Santhosh Pillai

Extracting Text from PSD Files

2008-05-01T02:42:00Z

Localizers often need to extract text from PSD (Photoshop) files, translate them, and put the text back in the PSD files in the appropriate places (layers). I haven’t personally seen anyone using a tool to do this. Is there any tool that can extract and/or place text on a given layer?...(read more)

Kinsoku, anyone?

2007-11-07T06:16:00Z

I should admit that I am a little rusty as my last post was a while ago.

I am interested to find out what content providers do to avoid Japanese Kinsoku issues. This page has a lot of details, but apart from specifying line-break="strict", are there any other known solutions that the Japanese web sites employ to minimize the problem? Ideally, I would like to know if anyone is using ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (U+FEFF), ZERO WIDTH SPACE (U+200B), or WORD JOINER (U+2060) to work around this issue.

Media Center SDK Vista Beta 2

2006-06-14T22:10:00Z

Media Center SDK for Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available here for download. The good news is that you do NOT have to be a beta participant to get the SDK now.

Install it, try it, and report any problems that you may have. You can leave a comment here, or report it via one of the channels below:

Media Center Sandbox
Sandbox Discussion Forum
Charlie Owen's blog
Aaron Stebner's blog

Indeo Codec & XP SP2

2004-11-18T01:19:00Z

Do you have an AVI file encoded with Indeo codec that stopped displaying video when accessed from a share when your client is XP SP2? That's because XP SP2 blocked the content because of a security problem with the codec. If you should access the content from the share, your best bet would be to re-encode with a codec other than Indeo. Desperate times need desperate measures, so, contact Microsoft Developer Support if you can't live with any of the above solutions.

Account Protection, Baby!

2004-07-13T19:21:00Z

So, here I am calling up my credit card company to have my address changed (well, I tried online, and failed to login for some reason). After changing the address, she goes: “do you want to add account protection to your card?”
Me: “Yes, most definitely.”
She: “That will be $12.50 per month charged on your card.”
Me: “Hold on, I want the account protection, and I feel that's something you should provide for your customers without charging them”.
She: “So, is it about the money? If you make money, can't you spend around 40 cents per day to protect it?”
Me: “Your bank's networth is in billions. Can't they spend 42 cents for me to protect my account as a nice gesture of me doing business with them?”
She: “I understand you don't want the protection then!”

Calling C++ Unmanaged Class from C#

2004-07-07T23:59:00Z

This may be a no-brainer, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

If you have a C++ class in an unmanaged dll what is the best way to call it from C#?

1. You need to wrap the C++ class in a COM object or expose the class through dll exports. Managed code can call methods on COM object through COM Interop. And it can call dll exports through P/Invoke.

2. There is another way to do this using P/Invoke. Here is the sample code from the SDK.
The best way to do this is to write a thin wrapper in MC++ around your MFC classes and expose managed interfaces from it to your C# code. If you can use Whidbey, you could even compile your MC++ wrapper and rest of the C# code in same DLL using new linker.

// ClassMethods.cs
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public class LibWrap
{
    /*
    class PINVOKELIB_API CTestClass
    {
        public:
            CTestClass( void );
            int DoSomething( int i );
        private:
            int m_member;
    };
    */
    [ DllImport( "..\\LIB\\PinvokeLib.dll",
    EntryPoint="?DoSomething@CTestClass@@QAEHH@Z",
    CallingConvention=CallingConvention.ThisCall )]
    public static extern int TestThisCalling( IntPtr ths, int i );
    // CTestClass* CreateTestClass();
    [DllImport( "..\\LIB\\PinvokeLib.dll" )]
    public static extern IntPtr CreateTestClass();
    // void DeleteTestClass( CTestClass* instance )
    [ DllImport( "..\\LIB\\PinvokeLib.dll" )]
    public static extern void DeleteTestClass( IntPtr instance );
}
public class App
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        IntPtr instancePtr = LibWrap.CreateTestClass();
        int res = LibWrap.TestThisCalling( instancePtr, 9 );
        Console.WriteLine( "\nResult: {0} \n", res );
        LibWrap.DeleteTestClass( instancePtr );
    }
}

P/Invoke: Should it be this hard?

2004-03-31T23:31:00Z

Obviously, no!

We are trying everything we can to make it less painful for the developers. Most of the time, the hard question is whether or not the P/Invoke signature is accurate. Now that we have a sample that shows P/Invoke signature for methods declared in Windows.h, it's just a start.

You can also find a list of resources that provides assistance to developers encountering problems P/Invoke functionality at http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/clr/bcl/TechArticles/TechArticles/PInvokeHelp/FAQ.aspx. Please let us know your feedback.

Hard to Find a Technical Resource? Think About Microsoft Developer Support!

2004-03-27T00:09:00Z

I often see questions like this in various forums:

We are about start the coding phase of our project. We would like to validate our architecture against someone with expertise in DCOM/Remoting/--Add your technology here--. We probably need a week or two of someone's time to provide a sanity check before we start our work. It is hard to find a resource, can you help?

You can open an advisory incident with Microsoft Developer Support to get help. Get the details at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=cntactms.

However if it is a quick question, please use the newsgroups.

DCOM: Is there a way to get the IP of the DCOM client from the DCOM server?

2004-03-01T23:26:00Z

Another FAQ. Short answer: may be. Shorter answer: no. To be honest: no supported way.

CoQueryClientBlanket() will give "some information", such as the user name and domain name, but unfortunately, there is no way of obtaining the client machine name or IP address from a DCOM application. This is because there is no way to get RPC Binding Handle inside a DCOM server. If you have a RPC application then you have a RPC binding Handle and this will have information about the client.

If you look at Inside Distributed COM by Guy Eddon & Henry Eddon and/or Don Box's article in MSJ back in 98, they talk about the "unpublished and unsupported (by MS)" interface IChannelHook which can be used to obtain the Client address. Both client and server needs to Activate IChannelHook to its process. Microsoft does not recommend nor does it support the use of IChannelHook or any other unpublished interfaces/APIs.

Speaking of "unpublished and unsupported" API's, the web site http://members.tripod.com/IUnknwn gives an example of how to marshal an interface pointer to a stream, and then look at the OBJREF structure that is part of the marshaled interface pointer (as described in Chapter 12 of Inside Distributed COM by Guy Eddon and Henry Eddon). The OBJREF structure contains the client's STRINGBINDING when standard marshaling is used, which contains the client's IP address.

Post your Remoting questions in microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.remoting

2004-02-25T00:56:00Z

As I look through the feedback for my post, I thought it may be a good idea that I propose this: feel free to post your Remoting related questions in microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.remoting newsgroup. The newsgroup is pretty active with some MS guys and a couple of MVPs regularly answering queries. It is easy to configure Outlook Express to read newsgroups. Details available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/