I am trying to parse an ESC/POS file which is created by the POS Printer Driver and display it on windows. Unfortunately I couldn't find any parser / renderer for that and I've been researching this for 2 weeks now.
All the existing solutions are build for the other way around, meaning - for creating ESC/POS files but I need the opposite direction which is taking an existing ESC/POS file and display it in my windows application.
Does anyone have an idea how this can be done? Thanks!
The language is dead simple and well documented. Of course, there may be extensions for newer printers or other vendors, but in two weeks you could have written a parser.
Related
I used Sphinx4 for some time which really fits my needs. I load a recognizer, pass the audio data to it and use the recognized String in my application.
Right now I'm working on a C application (C++ is unfortunately not an option) where I need something similar and thought that I could use Sphinx3 which is written in C.
The problem is that I don't really know how it is used inside an application and there is no "Hello World"-example as Sphinx4 provides it.
I already compiled and installed sphinxbase and sphinx3 and now I can include the sphinx header files in my application.
Now to my questions:
Is there a "simple" and well documented example application that uses sphinx3 from a C environment?
How can I load up the sphinx3 engine and call a recognizer with my binary audio data?
OR: Do I need to start an application like "sphinx3_decode" and call it from my own application? If so, is there an example application for that?
Thank you in advance!
Best regards,
Robert
It's not recommended to use Sphinx3. From the website:
Sphinx-3 is CMU’s large vocabulary speech recognition system. It’s
older C based decoder that we continue to maintain. It’s planned to
make it obsolete in the future, it’s still most accurate decoder for
large vocabulary tasks. We are using it as a baseline to check the
recognizer accuracy. This decoder is only intended for researchers who
want to evaluate bleeding edge methods in ASR like tree search method.
If you need to use a decoder you should use pocketsphinx. You can find the tutorial and the API documentation on the website
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/tutorialpocketsphinx
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/api/pocketsphinx/pocketsphinx_8h.html
I Recently worked on an Intregated Project on Punjabi Language.
Here are some steps that we used...
First we recorded the punjabi audio data in a vaccumed room in 16000 hz sample rate.
Then we took the recorded data and segmented it using Praat Software into small wav and raw files of 2 to 30 sec and saved them in a folder named train.
Then we took a system having Linux ie. Ubuntu and installed the required plug in like autoconfig, automake etc and untarred Sphinx 3 along with 4 packages that are cmuclmtk, pocketsphinx, sphinxbase, sphinxtrain.
Then according to the small wav files we made many files like transcription, dic, phone, filler, file id, ccs etc.
Then we opened the terminal and typed –"sphinx_fe” to check the whether the sphinx is functional or not.
Then we created an folder named “man” and then in terminal wrote its path.
Then we run the command- “sphinxtrain –t man setup”. By running this command an folder named “etc” will be formed in “man” folder containing files “feat_paramas” & ”config”.
Changes were made in the in the config file according to our data.
Then we moved all the files that we created before ie. transcription, dic in the etc folder in that is located in man folder.
Then we placed ‘lang1.sh” script in etc folder and remaining 4 scripts in man folder.
Then we opened the path for etc folder in terminal and run command- “lang1.sh”
Then we run series of commands in terminal – “mfcgen2.sh” then “verify3.sh” then “hmm4.sh” and at last “end-test.sh” to get the final result.
Rest if you have worked on Sphinx 4 then you may know about the files that are mentioned above in the steps. I hope this helps you.
I have a legacy system which used to run on dos. It is an ERP system for retail stores (fashion). It think it stores it's data in flat files.
I have files ending with *.KEY and other files ending with *.D00 (counting up).
I think the key files hold the key informationen and the D-Files hold some data ... there are alot D77 files...
As far as my investigation concerns this is not dfb or foxpro it could proprietary...
The company who wrote it is out of business of course so no chance for support or any hints.
When I open these files in vim or other editors I get some binary signs and some text... I tryed it in hex mode but still nothing to use...
