Encoding of SMS-files from Nokia backup (.nbf)? - macos

I am using a Mac and have a Nokia phone. Therefore I cannot sync it with my computer, but I found out, that making a backup on the creates a .nbf-file, which contains all the data I want (contacts and messages).
The contacts are stored easily accessible as vCards, so that's cool. Unfortunately the messages are stored each text separately in one file, which looks pretty weird when I open it with a text editor (for example TextWrangler). I can see the numbers and the text, but no information about date.
I uploaded the file here: http://www.4shared.com/file/7LNsuPbF/00000A123EB640F500002010005000.html
I already tried out different encodings, but it never looks good.
Maybe someone has a clue how to read that file? Could it be encrypted or something?

Try https://sourceforge.net/projects/nbuexplorer/ - it should be able to open .nbf files.
It is/was a C# project, and it only provides Windows exe as release download, however, I could get this .exe to run on Ubuntu 18.04 using mono; and I could also get the project sources to compile on Ubuntu using xbuild (the result again being an .exe file that can be run with Mono), see comments in my build script get-nbuexplorer.svn.sh.

Related

Why doesn't the PDW copy some files when updating an existing installation?

I have a fairly large application (~750k LOC) that I distribute using the Package and Deployment Wizard. I fully understand that it would be nice to migrate to .NET (that ain't happening - see the code size above), and that the PDW is deeply flawed. However, for the most part I've made it work well for my end users, by customizing the Setup1 application, writing a menu-driven wrapper for the Setup application, and by running it in silent mode. (Note that the problem I'm about to describe occurred even before I started using silent mode.)
The issue I'm having is that my application requires quite a few auxiliary files, which I've added to the PDW project in the "Included files" section. When a user does a clean installation (either from scratch, or after un-installing a previous installation), everything works fine. However, if they simply run the installer to update the existing installation, the executable file and any OCXs I've updated get copied over the previous versions just fine, but my auxiliary files don't - I have to have the user manually delete them, and then the Setup1 program will re-install them as it should.
I've checked in the Setup.lst file, and all of the files are listed there, with their current date stamps. In fact, in my "BuildAll.bat" file, I do the Windows equivalent of a "touch" (copy /b "TheFile.dat" +,,) to force the date stamp to be current. However, if the file exists on the target machine, it won't be over-written even though it's older. There are no errors reported, either visibly or in the .LOG file (which is required if using the silent option).
A couple of additional points: Some of the auxiliary files are themselves VB6 applications - just the .exe files. Those do get copied correctly if they're newer than the existing files. Other than being files with internal versioning information, there's no difference between them and the other auxiliary files (which are things like media files, or text-based .txt or .dat files).
So, what's going on, and how do I fix it (besides moving to Inno or some other solution that won't work for me...)? Thanks in advance for any help!
~~
Mark Moulding

Connecting dots from self-contained Java application to Mac OS installation

I am not a Mac owner and am putting myself through a crash course to get up to speed (e.g., reading "Switching to the Mac"), to give you an indication of my current level of understanding. The access I have to a physical Mac is limited, so I am trying to connect as many dots as possible before my next session with my friend's computer.
I have: a file folder containing all resources needed for a self-contained application written with Java (OpenJDK 11, JavaFX 11). The JLINK tool was successfully used to create this file folder, and it holds all necessary Java libraries as well as the code I wrote for the application. The executable resides in a subfolder: /bin. The program runs perfectly well on the Mac when the executable is run.
I want: something that is easy to download, install and run.
I'm unclear about what needs to be done to get this. The road map seems to have two main steps:
the file folder needs to be converted into something that responds as if it were an application (e.g., a Bundle? or an .app?)
the resulting folder-as-executable can be shipped via either .dmg or .pkg
For the second part, I've researched and found tools such as Packages or create-dmg. It seems to me these tools are pretty straightforward and shouldn't be too difficult to learn to use. (Just have to pick one or the other or something similar.)
For the first part, I'm on shaky conceptual ground. I've found info about Bundles, but no tutorials, walk-throughs or examples. It looks like a key step is understanding how to make a proper Info.plist file, but doing this properly looks tricky. Also, I'm not clear on how the resulting Bundle will become an .app file or if it needs to, or if there is another, more direct way to make my file folder be viewed by the OS as an application.
Some hand-holding or references to tutorials or even assurance that I am on the right track (if that is the case) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
The Java Deployment guide from Oracle relies heavily on ANT, but doesn't cover the case of a self-contained, customized JVM via JLINK well enough for me to decipher. So, I've taken the approach of trying to learn/understand the necessary steps using command-line commands.
While creating a Bundle is certainly an option, there is an easier way.
Step one is to make an .app manually. An answer to this question: "How to make a Mac OS X .app with a shell script?" goes over the basic steps. The Java file system that results from jlinking has a folder /bin in which there is a bash file that runs the program. This file should be moved to the outermost folder, and it should be named the desired name of the application. The bash file itself will have to be edited and "/bin" added to the address in last command so that the executable will be found. In addition, the folder itself will have to be renamed to be the same as the bash file, but with .app added as an extension.
The next thing I wanted to have was a custom icon. The question "Include icon in manually created app bundle" shows how to do this.
For the next step I made use of the program "Packages". I'm a bit confused about where I downloaded this from (there seem to be multiple sites), but here is a link to the manual. This tool allowed me to create a .pkg file that, when executed, installs my .app in the Applications folder. Then I compressing the .pkg file (to .zip) and made it available at a URL for downloading.
I've had a friend do a test download and install, and the program works!
This isn't meant to be a complete tutorial, and there are a few steps more that I want to figure out pertaining to sandboxing and sealing, but I believe this is a reasonable roadmap that can be used for simpler jlinked Java applications for Mac distribution.

