Blowfish and Progress Bar...

[Jahkri]

Hi Everybody,

i have a small problem with the Blowfish-Extension. The Encrytion/Decryption-Process works flawlessly, but i wanted to implement a Progress-Bar that shows the Encryption-Progress on large Files (some hundred Megabytes for example). But it seems like any progress-bar (the one in the Dialog-Box-Object and also the one from Chris Branch) doesn' t work. But from my point of view there' s a Problem with the Blowfish-Object. Also in the Event-Editor i noticed a strange behavior of the "Set File Work Percentage Interval"-Action. It changes its entry on an irregular basis (it adds more % signs or messes up the Line in the Event-Editor). Strange Behavior.

Could this also be related to Win7 64-bit System? I recently upgraded my computer from WinVista 32-bit to Win7 64-bit.

Anyway, i will investigate further into this tomorrow, it got late here. If someone would like to test it, i could upload an .mfa tomorrow.

Good Night everybody...

[Jahkri]

Hello Everybody,

i have now uploaded the .mfa of the File-Encryption.

If anybody could please take a look and tell me why the Progress-Bar isn' t showing the Progress of the Encryption.

As i said above, the Encryption itself works, but i' m not able to use any Progress-Bar or Counter to display the Encryption-Progress.

Thanks in Advance and

Greets,

jahkri

Heres the MFA:

View MFA

PS: It also seems like the following Action is Buggy in the Blowfish-Extension: "Set File Work Percentage Interval". If i add this Line in the Event-Editor, it adds some odd Text from other "Actions" into it. It just behaves strange. I have removed that Action from the Uploaded mfa-file but you could try to add that action by yourself and see if it behaves strange.

[Jaffob]

It seems as though the object has to stop the MMF event loop in order for it to write a large file. As a result, none of your events will run while it's encrypting, which is why the bar doesn't work. I'm not sure why the author of the extension included a feature for progress, it's not going to do anything unless the encryption can be done in a separate thread or something.

[Jeod]

You could try using the encryption bit in a separate application and then open that application as a subapp.

[Jahkri]

Thanks Jaffob,

thats what i thought too. It realy stops the MMF Event-Loop. There' s this "Set File Work Percentage Interval" that can be set for ex. to 1 and it should allow an Event-Loop every time 1% of the File has been encrypted. If set to 25, then it allows the event-loop only when 25% have been encrypted. It seems like this Action is Buggy because in the Event-Editor when i select that Action and set it to 1, then it adds annoying extra % Symbols or mixes the Text with other Actions in the same Event.

And thanks Jeod for the Idea with the Subapp, didn' t think of that. I will definitely try your suggestion if i don' t find any easier solution to this.

Thanks again to you to (Jaffob and Jeod)...

by the Way, is this the J-Thread (Jahkri, Jaffob, Jeod)

[Jahkri]

Hi again,

i' ve done some testing again and i found out that the "Set File Work Percantage Interval" does indeed work, but the Blowfish-Object is returning strange "File Work Progress"-Numbers.
In the Help-File it says that it outputs the File-Progress as Percentage. So i assume it should go from 0 to 100 (%). But when i test the Percentage-Output of the Blow-Fish-Object then it gives me realy strange numbers. It goes twice! from zero to about 40 or 50 and when the File is finished, it goes to 19.

Realy strange Behavior. Could i consider this as a Bug or is it something that i may have overseen? I could upload the new .mfa if anybody is interessted in investigation.

Thanks and Greets,

jahkri

[Jahkri]

Anyway, here' s the .mfa of the new Version with the "semi-working" Progress-Bar.

I was able to find the Solution within the Blowfish-Object. One has to define a "Percentage-Value" (%) for the "File-Work-Percentage-Interval" Action. This Value defines when the Encryption-Process will be paused for a short period of time to allow one MMF-Event-Loop before continuing Encryption.
For example, when set to "1" in the "File-Work-Percentages-Interval"-Action, then it would allow one MMF-Event-Loop always when 1 (another) Percent of the File has been encrypted/decrypted.
Same with the "File Work Time Interval"-Action. But instead of defining a Percentage Value of the File that beeing encrypted, you define a "File-Work-Time"-Value in milliseconds (ms). Then the encryption process is alway paused when the Time-Spawn has been reached. For example it would allow an MMF-Event-Loop every 100 ms or every 200 ms or whatever.

So that Part works now. The Progress-Bar is reacting acordingly to the Value that i' ve entered for the MMF-Event-Loop to be allowed in the Blowfish-Object. But there is now another Bug, as i described in my pervious post. The Percentage-Value that is outputted by the Blowfish-Object seems to be Buggy. I don' t get a percentage-value from 0 to 100, instead it behaves completely different on every (large, 100+ MB) File. Sometimes it goes from 0 to 15 five Times with another File it goes from 0 to 40 twice and then it goes to 19. Realy Strange. I could of course add an
+ "File Encryption has completed"
- Set Progressbar to 100 (%).

But that would give a Jump from the "strange Value" to 100 at the End, and it doesn' t prevent that the progressbar has this strange behavior before Ending the Encryption-Process.

Here' s the new .mfa

View MFA

PS: Sorry if i described the problem again in Detail and you have to read a lot. I just want to make sure that everything is transparent and hopefully understandable to anybody who reads the post.

Greets,

jahkri

[Richard_Pikk]

I have downloaded and tested the .mfa, and there is definitely some problem with this aspect of the Blowfish object. The "Set File Work Percentage Interval" action becomes visually corrupted in the event list editor when used, and the percentage values that are returned makes little sense.

My idea for a workaround was to set the work percentage to for instance 5, and then add the value 5 to the progress bar on every MMF-loop that the Blowfish object allows in between its batches. Sadly this didn't turn out to work reliably either.

[Jahkri]

Hi Rickard_Pikk,

thank you very much for verifying the Problem with the Blowfish-Extension. Should i post a Bug-Report in the Extension-Development-Forum? Is there a possibility that the "Bug" in this Extension could be fixed?

Anyway, thanks for your much appreciated input. I will try to find a work-around. Perhaps instead of a Progress-Bar just an Icon with some Text like "Encrypting File now, please wait...".

Greets,

jahkri

[Jahkri]

Last Information:

I sent a Bug-Report to the Developer of the Blowfish-Extension. Hopefuly he will patch the Blowfish-Extension. Ofcourse i recognise that it is just a "cosmetic" Bug (i just have to avoid a progress-counter or progress-bar), because the Encryption itself works flawlessly. So the most important Part of the Object is fine.

I will post new information if i receive an answer from the Extension-Developer.

Greetz

jahkri