Build 4.5.0.90 of xlsgen adds a new property to pictures, the ability to set a RGB-based chroma key in order to make transparent all pixels in that picture with that RGB color. This works with all Excel files.

Here is how it works. Assuming you have a picture to be inserted, where you know in advance that the red color is used as chroma key :

(C++ code follows)

xlsgen::IXlsPicturePtr picture1 = worksheet->Pictures->Add( L"input\\a.gif" );
picture1->LeftColumn = 1;
picture1->TopCell = 1;
picture1->ChromaKeyColor = 0xFF0000; // RED chroma key



Setting the chroma key color lets one see through the picture

extrait : "Microsoft’s Defender software will become available for Android and iOS devices later this year."

Translation : since this sniffing tool does so great for the NSA with Windows, it's now poised to become available on Android and iOS, therefore potentially claiming virtually 100% of connected devices out there. Well done NSA ! erm Microsoft !!

Build 4.5.0.89 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to the calculation of a special operand used in the TEXT() function. It's the case where the operand uses a percent-formatted number.

Build 4.5.0.88 of xlsgen improves how linking behaves in duplicate scenarios involving external workbooks.

Before this build, any link from an external workbook, for instance a chart series formula, would be expanded to literals and copied over to the destination sheet. Beginning with this build, links are brought as is, as long as the links depend only on the sheet being duplicated. When the link depends on a sheet not being copied over, the link is expanded as literals and brought over as literals.

This build also exposes the text boxes collection inside charts. So far only pictures and vector shapes were exposed (for querying purposes).

Build 4.5.0.87 of xlsgen adds support for copying hyperlinks (url, file, sheet location) stored in text boxes, vector shapes and pictures in duplicate scenarios.

Pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas l'implication du fait que l'entreprise privée fournisseuse de certificat de chiffrement était en fait possédée par la CIA, c'est qu'un certificat est comme la clef de votre porte. Un tiers qui fabrique cette clef spécialement pour vous ne devrait conserver aucun exemplaire. Mais en informatique, c'est le contraire qui se produit. L'entreprise garde un double de la clef.
Et comme par ailleurs la CIA aspire les tuyaux internet 24h/24. Les deux mis ensemble, c'est la possibilité d'ouvrir n'importe quelle porte dont la clef a été fournie par ce fabricant.
Or, comble d'ironie, cette entreprise suisse Crypto AG, avait tout d'une superbe success story informatique.
Trop beau pour être vrai.
Il serait peut-être temps que, même pour les choses les plus simples, les pays qui ont des choses à dire sans que cela ne se voit, développement leur propre système de chiffrement de bout en bout. Y en a un peu marre de cet amateurisme.

With all what was done by major social networks to so-called curb online disinformation, especially during elections, we can now safely state that on the one hand, we have given more power than ever to social networks, letting them censor content as they wish, by that I mean without a juridicial conclusion, and on the other hand, the mess regarding what's fake what's true what's information and what's not, that mess has only got bigger not smaller. Nothing is fixed and social networks have now more power than ever on freedom of expression of individuals. This is, inadvertenly, exactly what you thought would have happened if you wear a tin foil hat. Freedom of expression for media and the wealthy is higher than ever.
I can only regret that many of so-called open society supporters have contributed to this. Those open society fans are what your enemies, apparently, and you're better off without their interfering.

Build 4.5.0.86 of xlsgen is a fix pack for charts :

- when duplicating charts, improved accuracy of chart formatting details such as chart XY type combination, axis type, font details

- also when duplicating charts, make sure to copy text boxes, vector shapes, pictures and charts (both inside charts)

- when reading existing charts, better read font details and better read of leader lines in the case of a bar/column chart

If you were wondering whether or not the search bar (in the task bar) of Windows 10 phones home or not, by that meaning Microsoft listens to your every search request, you've got the answer this week.

One of their listening servers went down, and everyone in the world noticed that the search bar in Windows 10 did not work at all.

This was not due to a failed Windows update, and this did not get fixed with a Windows update. To fix it, Microsoft actually restarted their listening servers.

In fact, this piles up with a software programming mistake because when a server request goes unfulfilled, that should not have any effect on the local search that is performed as well.

Windows 10 listens to your every search request, even if you thought these were local search requests.

And god only knows what they do with it : law enforcements, spies, NSA, sabotage, espionage, marketing, profiling. You name it.

In other words, Windows 10 is not your friend. That is a tool for a third party. And it will stab you in the back in the long run.

