[TimeCapsule] TextSpec 2.0B (VB6)
Time Capsule Project
This is a time capsule project/product from way back in my earlier programming years, you can read more about this at the information section bellow.
TextSpec is (was) a simple tool to do something which WordPad could not do (and still can’t in Windows 10 😳!): Count the characters, lines and words in a piece of text.
This was something me and many of my fellow students needed for our book reports for example, so back then I made this simple and small tool to solve that problem for us.
NOTE
DO NOT use this software for serious purposes anymore! It is just here for educative/archive/TimeCapsule purposes! Please read the information bellow to learn more.
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Information
This project is a so called Time Capsule Project, which means that it is a project which I made way back in the earlier days of my programming. Most of these project had never seen the ‘daylight of the internet’ and I thought it would be fun to have a small ‘glimpse back into the past’ on some of my older projects. You can read more about the XNL Future Technologies Time Capsule here.
This one in particular was a small util I wrote so that I and many of my fellow students could easily keep track of the word (and letter) count in book reports for school for example.
The first version I wrote was actually around 1998 or so which was version 1.0 (was VERY crappy 😂), but version 2.0 was written around 2004 and also spread around to other users (locally).
In those days not everyone had Microsoft Word on their home computer (or their own computer IF there where more than one computers in their household). Most of them used a rich-text editor (like Write/WordPad) which didn’t had this feature (and STILL does not have this in Windows 10 😳😂!).
So that is where TextSpec could help you out, you would copy-paste your text from your text editor (often WordPad) into TextSpec and it would then count all words, lines and characters for you.
We also often used this tool on websites which had a maximum number of allowed characters in a textfield but which did NOT have a ‘proper lock’ on entering more characters than allowed. Which would then often result in an error something along the lines of: “You’ve exceeded the maximum number of characters (500)“. And that was another purpose we often used TextSpec for.
Back in the day I didn’t published TextSpec on the internet, but initially it was shared on 3.5″ diskettes, USB sticks, MP3 Players (used as USB stick) and via email.
And after a while the user-base grew to around a “whopping” 300 to 500 users. Which obviously isn’t a big number at all these days when you publish a program/project to the internet. But considering that this project (TextSpec) was shared ‘hand-to-hand’ and via email, you could say I was quite proud of the interest in my tiny and simple tool back then.
Years later I got to another school and had to grin a bit because I noticed that one of the students there was actually using it on his laptop. I never asked how got it, and I wasn’t even using that ‘Company name’ either anymore. But I still found it quite funny and interesting that some people still found it useful years later.
Written in Visual Basic 6 never published online
TextSpec was originally written in Visual Basic 6, never released on the internet and only the binary (.exe) was shared via diskettes, USB sticks and via email as attachment.
2024 (Re-Release) Update
For the first ‘official’ release of TextSpec 2.0B (after almost 20 years now!), I did not changed ANYTHING to the functional code of the program, and I did not changed ANYTHING on the (main screen) layout either.
The only changes I did made for this first (and final) official release after almost 20 years:
– I added some information to the about screen (clearly marked in a groupbox),
– I did left all my MAJOR dyslectic errors in the about screen (on purpose)
– And I added some comments to my own code from back then (some ‘small jokes’)
– Added the new website to the about screen (this page)
– Removed the (old) email address from the about screen
But the code itself (and even the file dates!) are 100% original from the last time I edited/updated this project back in 2004.
To make it even more “authentic for the Time Capsule” I even decided to make these final changes before publication on one of the old machines I used back in 2003/2004 (a Pentium III laptop actually running Windows 98 with Visual Basic 6). So these final changes to this project are in ‘honor of the project’ made on exactly the same software and machine as I was using back then (NO I didn’t transferred to Windows XP yet back then 😉) and not just on some Virtual Machine 😊. You can even see the photo’s of me (re-)installing my old Visual Studio 6 on this Pentium III laptop running Windows 98 in the photo’s😊 especially for this ‘Time Capsule Release‘
And now I decided to release it to the public, but not just the binary (exe file) but also the full source-code of TextSpec 2.0B
So if you are one of the few that used TextSpec back in the days: here it is again but this time with source code for Visual Basic 6 😊
Want to try the ‘vintage version’ of TextSpec but having issues?
Please read the instructions tab for more information if you are (for funs) trying to get this software to work.
Specifications/Requirements
Windows 98 and up (Yes, I actually tested it and even on Windows 10 it works! 😉)
On older computers (prior to Windows Vista) you’ll need the Visual Basic 6 Runtimes
On some machines you might need to install the file COMCTL32.OCX manually if you get an error that this file is missing (also happens on Windows 10).
License
BY DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THIS PROJECT, PRODUCT, FILES OR ANY PART THEREOF (AND THE RELATED DOCUMENTATION) FROM XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES, YOU ON BEHALF OF YOURSELF, OR ON BEHALF OF ANY ENTITY BY WHICH YOU ARE EMPLOYED AND/OR ENGAGED AGREE TO BE BOUND TO THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT.
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Am I allowed to make changes to the source code only for my own use, for my dad or for some of my friends for example?
Yes, but read on first 😉:
Sure you can, that is actually how I myself (and several others on the XNL Future Technologies team) have started programming years ago. It is however very important to note that you are not allowed to publicly publish your modified/changed version online if it's not actually a Foundation Project (which are intended to be re-used and can be re-published). But if you are using our source codes to make 'custom versions' for yourself, your family and/or your friends (while not publishing them publicly) then you are of course allowed to do so. I would even recommend you to share your own 'custom versions' with your family and friends (offline/non-publicly that is of course), so that you get a 'testing audience' which gives you an opportunity to actually learn to deal with 'bug reports' and feature requests by your (small) 'user base' 😊
A small tip though (and I'm speaking from experience here😉): Always keep a copy of the original source code(s) as back up, and make comments in your (modified/custom) code to mark which sections you have used from other people's source codes for example. This way you can still 'back-track' what you did if you look back at your projects decades later 😉.
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Instructions
There is no support at all for TextSpec 2.0B but here are some tips if you are trying to get this (old) project of mine to run.
If you are trying to run it on a computer with a Windows version older than Windows Vista, then you will most likely need to download and install the Visual Basic 6 Runtimes. Newer Windows versions already have these runtimes build into the installation (Including Windows 10).
If you are trying to run it but get an error that you are missing a file called ‘COMCTL32.OCX‘, then you also might need to download this file here and follow the instruction on how to use install this file (manually) on your computer.
If there are any other errors which you might get while trying to TextSpec.exe, then please just Google the (error) message and try to find a solution for your specific problem. TextSpec does not use any special features, modes, libraries or anything alike which would or should cause other error messages than missing Visual Basic 6 Runtimes or that it’s missing the COMCTL32.OCX. So if you are having any other issues, it’s most likely a problem related to missing Visual Basic 6 run-times and/or files.
And because Visual Basic 6 was a very widely used programming language back then, there are plenty of websites to solve those issues 😊
Features
Simple: Counts Characters, words, and lines in (pasted) text.
Known Bugs & Issues
Bugs? Well only that It’s obsolete and OLD…. I mean like really old… like in 20 years old (as of 2024)!
Ow and depending on your character encoding used the byte count is/could be incorrect 😉