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June 6

Pdf

Ho! If I shrink a pdf with Acrobat say I can get it down by 60% say but if I then want to OCR it the size goes up to be even more massive than it was before. Is there a way to avoid this, say, keeping it smallish but also with text recognition? Thank you 2.28.124.7 (talk) 10:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the use of Acrobat and am not sure what you mean by "shrinking" a pdf with Acrobat.

Some apps, such as PDFpen, can OCR a bitmap and turn it into a searchable pdf.^[1] The output is not much larger than the input – the blow-up in size occurs in the other direction, when a pdf produced by a word processing app is converted into a bitmap. PDFpen is not free; I do not know if there are free apps for this.  --Lambiam 19:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

A scanned PDF is, in essence, a PDF container with a series of high-resolution bitmaps (JPEGs) for each page. A typical OCR-annotation program extracts each JPEG, does optical recognition, and then adds PDF text objects behind the JPEGs (so they're selectable and copyable, but not visible). Those text additions are trivial - typically a few KB at most, per page.

Your problem is twofold - you want to a) downscale the JPEGS and b) add the OCR annotations. These are effectively orthogonal tasks. I've no idea how you're getting the poor results you are, with the Acrobat workflow. But I can do what you want with ghostscript and then ocrmypdf (which uses Tesseract). All of this is free software. For me, in Linux, it's as easy as:

QUALITY=/ebook  # use one one of /screen /ebook /printer /prepress /default  # /screen is very low resolution, /prepress is the highest

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=$QUALITY -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH  -dQUIET -sOutputFile=scaled.pdf test.pdf

ocrmypdf scaled.pdf ocred.pdf

For me, this takes a 2.5Mb scanned pdf test.pdf and the GhostScript (gs) line scales it down to 178Kb. The ocrmypdf command takes that and produces a 181Kb file (a modest addition consistent with the text on that page).

I've no idea how do to any of this with Acrobat. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 20:20, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

@Finlay McWalter: Cheers! When I said shrink, yeah,, I meant 'compress'. I'll try copying what you've put up here into GS for Win and then stare blankly when, of course, nothing will happen except little squares appear. H'mmm. Your code above, are there meant to be 2X 'one' in the first line? Thanks again! ——Serial Number 54129 13:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I should have only one one. I've no idea about GhostScript on Windows, I'm afraid. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

June 8

Windows 11 Storage Capacity Issue, maybe

I am using Windows 11, and I have a 216 GB C: drive. When I view the "This PC" window, it shows that I have 14.3 Gb free, and shows a red bar, which may mean that I have less than 10% free storage on the drive.

When I last restarted the computer, it showed that I had more than 10% free. Looking at the C: drive, what I see is:

I see that the pagefile is now 26Gb. It was 12 Gb when I restarted the computer, so the expansion of the pagefile is why I have less free storage available. My question is whether I should in any way be concerned that I have less than 10% free storage. I have 14 Gb of free storage, and of the storage in use, 26 Gb is being used for paging, and 14 Gb was a lot in any decade that I was paid to use computing equipment. So am I correct in assuming that the red highlighting of the bar is a silly non-warning warning? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Windows' paging almost doubling from 12 to 26 is a bit concerning. 18.3 GiB free (in my opinion) is fine & workable. Windows will always make the bar red when there is less than 10% free space left (and it is quite intimidating). If you want, you can manually limit the pagefile size, but I think 18 GiB is enough for short/medium-term. Of course, the more space, the merrier.

Also, side note, keep in mind that screenshots of File Explorer aren't free (no DW permitted) so they can't be uploaded to Commons. WhoAteMyButter (🌷_talk│🌻^contribs) 23:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

You are experiencing exactly the same symptoms which have plagued Windows users since Win 95. I am still using Windows XP on my main machine, so cannot offer any up-to-date solutions with any confidence, but:

1. There will be an app/utility which will find your biggest files. These could be films (avi, mp4 etc.), .pdfs etc. Do you need them? I would suggest all files with 0 bytes can be deleted as well.

