An old BeOS app (source files attached) which no longer properly works on Haiku

[Giova84]

hrev50067.

The last time that I succesfully run this app called Replitext, was about one year ago, on Haiku.

Replitxt is a transparent text desktop replicant which can display various and dynamic text messages using scripting.

eg: print the current date inside the replicant:

~> time=$(date +"%d/%b/%Y - %R %p ")

Get IDs from the replicants:

~> replitxt --list

Insert the current date into Replitxt:

~> replitxt --text $ReplicantID "Current time: ${time} "

and we'll see:

And so on: as I've said is - was - possible send various inputs, via scripting, to the replicant.
I say *was possible* since in the latest nightly builds, when I attempt to run the command

~> replitxt --list

All that I get is the following error:

shelf_messenger not found (Bad port ID)
There are 0 replitxt replicants out of 0 replicants

I also tried to recompile this app from the source code (it correctly compiles, using setarch x86_gcc2), but the above error is still here.

I attach the zip file with the source code and the binary, maybe someone would be able to fix the code?

[Giova84]

Sorry, i forget to mention the fact that the source code was present on an old backup disk; in past this app was available on Haikuware and Bebits, but, due to the fact that both Haikuware and Bebits seems deads, I can't recall the original author of this app.

[jackburton]

I think the Tracker shelf view's name has been changed, so the application can't find it anymore. It needs to be adjusted in the code.

[Giova84]

Hi,

Can you give me some hints about the old and the new view's name? So I could do an attempt to recompile the app with the proper names.

Thanks.

[waddlesplash]

Pre-layout behavior restored in hrev50139, but this is still broken and I've no idea why at this point.

[mmu_man]

Did you try with and without the "full path in title" setting in Tracker?

[Giova84]

Replying to waddlesplash:

Pre-layout behavior restored in hrev50139, but this is still broken and I've no idea why at this point.

Well: at least, now, replitxt is partially working.

Now, when I launch the command

~> replitxt --list

I no longer get the error about the shelf_messenger, but just

There are 0 replitxt replicants out of 0 replicants

With the above command I expect to see a number between 0 and 9. If I attempt to guess the number (seems that the ID of the first replicant is always 0), now I am able to send the output to the replicant. Eg:

replitxt --text 0 "Hello"

And I can read "Hello" inside the replicant of replitxt on the Desktop.

So, now seems that remains to understand and fix the fact that the list command doesn't find any replicant, although the fact that now, is possible communicate with the replicant.

[Giova84]

Wait..

I had an old bash script with the following content

replitxt --list > /tmp/list.txt
checkID=$(cut -c1 /tmp/list.txt)
ID=$(basename $checkID)

Since, currently, the result of "replitxt --list" is "There are 0 replitxt replicants out of 0 replicants." the variable $ID is just "T" (the first letter of the phrase).

and then i run

replitxt --text $ID "Message received"

I am able to send "Message received" to the replicant.

I discovered that as replicant ID I can use any letter (A,B,C...T,Z,Y) and also any senseless word (eg: sdfjkl ): in all these cases the replicant of replitxt will receive the message. Very odd.

[Giova84]

UPDATE: as described in the comment:8, four months ago, was almost fixed.

But now, on hrev50440, replitext is broken again: when I type

replitext --list

I get

There are 0 replitxt replicants out of 0 replicants

to be more clear: the workaround described in my previous comment doesn't work anymore.