Application: MWSnap
Category: Graphics & Pictures
Description: MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen.
Download MWSnap Portable 3.0.0.74 Development Test 7 online [853 KB download / 1.3 MB + 601 KB installed]
(MD5: b6785e5de57ec2f27def564eeb895fe2)
Online Installer:
MWSnap Portable is an online installer that will download additional files during setup.
Release Notes:
Development Test 7 (2011-05-10):
Fixed an issue where the MWSnap settings were being saved incorrectly (thanks to spg SCOTT for pointing this out and to 3D1T0R and Gord Caswell for providing a fix)
Development Test 6 (2011-03-15):
Changed MWSnap Portable to an online installer to avoid potential copyright issues
Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Launcher
Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Installer
Development Test 5 (2010-06-05):
Improvement: Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Launcher
Improvement: Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Installer
Improvement: Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Format
Development Test 4 (2010-04-08):
Improvement: The MWSnap installer is now bundled with MWSnap; since the PortableApps.com Launcher supports Unicode and I used the Unicode version of the PortableApps.com Installer, Unicode filenames are no longer a problem.
Development Test 3 (2010-04-08):
Improvement: Updated to the latest version of the PortableApps.com Launcher
Development Test 2 (2010-03-07):
Bug fix: Other registry keys under HKCU\Software\MirWoj could have been screwed up in unpredictable ways if edited while MWSnap Portable was running
Development Test 1 (2009-11-15): Initial release (unreleased due to unresolved license issues)
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You forgot to mention that the only reason you did an online installer rather than bundling it was because it has a Unicode filename in it and the installer failed on it...
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Sorry, forgot about that. I'll add it right away.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Updated (twice) 2010-04-08; see above for details.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Updated, 2010-06-05; see above for details.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
I downloaded this package - and it trashed my machine startup, and didn't actually work as an application.
I replaced the 100k nwsnapportable.exe with the original .exe from the authors site - and mwsnap functionality was restored.
Something broken here just get it from the authors site and drop the unzipped folder into your portableapps folder - works just fine then.
Can you give me more details (e.g. OS, installation path, etc.), please? I just downloaded, installed, and ran MWSnap Portable on my XP SP3 machine and it works as expected.
Replacing MWSnapPortable with the original .exe is not recommended because it breaks portability. MWSnapPortable is the launcher, which is responsible for launching and cleaning up after MWSnap itself. Removing that launcher means MWSnap's settings won't be cleaned up.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Unless an app specifically gives you permission to repackage or modify, you can only distribute an app in the form they deliver it to you.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Should I switch this to an online installer, then?
EDIT: done.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Updated to Development Test 6, 2011-03-15; see above for details.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
It's best to contact the publisher and get permission. We probably won't be approving many online installer apps for a bit for official release.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
MWSnap is dead - it hasn't had a release since 2002. Back in late 2009, when I first looked at MWSnap for packaging, I sent the dev a note asking for permission; I never got a reply. I'd say the entire app, including any kind of support contact, is pretty thoroughly dead. The code seems pretty solid, though, since nobody's reported any issues with it.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Every time I use the "Repeat last" option, when I save it, no matter what filetype I save it as, it is just a black rectangle...i.e. the image is just like you had taken the screenshot and then used a fill tool to fill with black.
Make sense?
Not sure if this is a problem with MWSnap or the portablisation (sp?), but thought you should know...
Obviously if the base app...then nothing we can do...
And: Win 7 64bit
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
That sounds like an issue with MWSnap. I wasn't able to reproduce it on my XP SP3 system, though (any Repeat Last operations I did turned out well; I tested repeating several different captures, including full desktop and selected rectangles, and I tried saving in a couple of different file formats), so it could be MWSnap not liking something about your 64-bit system. Do you have a 32-bit system you could test on? Also, would anyone else with a 64-bit system be willing to try to reproduce this issue?
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
So maybe some things don't quite work on 64 bit.
Everything else works on my machine though
Will double check on a Vista 32 bit system later.
Something else I have noticed, when starting this, I am alerted on a change of a reg key:
Is this a portablilty issue or is this normal?