2. Empty your Temp folder. Click on the Start menu. Choose All Programs then Accessories, followed by System Tools. Select Disk Cleanup. Under Files to delete, choose the files you want to get rid of. Once you’ve selected the file types to delete, click Ok. Another method: Quit all applications. Press WinKey + R. Type %temp% In the folder that opens, drag all the files to the recycle bin or select them (Ctrl+A) and click/press Delete. It won't delete temp files which are being used in the current session. Pressing Shift+Delete will bypass your Recycle bin and permanently delete these files, so beware.

3. Almost any file with a .tmp extension can be deleted as well. Use Windows Search or a dedicated file search utility. If Windows complains, it means it's being used in the current session.

3. Empty your Recycle Bin anyway.

4. Quite frankly, 12 gigabytes for a paging file is an outrageous size. Excuse me while I delete some expletives. OK, I'm still running XP designed around 25 years ago, but I have a mere 4GB of RAM, and my paging file is 200 MB, ie 5% of RAM, and Windows rarely complains. Your Hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) is 4GB anyway, so that's equvalent to your installed RAM. If your motherboard can cope, I would double that. M$ fanboys can shoot me down, and I expect the specs have changed. Nevertheless, you should definitely place a manual limit to your paging file: hunt around for 'Win 11 fixed size paging file'. You could start with 8192 MB initial and 8192 MB maximum. Unless you are heavily into gaming or video editing, and you only use your PC for browsing, document editing etc., I suspect this should be enough. BTW, I created a Ramdisk in memory (RAM) and keep my paging file on it. This saves endless thrashing on my hard disk.

5. Empty your browser cache frequently: with Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift + Delete, and select Cache only. Dunno about other browsers, a quick search should find the answer.

6. I'm sure others will have different ideas. mine may be entirely wrong. MinorProphet (talk) 16:49, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

It may be easier, if you never hibernate your computer, to turn it off, which will save you another 4GB.To do this:

1. open a command prompt as administrator

2. enter powercfg -h off

3. enter powercfg -hibernate off

Note: some sources mention needing powercfg.exe /hibernate off for the second step. It should be the same effect imho.

To undo this, replace the "off" in the command with "on".

14GB of free space should be sufficient for most stuff anyway, but storage has become significantly cheaper in recent years. A quick look on a (dutch) price-watch shows me that a 512 GB SSD from a non-budget brand is ~55 euro for an M2 type, and ~70 for a 1TB 2.5" (I can't find 512GB drives from the non-budget brands I've selected). I seem to recall from earlier questions that you're on a laptop, so adding drives might be difficult, but I suppose the better computer shops will still do this for you (or buy an external SSD-housing for ~20 euro if you know how to do so). Rmvandijk (talk) 14:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Please upgrade SSD to 12 terabytes . System 4TB data 8 terabyte making fattest ever also Roblox support 2001:44C8:4145:4A1E:85B5:4782:3DD3:7CD6 (talk) 11:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

M$ fanboy attempts to shoot me down. Ha ha, missed both my legs. MinorProphet (talk) 02:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

June 9

Windows RT not come with 128 GB of SSD and 4 GB of RAM

Because Windows RT are low end tablet are only came out 32 and 64 gigs the Windows RT tablet system 32 or 64 gigs data storage removable storage only comes with full Microsoft Office 2013 for RT because Microsoft Surface tablet running Windows 8 RT (not NT) Windows 8 tablets do not have 128 gigs after a Surface Pro 1 released more storage than Windows RT . 2001:44C8:4225:785C:85A3:DE11:52D5:1869 (talk) 00:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a question? Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Windows Security warning about pure text file

I just wanted to unzip a simple text file from the zip file created by WhatsApp pure text export. Then the following message popped up:

Windows Security
(big "❢" in a shield) These files might be harmful to your computer
Your Internet security settings suggest that one or more files may be harmful. Do you want to use it anyway?
Show details      OK      Cancel
How do I decide whether to unblock these files?

Notes:

1. Despite the plural in the fat text, there is only one file.
2. There is no link behind "Your Internet security settings", so the dialog does not offer me a way to check these. (I certainly have not changed any security setting to consider pure text files as potentially harmful.)
3. The text "Show details" is underlined; clicking on it displays no other "details" than my target folder name.
4. "How do I decide ..." is underlined; but clicking on it doesn't even try answering the question, but only calls the very general page ‘https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows’, which contains no informative text (only advertisements for MS's latest products).

