GoldMine macros let you automate the more tedious sequences of key strokes and clicks you do within GoldMine.
Here’s an easy to follow, pictorial tutorial on how to make one of these fellows.
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Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as Automation, GoldMine at 2:54 PM MST

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Yes, it turns out you can give the GoldMine executable (gmw7.exe for me) some parameters when you launch it. Some of them are even useful! Who knew?

Doug Castell says in this forum post:

Here are the ones I know off the top of my head:
/u: pass the username
/p: pass the password
/b: pass a folder in which remote installation files reside. Legacy
feature, no longer applicable(?)
/c: pass a folder in which contact files reside: example:
/c:c:\apps\goldmine\common\
/t: ‘thin client mode’. removes a number of bandwidth-heavy operations.
most appropriate for thin client users (thin bandwidth network/vpn, graphon,
term server)
/m: pass a recorded goldmine macro number to run
/s: run in silent server mode. options include /s:DDE and /s:GOLDSYNC

Please comment if you can think of any others. Of course it’s never been documented before!

As an example here’s how I get GoldMine to run a macro (even works if GoldMine is already running.)
J:\gmw7.exe /m:803

803 is the number at the end of the macro file in the J:\macros directory (with J:\ being GoldMines system directory for me.) The full name of that file is gpinero.803.

This GoldMine support page also lists a few more switches for you.

Tags: GoldMine, Macro, GoldMine Macros, GoldMine Help

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as Automation, GoldMine at 1:47 PM MST

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First the Background:
A while back I wrote an insane program to automate Omnipage 14 (an OCR program) mostly via GUI automation. The urge to do this was caused by Omnipage not handling more than 300 files on its own before dying, and the lack of a better solution in the market place.
So Omnipage was very tempermental and quit often for all kinds of unexplained reasons. So my solution was to feed Omnipage 3 files at once and when it finished OCR’ing the 3 files kill all of its processes. Then give it 3 new files and relaunch it and so on.

Once I had completed the programming I set it off on it’s own to work on a network drive full of ~30,000 files needing to be OCR’d.

1 month goes by …

I come back to check on it and here is what I see on the screen!

Apparently killing the processes didn’t allow some Omnipage process to clear its system tray icon. So as the headline promised here is at least one way that killing a process is harmful (and humorous). I’m sure there are plenty of more serious reasons though. (Yes, moving the mouse over these icons caused them to dissapear, so I spent a challenging 30 minutes randomly moving my mouse around the system tray and exterminating these things … )

A Better Option Than Killing
After that experience, here is the method I switched to. After Omnipage finishes its 3 files, I kindly request that it close itself using Python’s Win32 extensions. Here is the code (mostly copied from their win32 examples):

import sys
import win32process, win32api, win32pdhutil, win32con, win32security
import win32event, msvcrt, win32gui

def get_all_windows():
    """Returns dict with window desc and hwnd"""
    def _MyCallback( hwnd, extra ):
        """Helper function"""
        hwnds, classes = extra
        hwnds.append(hwnd)
        classn = win32gui.GetClassName(hwnd)
        if not classn in classes:
            classes[classn] = []
        classes[classn].append( hwnd )
    windows = []
    classes = {}
    win32gui.EnumWindows(_MyCallback, (windows, classes))
    return classes

def request_windows_to_close(list_window_descs_to_close):
    """Send me a list of stuff to close such as:stuff_to_close=['OP15_OmniPage_Agent_Class']
    run get_all_windows() to see what's available"""
    classes=get_all_windows()
    for windesc_to_close in list_window_descs_to_close:
        if windesc_to_close in classes:
            for hwnd in classes[windesc_to_close]:
                win32gui.PostMessage( hwnd, win32con.WM_CLOSE, 0, 0 )
                print 'requested closure with', windesc_to_close
        else:
            print 'Did not find a window desc. as',windesc_to_close

Life is good now I think

Points of discussion:

1. Did I miss an OCR product that I can just give it a directory with up to 60K files and have it OCR them into PDF’s?
2. Is there a programmatic way to ask Windows to refresh the system tray (Don’t say moving the mouse programmatically over the system, that’s cheating.)
3. I considered using the Omnipage SDK instead of GUI automation but it looked too expensive and hard to learn. Has anyone had experience with that method?

Tags: Python, win32, python win32, Python for Windows, Omnipage, GUI Automation, Automation, WTF, Windows 2000, System tray, icon, WM_CLOSE, win32gui, OCR, Autoit

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as GUI Automation, win32, Python, Automation at 12:10 PM MST

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Here you will learn how to write a working program to utilize part of the FedEx API. Although the program we will write looks short, it represents hours of trial and error, 5 support requests, and a lively discussion on the Python mailing list! So make sure you savor this advice thouroughly

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Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as Python, Automation, Web Services at 1:05 AM MST

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FedEx offers an API that lets you do some pretty interesting things such as getting ship rate estimates, checking service availability, the all important printing shipping labels, and more.
I’m hoping this short guide will get you up and running with the FedEx API as quickly as possible.
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Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) as Python, Automation, Web Services at 8:36 PM MST

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