Comments on: An implementation of a Copernic Desktop Search Custom Extractor in C#

by: Tomer Gabel

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:41:38 +0000

In case someone still needs this, the URL for the .NET CF version of the IStream wrapper has moved to http://www.tomergabel.com/ManagedIStreamWrapperForNETCompactFramework20.aspx

by: Oliver Sturm

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:54:57 +0000

Tomer, thanks for posting this, and also for your work.

You’re the second guy to comment on the captcha, so I decided to fiddle with the settings somewhat to make it easier to read in the majority of cases. Before, it managed to kill at least 99.9% of the comment spam coming this way (and I know that this means thousands of spams, from the time I didn’t have a captcha) - I’ll see how well it does now. Thanks for the feedback in any case!

by: Tomer Gabel

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:33:30 +0000

Thanks for the IStream wrapper - it saved me an awful lot of work. I’ve adapted it to work on the .NET Compact Framework 2.0; if you’re interested, it’s posted here with full credit. Thanks again for publishing your findings!

(BTW, your Captcha provider is horrible - the text is barely legible, and I think would still be easier on OCRs than most Captchas. Please consider replacing it?)

by: Stefe

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 14:59:06 +0000

I cant get it running, always get missing GUID reference or so.

by: Oliver Sturm

Mon, 23 May 2005 14:49:16 +0000

Guys, thanks for updated information on this. I haven’t had a look at the newer release versions of CDS and the corresponding APIs for quite a while, because the original purpose of the extension I was looking got pushed to a lower priority. I appreciate the current information, though!

by: Bloggit

Mon, 23 May 2005 14:45:05 +0000

Actually that code won’t work with the newest release, due to new bug in build 646 of Copernic. And it turns out that if you had implemented IStream::Seek() (as I did), it also wouldn’t work due to a bug in their Preview (though indexing works), in the Build 644 they released as 1.5. And lastly it takes about 20 seconds (and 250 spurrious reads) for their preview to return.

All-in-all, there are quite a few issues with Copernic’s current API. I hope they get it debugged soon, but they haven’t been very responsive yet.

by: ian thomas

Thu, 05 May 2005 08:51:01 +0000

A couple of things, here. First, your remark “there’s no way to visualise your data
in Copernic up to now”. There is a way -

I have followed, in recipe fashion, the approach used by ‘Pythonner’
(http://pythonner.blogspot.com/2005/03/copernic-desktop-search-plug-in.html)
where he presents a quick-and-dirty solution for indexing and previewing
of .PS (postscript) files with CDS.

This uses a C# wrapper. I have compiled, signed, installed this and it all works
as expected on my Win2K system with Copernic Desktop Search installed.

Because in this special case, GhostScript is used and it has a mechanism to process
any .PS files using a conversion file (PS2ASCII.PS) and a range of command parameters,
producing a plain text stream, search and preview are possible.
(I used GhostScript 8.15).

Using something like GhostScript is a very heavy burden (several Mb of DLL and files,
file locations to be explicitly defined, etc) but I guess it’s no worse than using
the Adobe iFilter for Acrobat 7, when using Microsoft’s OS Indexing Service:
that’s 7Mb, as I recall.

I might use the same approach, since it is quite feasible for an application I have
in mind to extract quite particular text from a GIS document file, using an installed
application (which is closer to 70Mb in size, as it happens).

Secondly, I’m a real novice with COM - I can *just* follow what’s in your code.
First, I need to implement what you’ve written in your 3March2005 blog article
before scratching the head about how to ’simply “append” content from other sources
to the data from the file itself’, as you say. That part’s relatively easy, I guess.

Thnaks for the helping hand.

by: Oliver Sturm

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:45:25 +0000

The code works with the final 1.5 release just as well as it did with the beta.

About indexing alternate data streams… you’d have to combine the content from the file with that from the alternate stream, I guess. It would be easy to write an extension to my IStreamWrapper that would simply “append” content from other sources to the data from the file itself. Copernic won’t be able to distinguish between data from the file and data from alternate streams, but as there’s no way to visualise your data in Copernic up to now, this shouldn’t be a great problem.

by: ian thomas

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:39:27 +0000

I’ve become interested in Copernic after a long absence (v1.2), and thinking that I should use MS Indexing Service (on 2000 / XP / 2003 systems and NTFS volumes only) instead.
I have a couple of quick questions -
1. Have you tried your C# code with the actual 1.5 release?
2. Have you got any ideas on how to implement indexing of the NTFS file alternate data streams, using Copernic?

I’ll be in touch later - once I have done a few tests with Copernic DS v1.5

Regards

Ian Thomas

by: Oliver Sturm’s weblog - Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 has been released

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:05:30 +0000

[…] DS since the beta and they haven’t taken up much that was suggested at that time. My C# custom extractor for CDS still runs, but they haven’t done anythi […]