So, is Windows Security just crying wolf or is there a real danger from a simple .txt file? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 17:16, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

How are you unzipping it? Just double clicking on it? Have you unzipped zip files on this computer previously without this error popping up? I would create a small text file, manually zip it (right click -> Send to -> Compressed (zipped) folder) and then try to unzip it and see if you get the error. If you do, the error message is spurious. If not, then there's something specific to the WhatsApp file that is triggering the error, which is more concerning, but still could be a false positive. CodeTalker (talk) 18:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

It's not the .txt file, it's the containing .zip file which raises Windows security concerns. If you're only using Windows security, I'm fairly it sure won't be able to make a scan of a specific file. A dedicated AV/Malware app would. From a paranoid point of view, theoretically just opening a .zip file without even viewing/extracting the contents can cause malicious code to be executed. Do you know/trust the person it came from? Did you create it yourself? If so, there should be no problem. Simple .txt files do not contain code, and it's highly unlikely that they would cause a problem. If you want to be ultra-security conscious, if someone has sent you the .zip, ask them to extract it themselves and send it to you as a plain .txt file via email etc. There are online scanners, which may or not work, eg https://www.fortiguard.com/faq/onlinescanner , but I haven't tested it with a file containing known malware. MinorProphet (talk) 21:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I created the file through WhatsApp's export feature, as I've done previously without this error popping up. (The only difference is that this time I exported text only.) So I now tried to reproduce it in other ways, up to zipping the same file on my cell phone directly, and it never reproduces. MinorProphet: It's an interesting idea that it could be the zip file, but then I'd expect the error to occur when I open the zip file. Still, software doesn't always behave logical. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 06:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Windows Security includes Microsoft Defender Antivirus, which scans whole files proactively ("real-time protection"). Any binary pattern can show up in the zip of a plain ASCII text file, also patterns that happen to be on an antivirus blacklist.  --Lambiam 07:51, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, learn something every day. So, a false positive, it would seem. Re binary patterns: back in the day, I installed Skype when it was all the rage: and whenever I was attempting to recover a customer's precious data after a disk crash using Norton Utilities when it actually did something useful, Skype would highlight what it assumed were UK telephone numbers (01234 567890) and invite me to ring them, although it was more likely to have been just a corrupt Word file. MinorProphet (talk) 12:59, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Lambiam. Yes, “Any binary pattern can show up in the zip”. But then I would expect the OS warning to come up when downloading the zip file. On unpacking, it should check the result of unpacking, i.e., the text file, shouldn't it? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 16:03, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

My guess is that the creators of Microsoft Defender Antivirus, originally a free anti-spyware program developed by another company, did not make special provisions for special file types. I don't know how this program works, but in general antivirus software scans files that are about to be opened.^[2][3][4] After unzipping, you still need to open the unzipped file, and then that file is also checked.  --Lambiam 16:33, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that explanation makes sense: It's probably not necessary to check a file as soon as possible; it's probably good enough to check a zip file on unpacking, rather than on downloading - although that's less "proactive". ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 21:03, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

June 10

Convenient way to use dd to flash a new firmware image

Hi. In embedded system development, it is common to use the dd (Unix) command to flash a new firmware onto a disk:

xzcat /media/ubuntu/ubuntu-core-24-amd64.img.xz | \
sudo dd of=/dev/<target disk device> bs=32M status=progress; sync[5]

Currently I am doing the following:

1. Create a bootable live Ubuntu USB drive

2. Plug this drive onto the system I want to flash, and wait for it to boot up (~3 minutes)

3. After it's fully booted up, I am now in a full Ubuntu desktop environment. Now I launch the terminal and run the above dd (Unix) command

Is there a more convenient way to do this?

It occurred to me that most of step #2 and #3 are not necessary. I don't need a full desktop environment. All that really needs to happen is for the Linux kernel to load, then the command is ran (every component of the command is known before hand).