Note, for most users, this is it, and there is no way around unless Microsoft is forced to by governements out there. Don't hold your breath, Microsoft should have brought to justice every single year and they have been brought just a couple of times.

For power users, you have this registry trick that disables the listening server lookup. Here it goes :

Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Search

On the right side, you've got a number of keys. Set the BingSearchEnabled key to 0. If this key does not exist, create it as a DWORD32 value and set it as 0.

Restart Explorer.exe (or reboot because restarting apps is now needlessly complicated and explorer.exe no longer restarts itself) and you're done.

Si vous n'êtes pas éditeur de logiciels, vous découvrez ces jours-ci que le fameux (et gratuit) anti-virus Avast était en fait un aspirateur à données personnelles, prélevant et revendant les visites web, notamment.

Si vous étiez éditeur de logiciels, vous savez depuis un petit moment que les entreprises derrière les anti-virus sont des racailles et des lâches. Car ces gens se permettent de créer des faux positifs sur des logiciels, privant ainsi leurs éditeurs de business. Et bien sûr, sans jamais prévenir les éditeurs en question.

Manquerait plus maintenant qu'on apprenne que la NSA (et d'autres, suivez mon regard) se cache derrière un autre anti-virus "populaire" installé de force sur les ordinateurs.

A bon entendeur. Quand vous achetez un ordinateur, la première action doit être, une fois le système installé, de supprimer les logiciels qui se nomment eux-même anti-virus. De toute façon, si vous êtes menacés par un virus, la plupart du temps, les anti-virus n'auront pas encore la signature du virus.

However unbelievable as it sounds, you will simply get no sound after cloning your main hard drive and installing it in the computer.

Yes, we are in 2020, and still getting this sort of mess. Thanks Microsoft, no, thanks.

Here is how to fix it :

1) Go in the Windows device manager, and uninstall your sound card or PCI sound.

2) Start the registry editor (involves a prompt) then expand the following registry key :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\controlSet001\Services\HDAudBus

On the right side of the expanded key, there is a "Start" value defaulting to 4 (in fact anything not 3). Modify it to 3.

3) Quit the registry. Reboot. Go in the Windows device manager, and install your sound card or PCI sound. This time, Windows finds the driver AND manages to load it properly.

Sound is back !!

L'année 2020 démarre en fanfare et jamais la consultation des sites web n'aura été aussi pénible. Jamais depuis 24 ans nous n'avons eu un tel empilement de pop-ups, prompts et autres bannières qui obstruent le contenu de la moindre page web. Jamais, qui plus est, les pages web n'auront été aussi lourdes à charger, avec bien souvent 1MO rien que pour la partie HTML, et donc avant toutes les ressources javascript externes et toutes les images. Sans parler des vidéos ou animations qui démarrent toutes seules.

Et enfin, le pompon des navigateurs web, entre les uns qui cessent de fonctionner si votre système d'exploitation est réputé trop vieux : par exemple Google a annoncé que Chrome ne sera bientôt plus supporté sur Windows 7, sans aucune raison. Et de l'autre la création de nouveaux super cookies qui rendent obsolète et impossible la maîtrise de sa vie privée dans sa navigation internet, même lorsqu'on sait ce qu'on fait.

Absurde, voire choquant.

Ce web est prêt à imploser désormais.

Un hasard ou une volonté sous-jacente ? Un malheureux concours de circonstances ou une savante reprise en mains par les puissants du seul outil qui leur avait échappé depuis 24 ans ?

Je pose la question. Non sans être quelque peu dubitatif. En principe, un citoyen du web, bref tout le monde, devrait finir par boycotter une telle chose. Je ne propose pas de revenir à la transmission en code morse, mais une chose est sure, il va falloir changer les choses.

Microsoft resurects life into browser by forking Chromium. It should be of no surprise to any Microsoft critics that anything these days coming from Microsoft is doomed at birth, and that Microsoft has to reuse popular software in order to claim any relevance. But Chromium is not just an API or layer, it's a number of such things (almost an OS in itself), and that should get Microsoft employees worried about the fate of it all. I don't think any divide and conquer plot à la Microsoft is going to work. People out there are informed enough to let this happen again.
So here we are with a not-designed-here web browser bound to be used by corporate suits out there for a long time.

As a side note, it makes the life of hackers much easier. Hack through the chrome code tree, and you can phish a ton of people then.

