Windows Vista

[Mr. Niakwa]

The Windows Vista runtime revision 5.10.51 will be available in the download area of  the web site as a maintenance release soon. 
It will require a valid release 5.10 license and includes three new executables, fonts, and a readme file.
It corrects the problem with the way Vista handled the default Niakwa font.   

It offers alternatives to the default location of the RTIWIN.INI file.  Vista will not allow a regular user to write to files in the Windows directory.  So in Vista you had to run the NPL runtime as administrator or login as administrator for changes to be saved in the INI file.  Now with Release 5.10.51, using the /R startup parameter a different location can be specified for the location of the RTIWIN.INI file.   Use of the /R startup parameter is more completely covered in the readme file.

[AlanWoods]

Runtime Rev. 5.10.51 is now posted in the Gold Area of the NPL Downloads.

There is a link to the maintenance release on the NPL  home page.

Please let me know (kindly) , if you have any problems downloading the new Release.  Remember you must be a Gold Reseller in order to download this new maintenance release.

[SeaFree]

re: Windows Vista

I just finished several months of rewriting my code for MS-Vista.  Thanks be to God that the NPL portion of that effort was relatively trivial.  The VB part was far worse.

The hard part was understanding that Vista doesn't offer any "workarounds" when it comes to security.  You simply can't write to or modify any files in \WINDOWS, \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32, nor \PROGRAM FILES unless you have "administrative" rights.   No matter what you do, you can't override or work around the issue.  You also can't access certain parts of the "Registry".   VB's SaveSettings command is now a lost cause.

This problem first appeared years ago with Windows Terminal Server and Citrix users.   Then XP users with only "Guest" rights appeared on the scene.  Now, every Vista user has the same problem.  And I mean EVERY "Standard" Vista (those who are not administrators). 

If you set an NPL target to C:\BASIC2C\RTIWIN32.EXE /R="C:\NPL\LocForRTIWININI" then that folder must exist and all users must have "full control" rights within the folder specified in the target.  First, because if NPL can't find the folder specified in the target you may get "unknown" results.  And second, if the user doesn't have the "rights" to create a folder on the C: drive then NPL may fail as well.    Sometimes, you get an error message that helps.  Sometimes, not. 

The same is also true with Windows XP once you start using the "/R=xxx" option and the user's "rights" prevent them from creating new folders in the desired location.

To be certain that NPL will run with the "/R=xxx" option, you have to first create the directory that you need and THEN tell NPL to use it.  I accomplished this feat by writing a VB program that modifies all existing icons and links then creates any missing folders before it ShellExecs NPL.  This program also tests for their having Admin rights before it tries to create any new folders.  

If there's a better way to handle this issue, I'd love to hear about it.

SeaFree