I am guessing that there is already some open source solution for this on Github, but I tried various different search terms and couldn't find it. 99% of what I found was for the use case where you have a Linux distribution ISO (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.iso, let's say), and you want to write that image onto a blank USB drive. This use case is extremely frequent so many projects and sites are dedicated to it, eclipsing the niche use-case that I am looking for. 17:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC) OptoFidelty (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Why don't you dd from the machine that you're developing the software on? Why is the Linux livecd step necessary? -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 20:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The development machine is a desktop workstation with sufficient RAM and storage space for development work.

The target machine is a development board with 2GB RAM and 8GB eMMC storage, making it not suitable for development work.

Since these are two separate computers, I cannot think of an easier way to perform the flashing with my very limited linux knowledge. OptoFidelty (talk) 23:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm beginning to understand. So you want to flash the internal disk on the target board. You've not said, but I guess the target board is x86 and runs a conventional UEFI bootrom. And you're flashing a normal x86 ubuntu image onto it. So it seems you'd want the target machine to flash itself and then reboot. If that's all the case, then I think you can have the target machine itself read the image to flash over the network and dd its own disk. Normally this is a rather fragile process, but netcat and dd are tiny programs that will fit in ram easily (as will the kernel and the relevant network and disk drivefs), and so won't be upset when the underlying storage is being messed with. Things will break (necessitating a boot from a usb) if the process is interrupted (so this is a fragile hack that obviously isn't suitable for field or production use). To do this, on the development machine:

      dd bs=16M if=image.iso | bzip2 -c | nc targetmachineip 19000

and on the target machine, a suid-root script does:

      nc -l 19000 | bzip2 -d | dd bs=16M of=/dev/THEDISK
      reboot

And that should do it. I've done this before without issue. To refresh my brain, I cribbed the command lines from this posting (when I did it, I didn't think to zip the stream, but that's probably a smart idea. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 08:14, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Simpler yet - on the target machine:

         nc -v -l 19000 > /dev/THEDISK
         reboot

and then on the dev machine:

         nc -v -q 0 targetmachineip 19000 < image.iso

That -q 0 makes the sending party close the socket and exit once it's done (otherwise you have to ctrl-c it). That's for traditional/openBSD netcat; if you're using gnu netcat, I believe you replace -q 0 with -c

You don't need dd at all, and I've omitted bzip2 for clarity (it might help, depending on the speed of the network vs that of the disk). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:34, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much!

(Yes, it's x86 and runs a conventional UEFI. It's not the usual platform so I can see why most guides don't cover it.) OptoFidelty (talk) 18:15, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

If you want something safer, you could instead:

1. Partition the target machine's disk in two, with a small partition and a bigger one.
2. In the small partition, install a minimal linux like Tiny Core Linux's no-gui version
3. In the larger, place in your actual test product (as you would with dd, before)
4. Configure GNU GRUB to offer to boot either partition
5. When you need to update the software under test, you book into tinycore and do the same netcat procedure as above, sending the iso to the large partition (e.g. /dev/sda2)

But I'm no expert at GRUB. Other than that, it should be straightforward. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 12:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

June 11

Cloud-client interfacing problems with Linux configured router

Hi all, I’m having problems properly interfacing cloud-client over bidirectional user protocols on Linux. Obviously I tried running a virtual network to reduce cloud interference over the router framework, but I think there is a problem with modem RAM that’s preventing me from accessing a more compatible data relay. I’m using a 327 GHz processor configured to a nested cloud-client interface utilizing firewall encryption. Camuscurve (talk) 00:28, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is trolling, but on the off chance that it isn't, can you explain in more detail what your problem is? What is "a more compatible data relay" and what does modem RAM have to do with it? And please tell the aliens from whom you obtained a 327 GHz processor that I want one too. CodeTalker (talk) 01:42, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

There is no chance (check out their posting history), and please do not feed the trolls. Assume good faith? I used to, but trit-trot, trit-trot over the bridge is more and more prevalent these days. Please, nurse, Camuscurve hasn't been taking their medication, best prepare the straightjacket and alert the white-coated assistants. MinorProphet (talk) 02:19, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, OP has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet. CodeTalker (talk) 05:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

June 12

Any recent usage statistics on the .zip top-level domain?