On nous annonce l'arrivée du ray tracing sur les smartphones. C'est, quand j'entends ça, pour moi, le début de la fin pour les jeux vidéos. Une "industrie" ne peut en effet pas baser son évolution sur le ray tracing pour exister. Car qu'est-ce que le ray tracing si ce n'est une légère variante de l'illumination d'une scène pour tenir compte de certaines lumières ou certains reflets. Si le rendu d'une scène devait être réaliste il devrait comprendre le relief, la sensation de vent, etc. autant de choses parfaitement inatteignables et pour quel objectif de toute façon ?

J'en conclut que c'est la fin de l'évolution des jeux vidéos.

Build 4.5.0.85 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to moving auto-filters accordingly, if present, when inserting a row or a column. This works for all Excel files and avoids corrupting the file in question.

Build 4.5.0.84 of xlsgen ships with the latest stable version of libPNG, a third party library that allows to read and write pictures in the PNG file format, which includes a number of security fixes. We are using libpng 1.6.37. libPNG is the only third party dependency of xlsgen and is used at a number of end points, for instance for PNG picture rendering purposes.

Here is what we get in the tech news today, not even mainstream news sites :

extrait : "Uninstall This Alleged Emirati Spy App From Your Phone Now. A messaging app called ToTok had scores of positive reviews, particularly from users in the UAE. US intelligent officials say it may be spying for that government instead. A social messaging app called ToTok has been surging in popularity around the world in recent weeks. If you happen to be one of the hundreds of thousands of users who downloaded it you should delete the app from your phone immediately. (...)"

This is not a suggestion to act. This is a freaking ORDER to act.

What went so wrong to urge such thing ? Well read the article for yourself :

extrait : "it's likely a surveillance tool that can funnel data to the government of the United Arab Emirates. Google removed the app from Google Play on Thursday and Apple removed it from the App Store on Friday, but ToTok will keep working—and potentially spying—if it’s already on your phone."

Holy caca, this must be some wacky thing going on, heh! heh ?

extrait : "Patrick Wardle, a security researcher at Jamf specialized in Apple operating systems who formerly worked at the National Security Agency. "When you start analyzing an app like this you expect to find a backdoor or some zero day exploits,” Wardle says. “But the more I think about it, this is actually a more elegant approach, which is just leveraging completely legitimate functionality. What that gives you is a very cost effective, easy way to gain a ton of information on people.""

A ton of information about people socializing together ? You mean, like facebook, twitter, etc. ?

extrait : "The app had scores of positive reviews, particularly from users in the UAE who were excited about its lack of restrictions."

Interestingly enough, the reason why the app got coverage and mouth virality is that in the UAE, this is an uncommon app. Most social apps are crippled to limit the freedom of expression of people using it. This app does not. In fact, any open society would welcome such thing.

extrait : "Wardle found that the app was set up to run continuously in the background. It would have requested permission to access users' microphones, location data, photos, camera, calendar, contacts, and Siri integration. The app provided explanations for why this access was necessary: for example, that location data was needed to display information about local weather. The crucial thing to understand about ToTok is that it does exactly what it claims to do. "

So this is a completely legit app in both grounds. What's the problem then ?

extrait : ""The problem is where's the data going and who has access to it? And those are very, very hard questions to answer," Wardle says. "There's a large amount of plausible deniability, which is why it's a no-brainer approach to gain a high degree of surveillance. I'm not saying it's good or ethical, but if other countries aren't doing this, from their point of view they should.""

Wait a minute, what is this security researcher saying. One, this app is legit and does what it explains to do. Second, every one is entitled to make such thing available for use.

extrait : "For now, just make sure you've uninstalled ToTok, and tell others to do the same."

See, uninstall it because you are being told to uninstall it, period. This is propaganda fed to tech sites which, sad as this is, are not any better than mainstream sites as soon as US national interest is at risk. Oddly enough, when US national interest, usually this benefits almost everybody in the world.

Build 4.5.0.83 of xlsgen adds support for database connections in table objects.

Before this build, you could program and run SQL requests but the result would not become an actual Excel table object fetched with the database data. It would just be rows fetched with database data. Likewise if you created an actual Excel table object in xlsgen, you couldn't program and run an SQL request from it.

This is put together in this build. You can now create an actual Excel table object, program and run an SQL request that will bound the table rows to the underlying database. And even better, xlsgen creates the database connection in the Excel file so you can reuse it elsewhere.

