Older readers may remember the Dos Tree command, which is still around. If you open a command prompt and type tree, then you’ll see a representation of folders and subfolders from the current directory downwards, with lines linking subfolders to parent folders.
As with most commands that output to the console, you can divert this to a file by typing, for example, tree > mytree.txt If you then open mytree.txt in Notepad, you’ll probably be in for a disappointment.
All the connecting lines will be changed to strange symbols, such as Ã. One way to change this is to use the /a switch with the tree command. You won’t get the nice neat lines, but you will get an approximation using symbols such as bar, plus, minus and backslash.
A better way to get the proper lines is to leave off the /a switch and change the Notepad font to Terminal. This is fine for viewing, but Terminal is not a printer font. If you try to print the file it will revert to a printable font complete with strange symbols.
If you’ve got any version of Microsoft Word, then there is another way. Open the file in Word you’ll need to have ‘All files’ selected in the ‘Files of type’ box. You’ll get a File Conversion dialogue asking which encoding to use select MS-Dos. Now your text file should appear, lines and all. You need to use a monospace font such as Courier or Lucida Console, otherwise the vertical lines will be disjointed, but this should happen automatically.
Jiggling with software
Further to our
previous mention of the Mouse Jiggler, a USB device that simulates random
mouse movements to prevent the screensaver starting or the PC going into
standby, reader James Clarke wrote that some years ago he wrote a program that
did much the same thing. Burnout can be configured to start when another
program, such as a CD burner, is run. And although it was written in 1999, it
seems to work fine on XP. You’ll find it at
www.jhc-software.com/burnout.htm.
Yet more metadata
In September’s column, we also mentioned finding metadata such as the camera
model and date taken for digital photos using Windows Desktop Search. In last
month’s Question Time we saw how to edit metadata to add the title and comments
to the pop-up info tip for an image file. This month we continue on this theme
with a free tool from Microsoft. Although you can edit the metadata of, say, a
JPG or TIFF file in XP by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties, the
capabilities are limited. Vista offers rather more, including a star rating
system for photos, videos and music.
The good news is that both XP and Vista users can download Microsoft Photo Info, released earlier this year, and edit metadata that the normal file properties can’t reach.
You can add all sorts of data, such as the location, city, and country where the photo was taken, a star rating and add a copyright notice. You can do this individually or with a bunch of images, so you could add your copyright details to a folder full of pictures. In XP it needs .Net Framework 2.0 or later. In Vista .Net 3.0 is already present, and some of the extra metadata, such as the star rating, is already accessible.
Beware, however, of working with Raw files or the software that came with your camera, as Microsoft warns that ‘the third-party software included with the digital camera may no longer recognise some proprietary metadata’.
The dark arts
The first time it happened it was something of a shock. I went to open a command
prompt and the Vista screen went completely dark. Just as I was thinking
‘Powercut? Crash? Data loss?’, the screen came back, albeit dimly, with a
message saying that Windows needed my permission to continue.
We’ll come back to the philosophical implications of that later, but the second time it happened there was still that blank panic moment. Activating Windows produced another brief blackout and it’s still catching me out. Microsoft has obviously devoted considerable psychological research into how to give users a momentary panic attack without causing any permanent (and litigable) harm.