 Courtesy link: Draft:.zip

Hi, are there any sources or recent publications that show how the TLD is being used, or by whom its being registered (i.e.: percentage of personal vs registered corporations, or location of registration according to WHOIS information)? There was of course a lot of ink spilled regarding the potential for misuse when the registry was created, but I'm looking to see if anyone came back and did a study or research after the fact.

Thanks, microbiologyMarcus ^{[petri dish·growths]} 15:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Easy way of generating "mylist.txt" files from a folder?

I have a bunch of folders consisting of mp3 files, which I would like to concatenate via ffmpeg. I am using the method described here, in which the full paths of all the files one wishes to concatenate are named in a text folder using the format of file '[file path]'. It's very tedious having to copy and paste the paths of every single file in a folder, so I'm wondering if there's any program that can scan a folder and output this kind of text file. Cheers, Mach61 17:07, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

On what system? On Windows, taking a lazy approach (rather than writing a script), you could open a command prompt in the folder (right-click somewhere that isn't on a file and choose "open in terminal"), and then dir/B gives you all the file names. Since they're all in the same folder, copy and paste the list to a text editor and paste file ' and the path of the folder in front of each line, then put ' after each line. Repeat with next folder. Still effort, but less effort, and gets the job done.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

When I required a list of all files within a folder structure, I found that doing it with DOS ("Command Prompt" these days) was the simplest, though there was a bit of work to deal with the resultant file. In DOS, I went to the base folder I wanted to harvest and used DIR to fetch the filenames and paths. Something like DIR /S >OUTPUT.TXT (The /s command tells it to bring back the sub-directories and the > tells it to input to a (text) file. I then imported the result into Excel and was able to get what I wanted. Matt Deres (talk) 19:40, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Just to build on that a bit: the trickiest part was getting the pathways to correctly get matched up with the filenames. Most of the problem came from the way Excel would split the text into columns: the rules for what you want it to do for the files is not the same as what you want it to do with the folder information. There's probably a clever way around that, but I ended up using some really kludge-y formulas and then correcting. It's not something I'd want to have to do every day, but as a one-time thing it was okay. Matt Deres (talk) 19:46, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Try https://www.karenware.com/powertools/karens-directory-printer and then running a macro or using search&replace in Notepad++ Polygnotus (talk) 02:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

On Linux I do ls -1 | awk '{ print("file \x27"ENVIRON["PWD"]"/"$0"\x27")}' > /tmp/mylist.txt You might be able to do the same on Windows using Cygwin. You will need to rename if the filename has a single quote in it, eg Return to Castle De'ath Track 01.mp3 which I had to deal with recently. TrogWoolley (talk) 08:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

A slightly simpler way to do it on Linux would be
for f in *; do echo "file '$PWD/$f'"; done >/tmp/mylist.txt CodeTalker (talk) 05:25, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

~

June 13

Microsoft Word: page numbering folios

Hello. Is there a way to get Microsoft Word to number pages not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... but instead 1r, 1v, 2r, 2v, 3r...? As in folio numbering? Thanks Amisom (talk) 13:46, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe that's possible, at least as of Office 2016. There's no option anything like that as far as I can tell. It's hard to prove a negative from Google, but nothing useful is coming up when I search for word page numbering "folio". Keep in mind, Word is a word processing program; it has only rudimentary printing capabilities. What you likely need is Microsoft Publisher, which is a desktop publisher. From our article: "Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft, differing from Microsoft Word in that the emphasis is placed on page layout and graphic design rather than text composition and proofreading. It's going to be discontinued in a few years, with its functionality moved to other applications in the 365 suite. Matt Deres (talk) 14:51, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Possibly by using a header or footer - "To show the document title, author’s name, or some other text with the page number, or to hide the page number on the first page, start by using Insert > Header & Footer instead of Insert > Page Numbers."  Card Zero  (talk) 15:14, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Redirect

I’m using Firefox, and after the last upgrade, I get the message below when I click a bookmark. Not all bookmarks, but almost all. Any ideas how to get rid of it? “The previous page is sending you to http://www … (the url where I want to go). If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.” (the last five words are a url back to where I was.). DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Is that the exact phrasing, or is it this message?

