Older, Probably Obsolete, But Still Working, Free Programs by Bob Swanson
Introduction
These are programs that I wrote several years ago. They are, for the most part, obsolete. You may certainly download them and try them, but nothing is expected to work, or there may be much better programs around that are also free.
I have been programming with Java for the last decade or three, and really enjoy it. I particularly like the ability to move programs easily from one operating system to another. While I use Perl for a lot of quick jobs and use of system utilities, I just enjoy Java a lot more, and like designing GUI’s with Swing.
After I first posted them, I continued to update some programs in Borland Delphi and CBuilder3. However, I have not done much in quite a long time. However, they also appear on this page.
I’m making these programs free because I have benefitted from the many kind people on the net who make their work freely available to all of us. It’s a payback of sorts. Hope you find these programs useful.
A Java “make” program to ease Java programming tasks
(As of January 4, 2001)
The program is available here.
After doing a lot of Java programming in a cross-platform environment, I devised this “make” program for Java. It eases the setup needed to compile, run, and create JAR files for Java programs. This is a first cut! Depends on at least Java 1.2. I used it for a number of years on Windows (NT4 so far), Linux (RH), SunOS, and AIX.
NOTE that this “make” process is rather primitive. The process of compiling Java is now done by many GUI programming products, and the go-to “make” project is now Apache ANT.
A Java program that reads online NEWS digests
(as of January 8, 2001)
The program is available here.
Here is a completely rewritten news digest reader see below for an older WIN32-specific version
Depends on at least Java 1.2 (uses Swing). I have tested it on Windows, Linux (RH), SunOS, and AIX. This program is advanced over the earlier Java (and WIN32) versions, in that it can sort by date and thread news articles.
A Windows-Only Program to Find Files
(as of July 5, 1999 [Its been too long. Many fixes and a few new features.])
A WIN32 program to find files is here.
Maybe not all is lost in history. I recently tried one of the older programs listed here and found that it worked just fine on Vista 64. In fact, this program was written to overcome some of the stupid behaviours of the file searcher available in Windows itself, and sure enough, Vista is still inconsistent in its search capabilities. While the program is dated (and I don’t have the source, or C++ compilation capability), it still works pretty well.
A Windows Program to Find and Delete Backup Files
(as of July 6, 1999)
A WIN32 program to help delete backup files.
Runs on a WIN 32 system (Windows 95/98/NT). This function is not easy to do on most Windows systems. Many programs, such as word processors leave backup files around. While these are useful, they tend to accumulate. For me, it seems easier to find and get rid of large backup files using this tool. I used to use this program every day. It is simple and quick and small.
News Group Digest Manager
(New version as of July 6, 1999 [sorry not posted until 3/11/2000])
A WIN32 e-mail news group digest manager.
This WIN32 program (Windows 95/98/NT) helps you to manage e-mail digests from newsgroups. It could also be used to manage e-mail “boxes” that contain many e-mail messages strung together as text. However, this program is very useful if, like me, you belong to several e-mail news groups. Most of these groups allow “digesting” of their output. You get all the news group messages at once, in one huge file. The problem is trying to check each message for interest, and deleting those that are of no interest. I’ve found out that I want to keep only about 5% of the messages from a newsgroup. This program shows all message “Subject:” lines and lets you selectively view the contents, and only keep those messages of interest.
This newer version was finished in July 1999, but did not get posted until March 2000. Sorry about that. In the rush to get it posted, the “help” is not completely up to date. Lots of new features, such as unlimited (at least by memory) numbers and sizes of messages, ability to cut and paste the digest from the e-mailer program directly into the news reader, and other improvements.
See above for the Java (1.2 or later) version of this program.
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