Geoff,
There will be a way to keep most of the programs working. There are two problems at least. First ActiveState is going to a new system that forces you to pay a monthly fee to use their IDE, this is not so terrible. I have a trial version and it can be installed during the trial period and can be used until it needs to be installed again. However although the current version works (the last one stopped due to windows update shit) they say it has time bombs in it that will stop it from working when windows changes some security shit. I can always make edits to the code without the IDE however I wrap them into the executables with with a program that works with their IDE. I can probably figure out how to do it separately.
Of course it would make sense if Microsoft gave you a warning and let you run wrapped scripts instead of making the decision to not allow them at all. This makes too much sense so they probably won't but it there is backlash they might. There are a lot of big companies using these types of programs.
Next, it seems that Microsoft is going to stop allowing wrapped programs to work because they can look like malware which they allow to work anyway. So even if i can fix problems with the programs if they show up, they will stop running on newer versions of windows at some time. You can run all of my programs in Virtual Box. I use it for running Wayne's DOS stuff. It is really not a big deal other than having to copy stuff into and out of a shared folder. I suggest that you set up Virtual Box for XP while it can be done and backup the installation.
It is also possible to run the programs as the original Perl scripts. To do this you need to install the Perl interpreter on your computer. It is free. The problem is that you need all the modules the script uses and the path and environmental variables need to be set up correctly. Programs that have bound files will be another problem. Lyric Adder does. This would be the dictionary. As long as you have your own copy in the working folder it should run as a script. If it gets to the point that this is necessary I can probably figure out what needs to be where and explain how to put it there. I am not sure but i think that if you put the script and all the libraries in the same folder and install the Perl interpreter that it mostly will work. Might even work for bound executables but those are not used in any of the program other than ones I wrote to run Wayne's stuff.
Best regards, Spencer Chase
67550 Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
Spencer@spencerserolls.com
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------ Original Message ------
Sent: 2/25/2019 11:41:48 PM
Subject: RE: [disklavier] spencers utilities
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Hi Spencer,
This is bad news. Your programs that I use are Lyric Adder, MidiMod2, On_off-gradual pedalling and Midi_equalizer (plus others occasionally). Will these programs be affected?
Kind regards
Geoff Ward
Anyone who uses my utilities for MIDI files and other purposes should be warned that at some time (maybe soon) they will stop working on windows. So if you find them useful and want to continue using them it will be necessary to run them on older or not updated versions of windows. It should be possible to run them in Virtual Box. I use this for all sorts of antique programs that I can not run in Windows. It is also becoming very difficult to even update my programs and soon will become impossible.
I have posted a warning on the download page of my web site. If there are any programs that you use and that might have bugs, now is the time to ask for them to be fixed because it will soon be impossible. If I had a lot of time I could convert the programs to be web based but as far as I know there is not enough demand and it would be a lot of work.