chris's random thoughts » Utilities

SQL Tidy

Chris Ciulla — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:27:18 +0000

Like a lot of programmers, I’m very… meticulous… when it comes to writing code. I detest looking at malformed code, and will reformat it — if not refactor completely — at the first opportunity. But, like a lot of geeks, I’m ~~lazy~~ efficient, so I use a class of utilities called beautifiers to help maintain my code (well, other’s code, but let’s not get snarky).

I’ve used HTML Tidy to clean up gnarly web pages…

I’ve used Jalopy to clean up mangled Java code…

I’ve even used a relatively ancient Visual Basic 3.0 one back in the day. The name escapes me, but it was in 1995 and I remember I paid $100 bucks for it. Given the nature of the code I was working with, it was worth it.

After googling awhile, I stumbled across a yacc version and a couple of on-line versions here and here. The former on-line one has some Delphi source available for download — too bad I haven’t used Delphi for years.

So, why is it so difficult to find an open source SQL beautifier similar to Jalopy or HTML Tidy?

When I get an opportunity, I’ll have to knock one out.

Complete Freeware Collection

Chris Ciulla — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 13:01:04 +0000

While entirely focused upon utilities, xtort.net is the kind of site I had in mind when I started putting together this site (especially my long-neglected wiki).

xtort.net offers daily updates of hundreds of pages which list thousands of complimentary software programs for Windows.

Crystal Reports Exporter

Chris Ciulla — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:05:23 +0000

I’ve been working with Crystal Reports quite a bit lately, and this looks interesting.

Crystal Reports Exporter

Rainy’s Rainlendar

Chris Ciulla — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:39:21 +0000

Rainy’s Rainlendar is one of the best calendar utilities around.

NuonSoft :: ShellEnhancer

Chris Ciulla — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:25:32 +0000

NuonSoft’s ShellEnhancer is pretty handy, but the last time I tried it, it had “issues.” It’s now in 2.0b stage, so I’ll have to check it out again.

THE Unzip Utility

Chris Ciulla — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 18:51:34 +0000

Tugzip is a HELLA-FAST compress/uncompress tool. Think WinZip or UltimateZip in terms of speed and ZipGenius in terms of price.

Definately worth the 3.7mb download.

Software Without Which I Cannot Live

Chris Ciulla — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 02:49:37 +0000

Well-written software can be life-changing… Well, that’s a bit much, but if you spend as much time in front of a monitor as I do, it can be time-saving at least.

Here’s a few packages I don’t leave home without. Literally — they’re on an Iomega Micro-mini USB Drive that’s attached to my keychain. I’m lusting after the 1GB version so I can put a full-on cygwin distribution on it.

Utilities

ASpell (GNU spell checker)
AutoHotKey (amazing hot-key utility)
exuberant ctags (custom-compiled with regex support)
GNU Win32 Utilities (native ports of unix-like command-line utils)
Office 2000 HTML Filter 2.0 filter (gets rid of narsty Office-specific tags from HTML)
rmempty (removes empty directories)
Roboform (well, my data, at least).
Sizer (resizes any window to a custom width x height)
SmartTab (alt-tab replacement that SHOULD be built into all future MS operating systems)
Vim (the one true editor)
xplorer² (dual-paned explorer replacement — worth buying)

Browsers

FireFox setup
Lynxw32 (text-based web browser (it comes in handy))
Maxthon setup (think tabbed Internet Explorer replacement with plugins)

Languages

ActiveState Perl setup
BeanShell jars and docs

Needless to say, I’m a command-line junkie.