on how much Microsoft still owned of Wang) and formed the Eastman Software subsidiary.

Windows 98/2000

The Imaging for Windows software was basically repackaged for as a Kodak product for Windows 98, with no change in functionality. The product did get upgraded to 2.0 at some point, but it was basically the same product.

Unisys Agreement Ends

Depending on who you talk to you'll hear different stories here, but Eastman Software and Unisys terminated their agreement in early 1999. Eastman claimed it needed to stop supporting the InfoImage code in order enhance its workflow product, while Unisys said they did it to obtain the rights to source code and allow them to independently market their product.

Kodak spins off Eastman Software

Kodak spun off Eastman Software in August of 2000 and was renamed eiStream soon afterwards. Sometime during this transaction the agreement was broken with Microsoft to allow the Imaging for Windows software to continue being packaged with the Windows OS. In 2005 eiStream changed their name to Global360 and competes globally in the ECM space. Global360 still sells Imaging for Windows today worldwide with just minor upgrades from the product that was shipped with Windows 2000.

Microsoft releases Office 2003 with MODI

Microsoft contracted with Nuance, then known as ScanSoft, to create Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) for release with Office 2003. Not taking this market serious at all, I believe Microsoft really missed with this product. Although it still has most of the features of Imaging for Windows, it does not support the old Wang format for annotations within TIFF files, which makes it incompatible with the older files. It also uses a new format called MDI by default instead of TIFF. TIFF is still supported, but the annotations are a new format. The MODI software is part of the Office 2007 product with virtually no changes except for a version 12 stamp.

I think that's enough for now without diving into our product. Have a good weekend,

Chris