Repository Applications Update Information

I updated the latest AIMP to check if the SetupSilent.exe file exists as when you did a regen it would throw an error. I also adopted the x64 only approach with my future apps as I don't intend on using 32 bit for anything myself anymore.

 

Finally found an image compressor software that is free and rivals JPEGmini Pro (the latter losing activation, whichever version I try). It also has dark mode which I enabled by default. It can do jpg, png, webp.

Caesium.Image.Compressor_v2.5.0_ppApp

 

Thanks, @Trouba ! Love the Dark Mode. By the way, on their website, they say that Caesium Image Compressor is only for Win10 1809 and later. Is that correct, or just false requirements? If it is correct, shouldn't the ppApp be named differently to indicate that?

 

Actually, looking at it I see it has Qt6 files in its dir, so it would not work on Win7 for example. We should probably just add NT10 in the name even if it may not work on Win10 versions pre-1809 (LTSB for example).

 

Looking further here - https://github.com/Lymphatus/caesium-image-compressor - it seems that its requirements are _Win10_x64, so I modified the name in the repo. There is an older, portable, x86 version (v1.7.0) available here - https://www.fosshub.com/Caesium-Image-Compressor-old.html - from about 9 years ago, no dark mode, etc, if someone needs it for Win 7/8 and/or 32 bit OS.

Note: Please remind me. As Pacav has mentioned, we get forgetful in our old age. I know we've used the _NT10 designation in the past, but the newer apps are marked _Win10. Is there a difference, or have we just standardized on _Win10?

 

I'm not always sure what to name it either. _NT10_ is more inclusive but probably least meaningful to most people. But I'd almost want to use _Win10+_ to indicate Win10 and up (as in, not Win10 only).

 

figure 1

On the setups v23.7.17.0 editor if NT10 is selected, as shown in figure 1, then '_Win10_xxApp.' is added to the filename i think making it easy to read.
Perhaps in the future add an extra entry of win11 to the editor, replacing NT5 would be a good canidate as not many apps are created for XP.

looking up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT it includes win 11 as part of NT10.

 

I've uploaded qBittorrent_v4.5.5_Win7+_Dark_x64_ppApp.apz. According to https://www.qbittorrent.org/news, this will be the last release of the v4.5.x (Qt5 based) series. All future versions will be Qt6 based, so will require Win10+ x64. There is already a qBittorrent v4.6.0RC2 release available here, but since it is officially considered unstable I figured I'd wait for the stable release.

Reviewing my past releases of this app I was reminded of its current "limitations" we discussed earlier:

Going further back in this thread, I discovered that @The Freezer had already solved this issue with qBittorrent_v4.2.1_DualArch_ppApp.apz almost 4 years ago using PortableApps methods as Glenn suggested. I'm not sure why its methods were not used in later releases. I'll look at reinstating its methods when the stable release of v4.6.x is available.

 

We generally haven't used PortableApps as basis for ppApps, but in some cases it could make sense to do so. I'm guessing it's particularly important in the case of qBittorrent?

Most if not all ppApps that have "Portable" in their names are based on PortableApps or similar methods, just to distinguish them from regular ppApps (because most of them are not based on PA or similar methods as said).

Generally I prefer to load exe's of apps directly, not to have a x86 exe loader to then load the x64 app, etc., unless it's very important to have some config file in the app dir or otherwise a certain app can't be made into a regular ppApp due to dependencies, etc.

Further, there are apps that provide their own portable install options, like SoftMaker Office or Mp3tag for example, but in those cases I have not added "Portable" in the name. So really when ppApps carry "Portable" in their names they are largely based on PA or similar methods. So if I were to make qBittorrent based on the PA method, I would add "Portable" in the name to distinguish it from the regular method of making ppApps.

But it's not perfectly adhered to; for example recently I upped SRWare.Iron.Portable ppApp but it is based on their own portable method -- but then it is similar to PAs method in that they use a loader so it's more iffy in that case.