Is there any chance I can dump out the data... in csv, ascii, xml?
I am pretty sure that this is not a standard format. Can someone point me in a direction how those data were stored back in the days and how could I make them read-able...
Any tools, tips or tricks?
// EDIT
After some time I made some progress and can now post some details which I did not now of back then and made a good answer impossible.
I asume that the dos system was written in visual cobol and that the files could be b-tree files stored in ISAM format. I assume the closet thing I could provide is, that there is a possibility that the format is C-ISAM.
How can I access / view or modify these files... C#, JAVA, ruby.... everything new age language would be cool... I am not sure if I can handle cobol... It would be great to have a converter or a viewer tool preferable opensource...
Hope this clearifies more my question =)
OpenCOBOL has a very active user group. The language itself is free and runs on Linux and Windows and perhaps MacOSX. Have a chat to the user group there; they may be able to help.
Peachtree Accounting Software used those file extensions back in 1992.
Which configuration management tool is the best for FPGA designs, specifically Xilinx FPGA's programmed with VHDL and C for the embedded (microblaze) software?
There isn't a "best", but configuration control solutions that work for software will be OK for FPGAs - the flow is very similar. I use Subversion at work and git at home, and wrote a little on 'why' at my blog.
In other answers, binary files keep getting mentioned - the only binary files I deal with are compilation products (equivalent to software object and executables), so I don't keep them in the version control repository, I keep a zipfile for each release/tag that I create with all the important (and irritatingly slow to reproduce) ones in.
I don't think it much matters what revision control tool you use -- anything that you would consider good in general will probably be OK here. I personally use Git for a sizable Verilog + software project, and I'm quite happy with it.
What will bite you in the ass -- no matter what version control you use -- is this: The Xilinx tools don't generally respect a clean division between "input" and "output" or between (human edited) "source" and (opaque) "binary." Many of the tools like to store some state information, like a last-run time or a hash value, in their "input" files meaning that you'll get lots of false changes. Coregen does this to its .xco files, and project navigator (the main GUI) does this to its .xise files. Also, both tools have a habit of inserting or removing lines for default-valued parameters, seemingly at random.
The biggest issue I've encountered is the work-flow with Coregen: In many cases, at least one of the following is true:
You have to manually edit the HDL files produced by Coregen.
The parameters that went into Coregen are stored somewhere other than the .xco file (usually in what looks like an output file).
You have to copy-and-paste the output from Coregen into your top-level design.
This means that there is no single logical source/master location for your input to the core-generating process. So even if you have the .xco file under version control, there's no expectation that the design you're running corresponds to it. If you re-generate "the same" core from its nominal inputs, you probably won't get the right outputs. And don't even think about merging.
I suggest CM tools that support version labeling and binary files. Most Software CM applications are fine with ASCII text files. They may just store a "difference" file rather than the entire file for updates.
My recommendations: PVCS, ClearCase and Subversion. DO NOT USE Microsoft SourceSafe. I don't like it because it only supports one label per revision.
I've seen Perforce and Subversion used in a couple of FPGA-intensive companies.
We use Perforce, and its great. You can have your code that lives in Linux-land checked in side-by-side with your Specs and Docs that live in Windows-land. And you get branching, labels, etc.
I've seen everything from Clearcase to RCS used, and it is really all okay for this kind of thing. The important thing is to get a good set of check-in policies established for your group, and make sure they stick to it.
And have automated nightly regressions. That way, when someone breaks the rules, they can be identified and publicly shamed.
I have personally used Perforce, Subverion, git and ClearCase for FPGA projects. Since VHDL and C are just text files, any works fine. However be sure to capture the other project and contraint files and any libraries you use.
Also think about what to do with the outputs, e.g. log file and bitstreams. Both tend to be big and the bitstreams are binaries.
Previously I used Subversion but have switched to git two years ago. Git handles FPGA design files just as well as it handles every other text and binary file. Git is all you need for version controlling your files and artifacts.
