[roann]

Showtime girls and boys! A new release (v0.9.2.55) of Trader's Little Helper. As usual you can download the setup file here.

Next are excerpts from the change log with some comments/explanations I added for you. Though this will take some time please read those notes carefully! There are some answers to reported problems and some help/hints how to use new functionality.

Added: Ability to verify shn files
flac.exe and mac.exe come with a build-in option to verify files (i.e. decoding w/o writing an output file), shorten.exe does not. I used a little workaround to implement the same functionality for shn files.

Added: Ability to pad files with zero bytes
Padding a file with zero bytes means adding silence at the beginning ("prepad") or at the end ("postpad") so the file becomes sector aligned. This is very useful if only the first or if only the last file in a file set has a SBE.
Important: Do not use pad mode for fixing single tracks that are part of a live file set (only exceptions noted above). Because it's silence that is added you will ruin the whole thing.
Note: The Fix tab had been reworked, so please take a deeper look to become familiar with this (for example "Preview" is now in the "Options" group).

Added: Re-encoding level can be set when fixing SBEs
As discussed early in this thread shntool re-encodes the files to be fixed. This will be done with a default re-encoding level of 5 on flac files and 2 on ape files. This default value can now be changed.
Note for those of you that are not familiar with ape encoding levels: Do not use the "insane" level. It will take a very very long time for encoding ...

Added: When fixing SBEs default setting "Skip the first N files that wouldn't be changed" can be disabled to process all files
The default was/is to skip the first N files that wouldn't be changed, i.e. shntool will check the file list from the beginning and skip all files with no SBE until the first file with a SBE comes up. That's the way all previous releases of Trader's Little Helper will handle a file set with SBEs.
And there we got a problem that was reported earlier in this thread: If you have a file set with a SBE only on the last track, all files except the last one will be skipped. Now there's only one file left to fix, and this cannot be handled by shntool ... error message.
With Trader's Little Helper there are now two ways to get this processed properly: a) Use pad mode (see above) to postpad silence to the last file. b) Stay in fix mode but disable the newly implemented option "Skip first N sector aligned files" so all files will be processed even if the first several of them wouldn't be altered.
Note: Please keep in mind that fixing SBEs the latter way in most cases needs alot of unnecessary time and disc space. Say you have a set of 10 files, each file 40 MB, and only the last file got a SBE. If you have disabled file skipping the first nine files without SBE will be copied to your drive though there are no fixes/changes (except the file names will be suffixed with "-fixed"). Because of copying this will work a lot longer and will waste your disc space with data that's already there (in this example 360 MB).
Note:Sorry for my previous incorrect postings on this but I tested your reports on the version I was working on and there skipping files was permanently disabled for debugging purposes - what I hadn't in mind at that time.

Added: Ability to fix SBEs on multiple file sets
If you double-click on a file name in the file list there will be a number left-handed to the file name. So this file is marked as first file of a new file set. Double-clicking on the file name again will remove the marker. When fixing SBEs Trader's Little Helper will detect those markers and step-by-step fix SBEs for every file set found.

Added: When fixing SBEs the file order can be changed with Move up / Move down buttons
There are now two buttons to change the order of the files. You can move all the files you've selected (BTW with the mouse you can move only one file at a time now). Moving files is only allowed within a file set (or in other words you can not move a file from one file set to another). So the best way is to set the file set markers after arranging the files.

Added: Buttons on some pages to expand the size of the log window
Those buttons will expand the size of the log window to the max so you can see a lot more messages at a time.

Added: Checksum files (.ffp, .md5, .st5) can be associated with Trader's Little Helper for verifying purposes
If you had selected "associate" during setup there a now two additional ways to verify checksum files: a) Double-click on a checksum file. b) Right-click on a checksum file and select the item "Verify with Trader's Little Helper" in the context menu. BTW there will be some (poor) icons installed for the checksum files. Would be great if you have better ones or can create better ones ... please let me know.
Note:Putting things to the registry is sometimes a bit frustrating because other entries may be a bit unusual. On one of my machines I had a minor "problem" with MD5Summer: MD5Summer stays as the default prog which will be executed when double-clicking a md5 file, Trader's Little Helper does not appear in the files context menu. If you want to set Trader's Little Helper as your default md5 checker you need to do this manually via the Explorers Tools --> Options menu.

Added: .ape, .flac and .shn files can be associated with Trader's Little Helper for decoding purposes
This is the same as described for checksum files above. Please keep in mind that with double-clicking you can only process one file. Processing multiple files will only work using the files context menu.

Added: .ape, .flac and .shn files can be decoded via drag & drop
As requested .ape, .flac and .shn files can be dragged from Windows Explorer and dropped on Trader's Little Helper to decode them.

Changed: Audio files that were located in different directories and/or have different file extensions can be processed at the same time to show file details
In previous releases Trader's Little Helper refuses to show details about audio files that have different file extensions or are located in different directories.

Changed: Default name for saving a checksum file is '<directory>.<type of checksum>'
Example: The files checksums were created for are located in C:\Music\abc2004-07-11.flac16 and it's a flac fingerprint. The default file name will be abc2004-07-11.flac16.ffp.

Changed: Default name for the file details log file is '<directory>.shntool.txt'
Example: Files are located in C:\Music\abc2004-07-11.flac16. The default file name for the log file will be abc2004-07-11.flac16.shntool.txt.

Changed: Almost all error messaging is done in the respective log window
In previous versions there are a lot of pop-up error message boxes. It's very annoying to click them away especially if there are alot of them during a task. Now the error messages will be displayed in the log windows.