Windows Installer for Christoph's Folding Stats Sig Generator

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

F@H Team 32 Stats Sig Generator for Windows 0.1.2 (beta)
This project is still in the development & testing phase. Any suggestions, comments, or testing would be appreciated.
3/10/05: Small update, "Gbye" line now comes blank by default, included updated mksig (uploader) to bundle.

Download Installer (281KB) 3/10/05
Manual Install, Perl Scripts (37KB) 3/10/05

Tada! All the files that you need to make your online signature here on the forums. Install, run, and follow the onscreen instructions.

This brings Christoph's hard working perl scripts to the Windows domain in a fast and easy manner. The Graphical User Interface, gui.pl, is meant to make editing of the signature easy. Colors, stats, and WU progress can be shown with a couple clicks and an upload.

ActivePerl is required to run Perl scripts in the Windows environment (version 5.8.6.811 or greater is required for this application.) You can download this from ActiveState, free of charge.

The signature editor:

With the settings above, it produces this signature (though customizing is easy):

Build!.Borg!.Recruit!.Folding.for.Team.32!
My Folding Stats:____Currently Monitored WUs:
score:______28611____{§¤´²¨ª‰•_________}_50%: p1315_1fnt_a4_9.1ps-1_uf
Pts Per Day:__478____
Pts 7 Days:_3,344____
Clients:________6____
Work Units:___241____
Team 32 Rank:_501 (+24.in.7.days)____

Please Note: There is a sticky at the top of these forums for Christoph's work. That thread should be used to ask any questions about the project. Christoph will maintain the bulk of the information necessary for mksig and it's applications, as well as numerous other sig_gen versions (e.g. SETI).

THIS THREAD is for the maintenance of the customized sig_gen, GUI and installer I made for the project, as well as an FAQ. If there's anything new, I'll post in the sticky, not here.

FAQ Table of Contents

Installation & Running

How do I install the Sig Generator? Can it be uninstalled?
[*]How do I get Perl for Windows?
[*]How do I run the Sig Generator? How do I upload my sig to the forums? Is the GUI necessary to upload?

Name, ID, Path

What is my EOC #ID?
[*]What does the "Validate" button below my name and ID do?
[*]What are the "Dir" fields for?

Greeting Line, Progress Bar, %Indicator, WU Name

Why are there two colors for these things?
[*]What are "chars" and "length" under progress bar?

Colors, Stats & Variables

How do I change colors?
[*]What do all the different stat variables mean?
[*]Can I save/Load my customization?

Spacing

Can I change the spacing?
[*]What does "Left Width" and "Column" do?

Misc Questions

Why are some of the features disabled?
[*]Can I show less than 6 stats?
[*]How do make my own customized signature?

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

Installation and Running

Installation via SigGenerator-v0.1.1.zip

First, you need ActivePerl. Quoting BeerCan from Christoph's sticky:

BeerCan said:
You need to download a win32 version of perl. You can find [version 5.8.6.811 or greater!] here. I downloaded the msi version but your preference may vary. The AS Package doesn't provide any uninstall functionality, and ActiveState recommends it only if you can't use the MSI installer. Install using all of the defaults. It will create a directory c:\Perl and automatically install all necessary files there. It will also create your program groups and associate all perl extensions with perl.exe.

Next, Download the Sig Generator zip file, open it and read TEAM32.nfo.

Then extract and run SigGenerator-v0.1.1.exe. That will bring up the installation dialog.

Read this! Again, download ActivePerl if you haven't already! Click "Next" to continue.

Choose your desired installation path, then click "Next" to continue.

If you don't want anything in your start menu, check "Don't create a Start Menu folder". Click "Next" to continue.

It is recommended that you have the desktop icons installed, for easy access to the Sig Generator. If you uncheck "Create a desktop icon", then you will have to manually navigate to your installation directory everytime you want to run the Sig Generator. Click "Next" to continue.

Confirm your preferences, then click "Next" to continue.

This won't make sense to you until you actually run the Sig Generator (gui.pl) script, but read it over slightly and click "Next" to continue.

Congrats! Installation is complete! Click "Finish" to close the installer.

To run Sig Generator, double click the desktop icon (if you created one), click on the Start Menu icon (if you created one), or navigate to :\Program Files\Sig Generator and double click "gui.pl".

Installation via Manual Install, SigGenerator-v0.1.1-manual.zip

Download the zip file and extract its contents to folder such as C:\mksig. To run Sig Generator, double click the gui.pl in Windows Explorer, or use the commandline (Start > Run > type "cmd" > navigate to the directory > type "gui.pl".)

Uploading Signature to Forums

Click the Sig Uploader icon on your desktop or Start Menu to upload your new signature. If you have not run Sig Generator yet, a default signature will be created for you. To create a colorized custom signature, you'll need to run Sig Generator.

Uninstalling Sig Generator

Go to Add/Remove Programs, or navigate to the installation directory (default C:\Program Files\Sig Generator) and double click unins000.exe to uninstall Sig Generator.

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

Name, EOC ID, FAH Paths

Your Name is your folding name, according to Stanford.

EOC ID is your extremeoverclock.com ID#. If you visit my (JerMe's) user summary page at http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=5414, you'll notice $u=5414 in the last part of the URL. That is my EOC ID# (5414). You will have to enter your own name and EOC ID# to have the stats work correctly.

