ITauthor

Microsoft have moved the home page for Windows SFU into their TechNet site at: www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/unix/sfu/default.mspx The other important destination for SFU is Interop Systems, which is still at: www.interix.com

What is SFU?

Check out these pages:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Services_for_UNIX
• http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024175,39150908,00.htm
• www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,1434520,00.asp

I've tweaked the script in my previous posting. The method described previously left a command console open displaying the files that had been deleted. This worked OK, but wasn't terribly smart because I'm not in the office every day, and the program didn't exit until I'd closed the console window.

A better way is to get the script to email the list of which files had been deleted. This is what the following script does. It also dispenses with the need for a batch file. The Windows scheduled task can then call the script directly. In my case, the scheduled task executes the command:

C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe D:\MyStuff\PerlScripts\deleter-scripts\deleter.pl 1 "C:\Documents and Settings\ac\My Documents\XDA6 My Documents\podcasts"

The script relies on you being on a network on which a mail server is available. That way sendmail is able to work its magic and deliver the email for you. All you need to do is change the value of $mailto to the email address you want the message to be sent to.

The revised script:

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I use Juice to automatically download podcast files (MP3s) into C:\Documents and Settings\ac\My Documents\XDA6 My Documents\. ActiveSync then automatically uploads these files onto my PDA when I connect it to the PC. The result is that I always have lots of new podcasts to listen to on my PDA.

All well and good but I have limited space on my storage card, so I need to keep deleting the files from my PC, or they get loaded onto my PDA - just deleting them from the PDA isn't enough because they just reappear next time the PDA syncs with the PC.

What I need is for the old files to be deleted automatically, so that they don't accumulate.

To do this I created (or more correctly, modified) a script that deletes files based on their modification date. I then created a Windows schedule to run this script every day.

Here are the details.

[NOTE: See also the new, improved version: Tuesday, 20 December.]

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I use Juice to automatically download the podcasts I subscribe to into: C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents\XDA My Documents\podcasts\ ActiveSync then picks these up and copies them to my PDA (an XDA running Pocket PC). The problem is that it copies them into memory on my PDA, rather than onto my storage card, where there's lots more space. Getting ActiveSync to copy to the Storage Card involves tweaking the Windows Registry on both the desktop and in Pocket PC on my PDA. I run the XDA-Developers Edition of Pocket PC on my XDA. This allows you to edit Registry settings - just like you can on a desktop using regedit. As far as I remember (it's a long time since I installed the XDA-Developers OS) you can't do this on plain old ordinary Pocket PC. WORDS OF WARNING a) The XDA-Developers Edition has associated risks and, as far as I know, prevents you upgrading Pocket PC. For me this wasn't an issue as my XDA Mark 1 wasn't fit for upgrading. b) Tweaking Registry settings should always be done with extreme care. Make sure you have backed up your systems (desktop + PDA) before changing anything. PROCEDURE 1. On your PC, use regedit and go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows CE Services\Partners 2. This folder will contain a subfolder called something like 01492942 (or another hex number). In fact will probably contain several such folders. Find the one that contains a string value called NoSubFolderIn 3. Double click NoSubFolderIn and change: \My Documents\ to: \Storage Card\My Documents\ 4. Expand the current Registry folder and go to Services\Synchronization 5. Double click DevicesSyncFolder and change: \My Documents\ to: \Storage Card\My Documents\ 1. On your PDA, use Registry Editor (on XDA-Developers Edition), or similar, and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows CE Services 2. Edit NoSubFolderIn and change its value from: \My Documents\ to: \Storage Card\My Documents\ 2. Edit FileSyncPath, making the same change. That's it. I make no guarantees. But it worked for me. Now my new podcasts go straight to my PDA whenever I connect to the PC. All I have to do is delete the old ones now and then to make space for new ones.

The project I'm currently working on involves a foreign-language version of our main application. My colleague George passed on a useful tip to help you see what characters your keyboard outputs. Go to Start > Run and enter: osk The On-screen keyboard dialog box is displayed. This is particularly useful when you have your locale set to something unfamiliar because it allows you to easily see what character is produced by each key on the keyboard. Having said that, it doesn't always work. In my standard UK locale it tells me that I can get a Euro symbol by pressing Ctrl+Alt+4. I don't, I get nothing. But it's handy to know about.