=> yes, that is the exact phrasing. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Redirect Notice

The page you were on is trying to send you to [...].

If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.

I found it on a thread on Mozilla support, where a moderator thinks Firefox is not responsible for the notice and that it's "likely a feature of the website that redirect[ed] the link you entered". But this is a typical software support reaction. I saw nothing on Bugzilla under bookmarks though it might be under some other component. You could open a ticket if you feel public-spirited.

What distinguishes the bookmarks that do load? Is this perhaps an issue about http vs. https? If you create new bookmarks, do those work OK?  Card Zero  (talk) 18:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

=> http vs. https has no bearing. Nothing I can determine distinguishes redirects from non-redirects. More, the redirects began all at once (but, as noted, not all websites). DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

If you want a quick fix, entering about:config in the address bar and setting accessibility.blockautorefresh = false will turn off the notice. But then you will have turned off the notice. (Worth trying anyway, because if it doesn't work, the mystery deepens - or it might somehow reveal a clue.)  Card Zero  (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Does the bookmarked URL look like, say,

https://www.google.com/imgres?⁠q=%22Zeng%20Shan%22&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F9%2F9d%2FZeng_Shan.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FZeng_Shan&docid=Harrumph666oid&tbnid=qWeRtY_uIoP&vet=1L1k3_8008s ,

instead of just

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Zeng_Shan.jpg ?

Google is tracking when its search results are followed.  --Lambiam 18:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

=> the simple version. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Follow-Up on Windows Storage Questions

Thank you for the various advice on my Windows storage question. Here are some follow-up comments and a follow-up question.

The Pagefile and other things

I think I know why the pagefile is starting at 12 Gb and expanding to up to 26 Gb, and it is all right with me. I am keeping an enormous number of tabs open in multiple windows with both Chrome and Firefox. I know that it is using a lot of RAM, and then using a lot of paging storage, and Windows 11 handles it fine as long as it has the disk storage to page to. That doesn't bother me, and is fine with me, as long as I am not about to run out of storage (secondary memory).

So what I want is to be sure that I have enough free space on my C: drive to accommodate the growth of my pagefile. That gets me to the question.

Utility to display disk usage

The comment was made that: There will be an app/utility which will find your biggest files.. Yes. What I specifically want is a utility that will show the total disk utilization of each directory on a drive, or each subdirectory in a directory. I can sort a listing of files by size, but File Explorer doesn't show the size of each of the directories in a directory. I can query the size of a directory manually from the Properties command, but that is time-consuming. Is there a utility on Windows 11 (not an older version of Windows) that displays the disk utilization of each directory? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

By the way, if I have any MP4 files or other three-dimensional monsters, I would like to be able to see and unload them. So a utility that searches for particular extensions such as .mp4 would also be useful. I know that video clips are three-dimensional and so are larger than two-dimensional things like .PDFs. I know that. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The Unix utility 'du' will do this, and there are Windows versions of it (to be run on the command line). I use cygwin, which includes many such Unix programmes, but there's a standalone version produced by Microsoft available at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/du.-Gadfium (talk) 20:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Produced by Sysinternals really, along with other handy utilities such as Autoruns. Microsoft's role in this was to buy them.  Card Zero  (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I use WinDirStat do to this. It shows the amount of storage each subdirectory uses, and what percentage this is of the parent directory. It also has a really cool treemap to represent a drive, with rectangles representing each file with the size depending on how much storage it uses, which are colour coded by file type. I'm not sure if it works for Windows 11, but it works fine for Windows 10. ―Panamitsu (talk) 23:28, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

WinDirStat is really useful, only problem is that it takes a while to analyse. Rmvandijk (talk) 13:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean that it doesn't give the answer immediately because it is doing the arithmetic? That is the same as the Properties command on a single directory at a time. I am willing to wait while the utility does the arithmetic on all of the subdirectories in a directory. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

June 14

Turning a PNG into a PSP-readable vector

I'm trying to turn a PNG into a vector graphic or vector object that I can open in Corel Paint Shop Pro, in order to add it into an existing vector composition inside a .pspimage file. The point is that I need it to be a vector in order to make it infinitely scalable inside PSP.

