Susan Bugher said:
I think we're fishing in murky waters. . .
more mystery. . .
Glad it was you, not me, who braved working out the web part of this.
The gleeful spammer links that come up when Googling these types of
software, it gets me reaching for the barf bag.
Like you, I didn't run these. What I did was extract the programs from
their installers, enough to get them separated by version and such.
TextBomber.exe
Date: 2000.07.06
File Version: 1.1.0.2
(c) Microsys Technologies, Inc.
Program: Text Bomber
Author: MTI Software (Niles Bentley)
Ware: (Registerware)
http://www.netprosweb.com/textbomber.htm
http://www.netprosweb.com/download/textbomb.exe
2193 KB (starting install produced no version info)
Text Bomber.exe
Date: 1999.06.27
File Version: 1.0.0.0
(c) Microsys Technologies, Inc
I believe both sites are owned by the same company/person. no version
info on either site. . .
Yes, same company in the file properties copyright.
I noted a significant change between the two releases: The older one is
visual basic, whereas the newer, it was written with Borland Delphi.
I'm wondering about the big difference in size. . .
That older one, the 2+ mb download, it is distributing VB runtimes. Such
as msvbvm60.dll -- which is over a meg by itself, as you know (all freeware
fans have been forced to download that file 435,000 times). Or another
megger, mscomctl.ocx. I didn't test, but I'd not be surprised if this
was one of those installer routines that sloppily overwrites one's runtimes
with those in the package.
Oh, and the app also has in its pile a couple of third-party OCX's, for
lots of extra registry bloat. Plus too there seem to be compile-time files
(.oca, .lib, .exp), which I'd venture were just left in by accident, by a
beginner programmer.
In short, I'd say one should choose the newer prog of these two. Strictly
judging from externals, that is; I've not actually launched these, so not
proclaiming it a good bunny or anything.
That second package, after extract, all that's involved is a 535k exe
plus a 35k .hlp. Much cleaner compared to the first mess.
.. . . .
Btw, regarding extraction here, tools let me bypass the installers:
The older 2mb download file, it was packaged with the Wise installer,
and for that E_WISE (a commandline tool) did the job for me nicely.
http://kannegieser.net/~veit/programm/index_e.htm
That other file was trickier, it was locked up a bit, seemed like, so
I unhappily had to submit to launching the installer. InstallShield
started up, and I let it proceed to that point where it makes a temp
directory for one to grab up. Then I terminated InstallShield (reqs
an external process viewer to actually truly kill all that disgusting
prog's threads). Then I chose the largest file of the temp dir, here
_SETUP.1, and handed it to Snoopy's Winpack (a gui frontend for a
set of InstallShield unpackers).
http://snoopy81.ifrance.com/snoopy81/en/winpack.htm
Speaking of unpackers, I was appreciative of the recent thread here,
the link posted by Mario Alvares for "Universal Extractor."
I haven't actually explored that yet, but have strong curiosity to look at
whatever interface and integrations it's set to offer. (I went to download
it, and did so, but then starting clicking links, and reading, and clicking,
and, you know, nature of the www ...)
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