Direct Connect: Just These Guys, Ya Know?

Language change

Have you ever been in the middle of writing a text and suddenly incorrect characters appear instead of the standard ones? You might just then have hit Windows’ shortcut keys for language change.

The standard keys are Alt+Shift and they are application specific (that is, you can enable it in one application without it affecting another one). You can see here for a nice tutorial on how to disable it.

Ignoring TTH

There is a way to see what people are searching for. It’s called the ‘Search spy’. There, what people search for is displayed, if the searches correspond to what’s in your current share and some other minor things.

What you will see (unless you are in a hub that doesn’t very much like clients that have TTH) is a lot of “TTH:” followed by an obscure string of characters and numbers. These are (as you might have guessed) files searched for by their TTH. And most likely, an automated search.

To avoid seeing all the gibberish, because that’s what is it considering you can’t decipher the TTH to a file name, you can select ‘Ignore TTH searches’. What this option does is that it doesn’t display TTH searches in the window. That is, it’s only a graphical thing. You will still respond to TTH searches (which you of course should).

“But when I click that option, the “TTH:”s doesn’t go away!” Well, no, they don’t. That is because they’re already displayed in the window. The option will not display future TTH searches.

Daylight savings

Every time daylight saving occur, there’s someone who posts about that DC++ re-hashes all files.

I’m sorry there hasn’t been a fix for this, but the fix isn’t trivial (atleast to those who have looked at code). If the fix would’ve been trivial, it would’ve been done. There’s one thing that you can do and you’ll never have to worry about it; Upgrade your drives’ file systems to NTFS. According to a current forum post (I’ll refrain from posting it, posts get purged after 2 weeks), there’s problems involved in upgrading the drive to NTFS. (I’ve never heard of them or experienced them.)

So, what to do if you really don’t want to upgrade? Well, ‘lordadmira’ has written a Perl script that fixes the symptoms. Note; It will not fix the actual problem (which is that the file system is FAT). I have not used the script, nor do I know how well it works, but I thought it’d be best to bring it into light. (I find the scripting solution very ugly.)

It works by reading in each line from HashIndex.xml and adding or subtracting 3600 from the timestamp field of files on the drives in question. It checks for HashIndex.xml and HashData.dat in the current directory. Checks for the presence of backup files and won’t overwrite them; it makes backups so the old xml’s can be restored. Checks to see if DC++ is running and won’t run if it is. Checks for valid command line arguments. Checks for sufficient free space to write the new file and make backups.

DCDev public

You can now find me on the DC hub dcdev.no-ip.org:16591. It’s supposed to be a replacement of the old (and public) DC development hub. There’s no particular rule, other than ‘behave’. And oh, you won’t be able to download or search.

Hublists

A lot of people have been asking about why the hublist is showing so few hubs. By hublist, they are talking about hublist.org‘s hublist.

While many think this is a bug, it is actually not. It’s actually an intended feature.

for 2x 10 minute every hour it will show a list with only hubs under 500 users

Now, of course, this only affect those who use hublist.org’s hublist. There are other hublists that you may try out if you really don’t want to use hublist.org.

Up, up and Icon away!

Ever wondered how cute all the icons for DC++ are? Ever wondered how you could *ever* get them? Okey, you’ve always hated the icons and you wouldn’t even consider touching the icons if you had to choose between death or getting the icons. That’s fine, and all.

Anyway… There are two ways to get them; (1) Go here and klick on one of the icon names and then click on ‘Download’. Or, (2), go here and download the source (latest version would probably be best). Look in the res/ directory, and you’ll find them.

RGB is after you!

There are quite a few colors present in DC++, even if you don’t pay attention to them. You can’t actually change some of them.

All of the RGB (Red Green Blue) values can be inputted here to see their colors. (Blogspot doesn’t allow me to easily show them.)

Those you can change:
Download bar: RGB(55, 170, 85) (this is only present if you have enabled ‘Show progress bars for transfers’) (this color is also what appears in ‘Network statistics’… It is not depended on the option)
Upload bar: RGB(205, 60, 55) (this is only present if you have enabled ‘Show progress bars for transfers’) (this color is also what appears in ‘Network statistics’… It is not depended on the option)
Standard background color: RGB(255, 255, 255)

Now to those you can’t change… There are actually three different colors involved in each tab. There’s a border color, a background color and a text color.

The background color is always RGB(128, 128, 128) and the text color is always RGB(0, 0, 0) (sometimes going bold – if you have enabled it for that kind of tab). What is changed is always the border color (which is what the following colors change).

If a user is online, and you have a private message window open with him/her, the color will be RGB(0, 255, 255) and if the user is offline, the color is RGB(255, 0, 0).
If you are connected (not “disconnected” or any other error message) to a hub, the color is RGB(0, 255, 0). Otherwise, the color will be RGB(255, 0, 0).
File lists have RGB(255, 0, 255).

When going through the source finding these values, I came across RGB(127, 127, 255) which apparantly can be found in the search frame. Though, I couldn’t figure out when the color is triggered and I have honestly never seen that color in DC++.

Commanding the keyboard

Most of the keyboard commands are documented in the help file, but not all of them. The reason not all are documented is because I didn’t add them when I created the file. Well, and the fact that some things has been added/removed since I created it and no one ever bothers updating the help file.

You can see a few of the commands at the bottom of this page. I’m sure you can find out when you use CTRL or ALT…

And have a look at the Coding Horror blog; (Very) Basic Textbox Keyboard Shortcuts. Most of what’s posted there is possible within DC++. Not everything, mind you.

The keyboard commands I frequently use are; CTRL+D (open download queue), CTRL+S (open a new search window), +/- in the download queue to control priority, CTRL and +, CTRL+F (open favorite hubs window), CTRL+Q (quick connect), Shift+Home/End to mark text and of course the standard CTRL+X/C/V to cut/copy/paste text.

ConTRoLling and ALTering the status bar

While you may have been a solid DC++ user, used DC++ for several years, been operator in a few DC hubs and know some of the internals (hopefully gotten some of that knowledge from here), there are still times where you may experience something totally new.

Last night, BSOD2600 (the maintainer of the DC++ FAQ) was having trouble with the status bar not showing. The status bar, being the little bar that says “H: x/y/z Slots: 1/1 D: 2 MiB” etcetera.

Why was the status bar not showing? A bug? No. It was no bug. It’s actually a known behaviour – if you enable it that is. If you look in the View menu, you can see at the bottom; “Toolbar”, “Status bar” and “Transfers”. (With Ctrl+1/2/3 assigned next to them.) If you press “Status bar” (or the shortcut Ctrl+2) that little bar below will disappear. And re-appear if you do the procedure again. (Which BSOD2600 found out a minute later or so.)

Before I begun submitting patches, I hung out at the Public Development hub (down for the moment – unknown when/if it will go up). The first question I had there was about the status bar. Not it being visible or not with Ctrl+2. But the actual text being visible or not. You can see what I’m talking about if you press Alt. The text should disappear and ‘File’ in the menu should be marked. I found out that this behaviour is not DC++ specific in any way. It’s a feature that Windows have. You can try it yourself, press Alt in Windows Explorer. While there’s a small text in Windows Explorer when I do this, and in DC++ there is not, is irrelevant (although it would’ve been nice if there were [I am NOT going to do anything about it]).