 

Thanks for the clarification of your methods, @Trouba. They make sense. I, also, prefer not to use a loader and as such I typically stay away from PortableApps. And I had not paid attention and didn't realize why "portable" was included in some ppApp names. I was thinking "Aren't all ppApps portable?"

In the case of qBittorrent, it is not required to have a "true" portable version. But the way it is:

And just using PortableApps methods alone apparently isn't enough since:

I'll have to look closely and figure out exactly what he ended up doing. But I haven't done any of that yet. So when I updated my qBit install to v4.5.5, I had to redo some of my qBit settings, though it did keep most of them, or rather I was using many of the default ones anyway.

For anyone using qBittorrent who uses the default settings, downloads complete files using either torrent files or magnet links, then deletes the torrent when done, the existing later apz releases of qBit work just fine as is and you will have no problems whatsoever.

The real inconvenience for me was when I updated to Win10. I use qBit to download many of my audiobooks. While most of the books download completely and you're good to go, some of the books use torrents that can be years old, and they are not online continuously. Eventually, many of them will download, so my client often has many dozens of books in a partially downloaded state. Well, even though my torrent folder was on a separate disk, I forgot that I needed to backup the AppData\Local and AppData\Roaming qBittorrent folders. So when I switched to Win10, and started my qBit ppApp, it didn't have any record of any of my settings, nor the status of any of my partially completed torrent downloads or files I was seeding. If I had saved my AppData I could have easily picked back up where I left off. Or if qBit kept such data in its program folder, or data folder, or at least had the option to do so, that would have been a huge convenience for me.

But having the app in PortableApp form is not required. I just need to remember to backup the AppData, then put it back after any update or reinstall. It's not the only app I need to remember to do that for.

 

updated the free alarm clock to v5,2 which now has a dark mode

 

Regarding all my efforts to force QBittorent into a ppApp; which ultimately I had abandoned. Ironically I had RTFM for it. LOL

Edit: I'll upload my latest ppApp (Legacy) here in a bit.

Done: qBittorrent_v4.5.5_LT2_NT6+_x64_ppApp​

Edit 2: For anyone interested in testing a BitTorrent v2 implementation (or a client using libtorrent-2.0), you can find test torrents here:

• v2 only torrent

HTML:

magnet:?xt=urn:btmh:1220caf1e1c30e81cb361b9ee167c4aa64228a7fa4fa9f6105232b28ad099f3a302e&dn=bittorrent-v2-test

• hybrid torrent (backwards compatible)

HTML:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:631a31dd0a46257d5078c0dee4e66e26f73e42ac&xt=urn:btmh:1220d8dd32ac93357c368556af3ac1d95c9d76bd0dff6fa9833ecdac3d53134efabb&dn=bittorrent-v1-v2-hybrid-test

 

Added "SendTo" support via SetupS to Caesium Image Compressor ppApp some time ago, which is handy and I forgot to mention. But more than that, you can right-click a folder with SendTo as well and it will detect all jpg/png/webp in that folder and its subfolders and reduce them in size. By default, the app saves the compressed images to a different folder and with the suffix "_caesium", but under the Output tab you can change this to "Same folder as input" and delete the Suffix text box and then it will replace the images in the folder(s). Just FYI as I found it to be a handy feature. Next release I'll change the webp quality to 100% as well as I did with the other formats.

 

I am busy re-installing but I'd like to mention to whoever is doing the new qBitTorrent that the profile.7z isn't extracting post install and is only copying across (for me), I manually extracted mine to allow dark theme, but it will need fixing

 

I think it's Freezer's release, mine was the one a few days before it (the dual-arch one).

 

Yep. Guilty. I had added the themes from Trouba's release to qB's "portable-mode" not noticing they don't get installed on previous installations.

I like that Enhanced Edition qBittorrent. It's pretty slick. It has better tracker/peer stuff and QT5 for the support of Windows 7/8. Libtorrent v2 and I2P are disabled for some reason. Not a big issue since almost no other clients implement them.

Edit: Okay, I think I fixed it for existing installations.