For building the designs, I recommend just using a single ISE project called "ise" (living in a subdirectory called "ise/"). You can take a look at my (very modest) FPGA open-source project on github for the file layout. I don't bother storing the ISE files at all since they are easy to regenerate. The only things I save are the Verilog files and some ISIM waveform config files. In other projects that use coregen I save the coregen.cgp project file and all of the *.xco scripts for regenerating cores. Then I use a Makefile for actually running coregen on the *.xco files. There are a few other Xilinx-specific files you should version control too: *.ucf, *.coe, *.xcf, etc.
I experimented with using Makefiles and the Xilinx command-line tools but found that ISE did a much better job tracking dependencies and calling the tools with the right arguments. Just don't make the mistake of trying to version control your ise/ project files or you will go mad. Xilinx has something like 300 different file types which change every release. If you want to save a file, you can try the ISE project file itself with a .xise extension. Anything that is hard to recreate, like the golden bitfile that you know works and took 6 hours to build, you might want to copy that and configuration manage it explicitly.
I have a requirement where my client want to install a custom "Print to File" printer (apparently MS has an SDK for this?). They want to be able to install this as a kind of "application" so that if someone chooses to print to this printer, they have to answer a few questions, and the file gets "printed" to a path of our choosing. (we will then do some other things with the file such as rename it and SFTP it)
I have tried googling, looking for things such as "customize print to file" and I have found nothing. Does anyone have any experience with this and can give me a kick in the right direction?
EDIT: I would rather have a c# oriented solution but I am willing to take anything right now.
Edit 2: The idea is for this "custom print driver" is for a document imaging company to provide an easy method for their customers to store/archive documents. The idea, is that the customer, if they want to store/archive a document, they would print, from standard windows applications such as Word, Excell, Acrobat Reader, Web Pages, etc., to the "company X" printer driver. When doing so, the document would get "printed" to a file in a specific location that another application (which has a filewatcher service on it, which would rename it and send it to the SFTP server), knows to watch. The document that is printed to the file, should ideally also be able to come out on paper (AKA just like normal). When printing to the "Custom print driver", we also need to have a form filled in which would provide meta-tags for the archiving system, which would also be uploaded to the document imaging system.
I am not looking to recreate a printing application, nor am I looking to add "printing" into a custom application. This needs to work at the Windows level.
I have no problems with the SFTP, FileWatcher, Alchemy integration (the document archiving application) or the document renaming portion. It's the "custom print driver" that I am having issues with. This is all compounded by the fact that when installing the application, I need to automatically install the "custom print driver", and configure it during the install process. Essentially the solution needs to be installed as a printer available under "My Printers" and should be available for any type of document, Word, Excell, PDF, etc. Oh, and it needs to be availabe for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 . . . . :(
Thanks in advance for everyones help. I have a feeling that this one is going to be a doozy :(
Hah! I knew I'd seen at least one...
ActMask Virtual Printer Driver
Can't make a recommendation of any sort not having tried this particular toolkit - but it would appear to me to bear a strong resemblence to the sort of solution you're after.
What kind of customization you are talking about? Can't you use the .Net inbuilt one?
I've an application, that uses encrypted (txt) files to store data. After investigating the decompiled assembly I concluded that it's a file of some DBMS. So how can find out which DBMS is this application using to store it's data, so that I can attach that file to the correct DBMS.
This is little application and there is no license problem. I can just ask the owner to gimme the data, but just curious to solve this myself.
MORE INFO:
Platform is Windows, and after trying couple of decompilers I concluded that it WAS written in Visual C++. However I couldn't fully decompile this exe, otherwise I just could find out it from the source code.
A couple ideas.
If opening the file in a HEX editor doesn't give you any information (like a magic identifier at the start of the file, which you can pop into google, then:
Use the depends tool from microsoft to grab a list of the DLLs being loaded by the application. Chances are whatever DBMS it's using is contained in an external library.
If the first two suggestions yield nothing, load the executable into IDA pro freeware and have a look at the code which is creating these files.