Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/08
Chocolatey extends the NuGet file format .nuspec based XML files as base for their packages with at the time of writing very sparse and limited documentation in what it extends, why it does that and what extra limitations it imposes on the fields used inside .nuspec files.
Hopefully by now that has improved, so this post is a reminder to myself to check that out eventually.
At the time of writing, the NuGet .nuspec documentation was at [Wayback/Archive] .nuspec File Reference for NuGet | Microsoft Learn and the file format at [Wayback/Archive] NuGet.Client/nuspec.xsd at dev · NuGet/NuGet.Client. Most fields are defined as primitive data types xs:boolean, xs:string and xs:anyURI (of the 19 available primitive XML SChema (W3C) types). Some composite data types are are composed from them using local and global complexType, most using xs:all, xs:attribute or single-type unbounded xs:sequence (which all imply no particular order).
Since an XML Schema allows to both use restriction and extension on data types (the eXtensible in XML!), making them more strict is a relatively straight-forward operation and has the benefit of having these in a central place.
In the past for more than 5 years [Wayback/Archive] Is there a specification for the package format? · Issue #379 · chocolatey/choco was just pointing to the NuGet .nuspec format, but after a request to re-open new comments were made pointing to a current issue (basically a stub, but still) and a Chocolatey nuspec.xsd file, yay!
Still it was a quest to figure out the additional rules they have added, especially since the documentation was sparse and sloppy.
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Posted in Chocolatey, Development, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, XML/XSD, XSD | Tagged: 101, 172, 205, 325, 374, 379, 4 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/04
Every now and then you make a typo when accessing remote systems through UltraVNC vncviewer.exe (I did the worst: thinking I had hit Enter to select the most recent connection, but typing a password instead).
I could not find settings in the registry, nor a vncviewer.ini file, so I used Process Monitor and filtered all events for the most recently started vncviewer.exe to figure out where it would store configuration files.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Power User, VNC/Virtual_Network_Computing, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/01
A few notes after I helped updating [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | SetACL (Portable) 3.0.6.0 to version 3.1.2.0 and [Wayback/Archive] Updates glab from 1.22.0 to 1.24.1; fixes #2 by jpluimers · Pull Request #3 · corbob/ChocoPackages.
As the burden on maintainers (not just Chocolatey ones) is high, not all packages get updated soon after new underlying software versions arrive.
Which means the maintainers are often very happy when an occasional user helps and preferably sends in a pull request.
That brings me to the an important point IN DOCUMENTATION DO NOT LIMIT EXAMPELS TO ONLY ABBREVIATED PARAMETERS OR VERBS as that scares away occasional and novice users of your software.
Chocolatey documentation is no exception on this, hence this blog post meant for people other than maintaining chocolatey packages on a day to day base.
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Posted in CertUtil, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Tagged: 2, 2850, 3, 309, 561 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/29
Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/23
This is a reminder to check if this below late 2019 proposal inspired by Visual Studio Code Screencast mode¹ already made it: [Wayback/Archive] Overlay of commands / shortcuts / keys pressed – Screencast Mode · Issue #981 · microsoft/PowerToys · GitHub which mentions some tools that can already do this
Here is a list of FOSS apps that currently do this (sorted by stars):
To add to this list (unsorted):
In the meantime, I am using Key-n-Stroke as it is the only still supported one I found that is easily turned off/on when typing sensitive content like passwords:
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Posted in .NET, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, PowerToys, Software Development, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows | Tagged: 32, 981 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/23
Maybe in the future I have enough energy to play around more with the Windows .CAT files that are catalog files with digital signatures for Windows driver files (.sys) that can be installed via Windows information files (.inf).
Some links for that:
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21
This started out ad a post to make things easier for my mentally brother, but then I figured it makes it so much easier for myself as well: getting rid of the evern returning Windows nag screens. Not just the ones after logon during initial Windows install that get back about every other Windows 20H update (thank god they stepped away from 19## version numbering that felt so, ehm, last millennium), but also the various “suggestions” in start menu, on the taskbar and elsewhere.
I understand that basically giving Windows 10 and 11 for free to many Windows 7/8 licensed machines or Windows-preinstalled machines induces Microsoft to see Windows as an advertising environment, but hey: many users can do without these distractions.
It is hard to solve, as even the underlying registry settings seem to be reset every once in a while, and solving it globally is not an option: the settings are a per-user one. Which means you need to run script early during every Windows logon to overwrite these settings.
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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Registry Files, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Tagged: 48 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/20
I thought I had long gone blogged about the .URL file extension as it has been in Windows for some 25 years now to point to URLs, but I didn’t.
So here are two links on them:
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 