The "Validate" button checks with the EOC database to see if your Name and ID exist.

Your FAH Paths are the directories or network locations that hold unitinfo.txt. These are used to show the progress bars and WU information. If you are running one instance of FAH, your unitinfo.txt file is most likely in C:\Program Files\FAH.
In the GUI, Click the "Browse..." button next to Dir1...

then browse to unitinfo.txt of your FAH directory. Double click the unitinfo.txt that you want to show the progress and WU name in your sig. You may enter up to 5 different directories or network locations, in any order that you'd like.

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

Creating your Own Customized Signature

For the time being, see this link: http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=3436436&postcount=241

That was the old way of creating the sig, before the GUI was coded.

A more in-depth tutorial is coming.

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

*reserved, just in case I come back to this in the future*

yanz · Mar 4, 2005

impressive!

dicecca112 · Mar 4, 2005

this goes right on my duallie with no hassle once it starts running again.

dark_15 · Mar 4, 2005

Did you reserve enough spaces?

Excellent work!!! I may be trying this out on a spare rig of mine soon enough!

Fathead · Mar 4, 2005

wow very nice

samuraisam · Mar 4, 2005

Wow! That's awesome! Great work!

-Sam

Leviathan41 · Mar 4, 2005

Excellent job! We'll put this on the team website.

TollhouseFrank · Mar 4, 2005

yah.... i remember trying to figure out and finally getting the perl-script figured out for the do-it-yourself thing... but wow.. that's great to have an installer

TollhouseFrank · Mar 4, 2005

only problem is..... when i reinstalled windows.... (WILL NOT REINSTALL WINDOWS JUST TO FIX THE FOLLOWING PROBLEM)..... It designated my windows drive as Drive "F". Uhm... the .exe you all made doesn't work then for me. guess i gotta do it the old way. (it wasn't to hard to do the other way...)

**edit** can't make it work either way. Could whoever wrote the exe let us choose the DRIVE LETTER to install it to? I can't install it otherwise.

samuraisam · Mar 4, 2005

What did you program it in? C?

-Sam

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

TollhouseFrank said:
only problem is..... when i reinstalled windows.... (WILL NOT REINSTALL WINDOWS JUST TO FIX THE FOLLOWING PROBLEM)..... It designated my windows drive as Drive "F". Uhm... the .exe you all made doesn't work then for me. guess i gotta do it the old way. (it wasn't to hard to do the other way...)

**edit** can't make it work either way. Could whoever wrote the exe let us choose the DRIVE LETTER to install it to? I can't install it otherwise.

All the files are perl scripts. I scripted the Windows installer to specifically write to "c:\mksig" directory and restrict changes to the installation path, because the perl scripts are hardcoded to "c:\mksig". I'll talk to Christoph to work out a clean way to have the scripts detect the Windows root drive silently, otherwise it'll have to be a user input thing again. Thanks for bringing it up though, I forgot about that.

Ven0m · Mar 4, 2005

JerMe said:
All the files are perl scripts. I scripted the Windows installer to specifically write to "c:\mksig" directory and restrict changes to the installation path, because the perl scripts are hardcoded to "c:\mksig". I'll talk to Christoph to work out a clean way to have the scripts detect the Windows root drive silently, otherwise it'll have to be a user input thing again. Thanks for bringing it up though, I forgot about that.

The best would be probably Program Files with possibility of changing it. I don't know Perl and what you've used for making installer, but .Net installers are pretty easy to handle. They don't show greater problems with installing program to various places, editing registry or preconfiguring programs. I think that most installers should allow that. If that installer is in Perl, and it has to be flexible, it should still be able to find system dir I guess...

JerMe · Mar 4, 2005

Ven0m said:
The best would be probably Program Files with possibility of changing it. I don't know Perl and what you've used for making installer, but .Net installers are pretty easy to handle. They don't show greater problems with installing program to various places, editing registry or preconfiguring programs. I think that most installers should allow that. If that installer is in Perl, and it has to be flexible, it should still be able to find system dir I guess...

It's a Windows Installer... hence, "Windows Installer"

I intentionally disabled the directory choosing because both Christoph's mksig script and my gui script were hard-coded to "c:\mksig". [insert reference to Murphy's Law here.] Different drive letters weren't taken into account at the time of creating the scripts, especially since whoever wanted to use the scripts before could just do a simple edit to make it work, and especially because when he made mksig, Christoph didn't predict that I would build a GUI and distribute everything with an installer

Nevertheless, I'll have gui.pl do relative path references and search for system root. Then, as long as the three perl scripts live in the same directory, everything should be a-ok. My guess is that Christoph will do the same or better with mksig, I'll run it by him.

Thanks for the feedback y'all. It's helping a lot, keep it comin'.

Sentential · Mar 4, 2005

Somone pm a mod to sticky this

TollhouseFrank · Mar 5, 2005

yah... would be good to sticky this... I Second It.

I went through the Perlscript line by line... and couldn't figure out where it wrote to the C: Drive at... but if someone else can help me with this... so i can redirect it to F: Drive (where unfortunately, Windows Decided to Default Itself)

SatanSkin · Mar 5, 2005

Where's the gui?

Windows Installer for Christoph's Folding Stats Sig Generator

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