EDIT: Same behaivior (black image) on vista 32
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
I was finally able to reproduce your bug on a XP 32-bit system, and add a report of my own: Repeat Last sometimes doesn't repeat the last capture, but the one before that (in my case, the last capture was the full desktop, but Repeat Last repeated the capture before, which was a fixed rectangle). It looks like a MWSnap issue, probably a bug I can't do anything about.
With regards to the Registry key, I don't think that's an issue; I've never noticed MWSnap Portable leaving anything behind. I'm not sure why it would be creating/modifying that key; are you sure it's not just reading the key? That would be considered normal behavior, just MWSnap checking to see if it's starting with Windows.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
looks like it may be a pre-fetch key?
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
Nope, this Registry key is in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, which is the Registry location for startup items."The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Not just me then
Nothing that can really be done then I suppose...
The reg key...
I *think* (after watching the location in regedit - refreshing after each action) that it is actually just checking whether it has a reg key there.
No key was created or left, so I don't think it is a bad thing
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
Good, no key creation = no problem.
It looks like, aside from that MWSnap bug, everything's all good. Between that issue and the necessity for an online installer, I'll probably pull this from the "Ready for release" list, but I don't think anything else needs to be done.
Thanks for the reports, and for the follow-up!
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Probably another issue with MWSnap itself, but it doesn't like the %PAL:CurrentDrive% syntax which is generated in the Auto-Saving section of the settings.
It does work when it is changed to a letter
The error:
Just have to remember to change it if you are using auto save.
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
I'm fairly sure that's due to a typo in
…\App\AppInfo\MWSnapPortable.ini, on line 17 cause AFAIK PAL doesn't use a%PAL:CurrentDrive%environment variable.Line 17 says
Replace=%PAL:CurrentDrive%\,but it should say:
See The Manual for details.
~3D1T0R
That doesn't work.
I realised that it is reading it from the reg file:
\MWSnapPortable\Data\settings\mwsnap_portable.reg
The key line is there:
Changing that, to Drive, still has the same effect. The drive letter is not being replaced, and MWSnap cannot handle the PAL syntax.
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
In the Reg file, replace %PAL:CurrentDrive%\ to X:\ and it'll work next run. X must be whatever your current drive is.
...but wouldn't that mess it up later when I use it on another pc which uses a different drive letter?
I thought the whole PAL:Drive thing was how it coped with the letter switching?
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman
So long as the launcher no longer writes CurrentDrive, it will continue to work, no matter where you use the app
… find it when it looks for X:\
With %PAL:CurrentDrive% in that file, it's searching for your last drive (I'll call this X:) followed by a \, and replacing it with %PAL:CurrentDrive%\ (since %PAL:CurrentDrive% isn't defined, it writes it verbatim), but if you write %PAL:Drive% it instead updates it to the correct new drive letter (I'll call this Y:) thus where it's currently getting updated X:\ to %PAL:CurrentDrive%\ it will instead get updated from X:\ to Y:\, however the corrected launcher will not update where it says %PAL:CurrentDrive%\ to Y:\ (because it's looking for X:\) thus YOU must fix it (just this once) and the corrected launcher will keep it fixed forever more.
~3D1T0R
%PAL:Drive% and %PAL:CurrentDrive% should not be used that way. They are env. variables that should be used to replace strings "in" the reg file (or an ini) with FileWriteN. The reg file should therefore contain a X:\ and be replaced with an Y:\ (Letters are examples) by the launcher on start.-edit-
Oops, misread.
%PAL:CurrentDrive" does not exist for the launcher, that's what you meant by your post from yesterday. I think the answers are too fragmented by now, giving a solution only combining the different aspects... (Change line 17 to Replace=%PAL:Drive% AND manually adjusting the drive letter to the currently used)
There's %PAL:Drive% and %PAL:LastDrive% which will both contain the drive letter and a colon.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
As 3D1T0R and Gord said, it's a typo in the launcher, and their solution for fixing your specific issue is dead on. Just make sure you change both the .reg file and the launcher, or the fix won't hold.
I'll fix the typo and upload a new build tomorrow. Sorry about that, and thanks for pointing it out.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
Updated to version 3.0.0.74 Development Test 7 on 2011-05-10; see above for details.
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
The auto-save option shows the correct drive letter now
This is easily my most favourite screenshot app, so thanks for making it portable
“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”Richard Feynman