Here is how it works,

xlsgen::IXlsWorkbookPtr workbook;
workbook = engine->New( L"output.xlsx" );

xlsgen::IXlsWorksheetPtr worksheet = workbook->AddWorksheet("SheetX");

xlsgen::IXlsTablePtr table = worksheet->NewTable[3][2];

table->DataSource->CommandTimeout = 40;
table->DataSource->ConnectionTimeout = 120;
#ifndef _WIN64
  table->DataSource->ConnectionString = L"Provider=MSDASQL;Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};Dbq=c:\\datasource\\db1.mdb;uid=;pwd=;";
#else
  table->DataSource->ConnectionString = L"Provider=MSDASQL;Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=c:\\datasource\\db1.mdb;uid=;pwd=;";
#endif

table->DataSource->SQLStatement = L"select * from Table1";

int nbrows = table->DataResults->RowCount;
int nbcolumns = table->DataResults->Columns->Count;

_bstr_t column1 = table->DataResults->Columns->Item[1]->Name;
_bstr_t column2 = table->DataResults->Columns->Item[2]->Name;
_bstr_t column3 = table->DataResults->Columns->Item[3]->Name;
_bstr_t column4 = table->DataResults->Columns->Item[4]->Name;
_bstr_t column5 = table->DataResults->Columns->Item[5]->Name;

_bstr_t definedName = table->DataResults->Name;

xlsgen::IXlsStylePtr styleDate = worksheet->NewStyle();
styleDate->Format = L"dd/mm/yyyy";

xlsgen::IXlsStylePtr styleBackground = worksheet->NewStyle();
styleBackground->Pattern->BackgroundColor = 0xFF0000;

table->DataResults->Columns->Item[4]->DataStyle = styleBackground;

table->DataResults->Insert();

workbook->Close();

Build 4.5.0.82 improves the handling of tables, particularly Excel table objects.

In xlsgen, tables can be used in a variety of ways. They were initially introduced as a way to program and run SQL requests. Then, when business intelligence capabilities were introduced to xlsgen, tables were the underlying model for manipulating data (i.e. InferFromWorksheet()). Actual Excel tables were available, see tables for more information, but were not quite first-class citizen. For instance, what you couldn't do is for example add totals to them even though the table object model in xlsgen exposes subtotals beneath table breaks. The reality was that many of the table features were for "xlsgen" tables, not Excel table objects.

In this build, total rows are not ignored anymore for Excel table objects. It works like this :

xlsgen::IXlsTablePtr table = worksheet->Tables->Add();

table->DataSource->Range = L"R3C2:R6C6";

table->DataResults->Style->BuiltinStyle = xlsgen::tablestyle_light03;

// we have an "age" column in the table

xlsgen::IXlsTableBreaksPtr br = wksht->Tables->Item[1]->DataResults->Columns->ItemByName[L"age"]->Breaks;

// compute the average of "age"

br->Subtotals->Add( wksht->Tables->Item[1]->DataResults->Columns->ItemByName[L"age"] )->BuiltinFunction = xlsgen::subtotalfunc_average;

Also, table objects are now exposed in the automatic source code generator. It exposes table range definition, style and totals.

Build 4.5.0.81 of xlsgen improves how rotated text is handled in rendering scenarios. Particularly this is an edge case that is fixed, where the rotate angle is very high (more than 45 degrees) and the room for rotating the text is small (cell has tight width and height).

It is a time to remind client and server applications using PDF output (one of our rendering outputs), that the quality of the rendering is slightly affected by the actual engine that is used. Notably,

• native PDF generation (vectors) [default engine]
  
  

  C/C++ code

  // worksheet level workbook->PDFEngine = xlsgen::pdfengine_text; worksheet->Export->ExportAsPDF(L"output.pdf"); // workbook level workbook = engine->Open(L"input.xlsm", L"outputAllWorksheets.pdf"); workbook->PDFEngine = xlsgen::pdfengine_text; workbook->Close();

  
  
  
• GDI-based PDF generation (screen DPI resolution, usually 96 DPI)
  
  
  

  C/C++ code

  // worksheet level workbook->PDFEngine = xlsgen::pdfengine_bitmap; worksheet->Export->ExportAsPDF(L"output.pdf"); // workbook level workbook = engine->Open(L"input.xlsm", L"outputAllWorksheets.pdf"); workbook->PDFEngine = xlsgen::pdfengine_bitmap; workbook->Close();

  
  
  
• GDI-based virtual PDF printing (printer DPI resolution, usually 600 DPI)
  
  
  

  C/C++ code

  // worksheet level worksheet->PrintWith(L"PDFCreator", L""); // PDFCreator is a popular (and free) virtual PDF printer // workbook level workbook = engine->Open(L"input.xlsm", L""); workbook->PrintWith(L"PDFCreator", L""); workbook->Close();