It's basically just a rectangle with two triangles attached that I've originally drawn as a vector in PSP, but because I'm physically and mentally incapable of using weird stuff like beziers or nodes, I've had to rasterize the two triangles in order to cut off two corners, ever since which I'm trying to find a way to turn the result back into a vector that PSP can actually open without rasterizing it.

NOTE: Just turning it into an SVG doesn't cut it, as once I open an SVG inside PSP, it automatically rasterizes it. Same goes for .eps and .ai, they all get immediately rasterized upon opening. 2003:DA:CF04:944:F0DB:9B1A:5CDC:69E5 (talk) 21:34, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Start again, and stay purely in vectors. It'll be quicker, and it'll look better. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the problem: I *CAN'T*, because I can't cut anything off of the triangles without turning it into raster. --2003:DA:CF04:944:F0DB:9B1A:5CDC:69E5 (talk) 22:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

If it doesn't import vector files as vectors, perhaps it can be fooled into loading them as "preset shapes". What type of files are in your preset shapes folder (if you have at least one preset shape saved)?

Or, try WMF files. WMFs can be opened and edited as vector objects with the right options setting. "Mark the Import vector data check box." Inkscape can trace a raster image and save as WMF, in theory.  Card Zero  (talk) 02:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Nope, nothing doing. WMF is the very same as SVG, EPS, and AI: Once I open them, it immediately slaps me with a rasterizing dialogue. I can't export the PNG as a shape either, that option is greyed out. --2003:DA:CF04:968:C09D:B5DC:CAB5:C30D (talk) 05:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

OMG, I *FINALLY* got to make it work! With a lot of fiddling and trial-and-error, I got to learn how to use the vector-cutting (slicing?) tool in PSP. I got it the way I wanted, but I'm so glad I don't have to use that tool again in the next few years. It's almost as terrible as beziers and nodes. --2003:DA:CF04:968:C09D:B5DC:CAB5:C30D (talk) 06:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

June 16

Phone app for decoding Morse code

Last night I had a dream about an Android phone app that listened to Morse code on the phone's microphone and attempted to decode it into human-readable text. Does such an app actually exist? JIP | Talk 19:05, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

A search for "Morse Code Decoder" in Google Play immediately provides an app to do that. I haven't tried the app to see if it actually works.-Gadfium (talk) 19:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

June 18

Python input integer

Consider this simple Python 3 input and calculation example:

 n = input("?")
 print(n*10)

On one computer, I input 7 and I get a response 7777777777. On another computer, I input 7 and I get 70. I believe that there is an issue with the input function. On the first computer, it stores 7 as a string. On the second, it stores 7 as an integer. Is one of those the correct way it should work? Is it purposely vague? 12.116.29.106 (talk) 12:51, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

input always returns a (stripped) string. So the 7777777777 behaviour is correct. If you wanted an integer, you'd have to call int on the result. I don't know where you're getting the 70 behaviour, and I can't reproduce that behaviour on python3.12 on Linux or 3.11 on Windows. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 13:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I figured out that the machine producing the 70 result has both Python 2 and Python 3. I assumed that typing "python" would use the latest version (3), but it uses the older version (2). So, it is perhaps an issue with Python 2 auto-casting the value to an integer. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 14:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I checked and input in Python 3 is raw_input in Python 2. If I change the function and run it in Python 2, I get the expected 7777777777 output. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I expected as much (but I couldn't find an online repl with python2 to allow me to check it). You should almost certainly uninstall the python2 installation, as it hasn't had a security patch since January 1st, 2020. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:46, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Download image from website

I found this scan of an old map and would like to download it completely in high resolution, but there seems to be no option to do that. I tried searching the source text of the page, I installed JDownloader, but I just cannot get the image file onto my computer. The only way I see is to make screenshots of tiny portions of the map, which would be quite tedious to begin with, and then somehow put them together, but I have no idea with what program to do even that. Is there a simple solution? --Abderitestatos (talk) 19:06, 18 June 2024 (UTC)