How to save files to AppData when using Microsoft Desktop App Converter to convert a Win32 app to UWP?

I have a game that was originally written in QuickBasic in the 1990's. I converted it into a Win32 app using QB64. I then used Microsoft's Desktop App Converter to package it as a UWP app and submit it to the Microsoft Store (it's been accepted).
The game seems to work fine, except for saving files. It throws a permission denied error whenever you try to save a file. From what I've been able to find thus far it seems that UWP apps can't save in the install directory and that is likely what my app is trying to do.
There are a number of code samples available online for taking a Win32 app written in C#, C, C++, etc. and having it use LocalAppData instead. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing anything that will help me with this application.
Is there a way to make saving files work in this instance? I'm hoping that there is perhaps a way to say, "Hey, when I say save a file, I mean save it to the LocalAppData folder for this particular application." This probably needs to be abstract, ideally a declarative part of the appx package that isn't in the QB64 code. Any ideas?
There are two options to fix it (and one way to hack it):
If the file saving is done from your code, change it to write to an accessible location instead, such as localappdata or temp.
If the file saving is done in code you can't change, then you can use the new Package Support Framework to apply a fixup at runtime that redirects the file operations. This is a new framework coming as part of the 1809 update for Windows 10. At the time of this writing this may not be an option for you just yet. Here is the documentation:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/package-support-framework?context=/windows/msix/render
A hacky way to solve it that you could try would be to add a launcher EXE to your package and make that the app's entrypoint. The launcher would then copy your actual EXE to a writeable location (localappdata, etc.) and then launch it from there. All your file writes will then succeed.

VB.NET file has become an unreadable format

So the images below were originally a vb files. I have just opened it and it looks like this and the compiler won't run it. I am unsure whether this is a compiler error or whether it may have become corrupt because the project is stored on an external drive. It is just these two forms that have broken like this; I have one other form and a module in the same project that are okay but the project can't run because of the two that are broke.
Broken Login Form
Broken Diary Form
If it changes anything, the designer files for the forms are intact it is just the scripting for the forms elements that is broken.
Also, if I can't identify the cause, is there a way to revert it back to the last working version in visual studio to get my code back? Just because I put a lot of time into it.
The data in those files is most likely gone.
IMPORTANT: Do not write anything to that disk drive unless you find that you cannot recover those files.
If you are using a version control system then you can revert to an earlier version.
If you are using Windows 10 and you happen to have stored those files in a location included in what File History saves, you can recover them from that.
If you use some other form of backup, retrieve the files from that.
If you have a separate disk drive with at least as much free space as the one with the corrupted files, you could try running file recovery software as it might be that the zeroed-out file was written to a different place on the HDD.
TinTnMn pointed out in a comment that if you previously compiled the code, you should have executable files in the "obj" and "bin" folders that can be decompiled to recover most of your work
It could be quicker to re-write the code while it is still fresh in your mind.

Lua Love2D - How can I make it download a file?

Title. It's only allowed to save to a certain directory, but is there a way of making an executable made with it update itself? I've got the code to check if it's out of date (HttpGet), but not sure how to intall the newer update.
Main reason is people are complaining about having to repeatedly redownload my RPG. Would it be easier to package it with a C# auto-Updater they can run?
You can not make the .love file "update itself". That is not possible, unless you use the operative system's package manager or something similar (apt-get in Ubuntu, the app store on mac, and whatever microsoft uses, if it has it).
If you don't want to do that, then the second best way to make that work would be making your love2d executable a "shell"; an "empty game" that simply downloads stuff from the internet, and later on it executes some function that initializes everything, including the proper game.
As jpjacobs says, you can download stuff from the web using LuaSocket (which is already included in LÖVE 0.7). For example, this is how you download a png (I've copied the code from here):
if not love.filesystem.exists("expo.png") then
local http = require("socket.http")
local b, c, h = http.request("http://love2d.org/w/images/e/e3/Resource-AnalExplosion.png")
love.filesystem.write("expo.png", b)
end
There's also a way to uncompress data using the GNU unzip algorithm using pure lua. It's implemented by the /AdvTiledLoader/external/gunzip.lua file in Kadoba's Advanced TileLoader.
So I guess you can make a game that:
Starts by reading a file called version.lua, and comparing it to a file in your server (http://www.your-server.com/latest-version-number). That file simply contains a number, like "48".
If no file and server could not be contacted, then error "could not download game".
If no file, or current version < latest version from the server, download zip file from server (http://www.your-server.com/latest.zip)
If latest.zip downloaded successfully, erase everything inside the /latest directory and uncompress latest.zip on the new latest. Update version.lua with the new version (return 48)
Detect when you are working offline - If could not download latest.zip or version, but there's already a version.lua and latest folder, give just a warning, not an error.
Require the file that contains the real game; probably something like require 'latest.main'
Notes:
I'm not familiar with luasocket. It is possible that there's a way to get the 'last updated' date from http://www.your-server.com/latest.zip, so you can simply get rid of the latest-version-number stuff.
I haven't used gunzip.lua myself. I don't know how it handles multiple files, or directories.
My first guess would be using LuaSocket. You can have a small file containing the current version number, have that downloaded on startup, and then decide whether an upgrade is necesarry or not.

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