This manual was last updated: 2020.10.18

1. Description
2. Command Line Launch Options (... custom shortcuts)
3. Module Guide: Clipman
4. Module Guide: Iconmake
5. Module Guide: Imagemod
6. Module Guide: Pixelgrab
7. Module Guide: Unixtime
8. Module Guide: Uricron

NPro Power Tools is a unique suite of powerful modules to empower organizations working in technical and creative industries. Enclosed are a collection of power user utilities built to stand the test of time and specialised for professional ICT operators requiring additional operational functions to improve their existing standard operating procedures.

NPro can be launched from the command line like all applications albeit its possible to launch specific modules without invoking the wrapping application. For instance to specifically launch module x, one can use the form:

npro x

... where x is replaced with the module name. Thus on Windows to launch the module "clipman", the parameter x is replaced with the name of the module which in this case is "clipman". So we use the form:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Nullox\NPro\npro.exe" clipman

The module clipman is loaded bypassing the entire NPro wrapper. Subsequently once clipman is closed so too is the NPro wrapper. This functionality allows you to setup your own shortcuts to use the modules you need quickly and organise your workstation to your own requirements. Each module may or may not support additional parameters which allow computation to take place on the command line. Please reference the specific module documentation for such details.

Clipman is a system clipboard manager which can record and export to disk all clipboard activity. It is a fast, lightweight and efficient clipboard archiver for all textual and bitmap IO operations. It comes with full system tray integration and can thus persist in the background minimising any interference into everyday IT operations.

Bitmaps captured through Clipman can thereafter be exported to disk safely or imported into imagemod for typical image process operations.

Three tabs exist in the clipman interface. The first tab "configure" allows the behaviour of clipman to be modified. The second tab "Search" allows past captures to be retrieved. The third tab "Session" renders the current session history.

Configure Tab

Capture clipboard contents If unchecked then most clipman activity will cease Record textual expressions to disk If checked then text expressions captured are stored to disk Record bitmaps If checked then clipman will capture bitmaps from memory Exclude localised bitmaps... If checked then bitmaps origining from local disk will be ignored Bitmap Cache Path You may override the cache path for bitmaps storage Import bitmaps into Imagemod Bitmaps captured will be immediately imported into Imagemod Auto delete cached bitmaps... Bitmaps older than two days residing in the cache will be routinely removed Delete Cache... This user invoked function will delete the entire clipman cache from disk

Search Tab

The search function operates in one of two modes. There is substring search which is enabled by default. This will pull any entries in the clipman database which contain the substring given. The latter (unchecked) mode will only pull entries which contain a specific keyword (keyword search) and substring occurrences are thus not checked.

Iconmake facilitates the creation of native icons and fully supports the importation and exportation of ICO file formats. Iconmake can be used to make favicons, portable executable icons and more. Iconmake supports the creation of icons for sizes 16, 32, 48, 64, 96, 128 and 256. Iconmake has a cell magnifier feature which can be modified using the mouse wheel to assist the modification of individual cells. This makes it easy to manipulate individual pixels in the icon bitmap for pixel perfect design.

The control bar situated to the left of iconview has a cursor, rectangular selection, textual input, pencil, brush, eraser, bucket and gradient tool. The pencil control is always 1x1 pixel in size, that is to paint pixels of a larger radius, the brush tool must be selected. The size of the brush or the eraser is determined by the slider that appears on the top toolbar whenever either of these control types are selected. The bucket fill control type can be used to quickly and accurate fill a region of pixels which are equal to and connected to the origin pixel selected when the tool is initialised. The value of the fill is equal to that of the primary colour selected. In this instance to the left, the primary colour is light red and the secondary colour is black. Historical colour values appear in the palette and they may be quickly recovered by clicking on each. Which will in turn hot swap the historical colour back as the primary colour. Primary and secondary colours can be changed by clicking on each and selecting a new hue set from the dialog which appears. When icons are saved into the ico file format. If the save is a fresh file then Iconmake if permitted will export multiple variants of the same icon which is typical in a ico file format. For example a 48x48 will be saved as a 48x48 and will be accompanied with a 32x32 and 16x16 variant to support ico readers which use distinct variants to support multiple resolutions. The scaling option can be toggled via the configuration module within NPro Power Tools in addition to how the brush control type manipulates neighboring pixels.

Filemenu

New make new icon Open open ico file and load largest icon variant Open and Select open ico file and select icon variant Save save modification of existing icon variant into origin file Save As save icon into new ico file Close close ico file Import Bitmap import bitmap and resize to existing icon dimensions Export Bitmap export icon and save into a non ico file format Save All save all open icons Close All close all open icons Recent files open recently loaded icon Exit exit iconmake

Editmenu

Undo restore existing image state backwards by one step Redo restore existing image state forwards by one step Find and Replace swap pixel values in existing image data Deselect deselect any existing selection on the image canvas Fill Selection fill all pixels in selection region with primary colour Configure Font change the existing font used for text entry Preview system shell execute the ico file Reset Palette reset the left palette of colours to the initial defaults

Imagemod is a batch bitmap processing utility with a magnitude of options to seamlessly operate on one or thousands of bitmaps circumventing the intervention that would consume many hours of admin work. Options include brightness modification, noise filtering using mean or median techniques, dimension scaling, grayscaling and format conversion.



Imagemod utilises thread technologies to work silently in the background processing thousands of images. Progress may be tracked via the interface in real time.

Input Form:	Output Form:

Should the option "Save All via Format" be unchecked then no format conversion will be undertaken. Rather the input format will translate to the resulting output format, that is a JPG input will result in a JPG output. The same applies for BMP and PNG, whichever the input type provided.

Imagemod CLE

Imagemod can be invoked from the command line so it can adapt to custom build processes which rely upon extensive image list processing. The invoke uses the existing form:

npro imagemod source_image_dir output_write_dir -argument value

You can specify multiple arguments and values. For instance to build a list of thumbnails where each thumbnail needs a width of 200 and a height of 250, one can use the form:

npro imagemod source_image_dir output_write_dir -scale 200x250

To repeat the same scaling process albeit change the image format from JPG to PNG, we could use the form:

npro imagemod source_image_dir output_write_dir -scale 200x250 -format png

Now the thumbnails will use the portable network graphic format (PNG). Available argument and value formats are listed in the following table:

Pixelgrab facilitates the pixel datum extraction underlying the current mouse position. It comes equipped with a large exotic preset of colours and includes a live capture which will analyse all distinct colours within a subspace of the region hovered.



By choosing the _Capture_ option, the capture mode will be activated and it may be ceased once a pixel of interest is identifed by using the hotkey combination CTRL+G. On Windows the _Capture_ option invokes Windows API with a hook so pixels can be captured with a mouse press event. However should the power user not wish to trigger a mouse click, the option CTRL+G persists as an alternative capturing trigger.



Once a capture has been performed Pixelgrab also goes a step further by extracting all the unique hues within the region of interest and compiles a list which may thereafter be sampled upon. Colours copied will populate the list residing inside the "History" tab. This list persists between instances of Pixelgrab thus colours can be reference long after they were captured should the power user need back tract their capturing history. This buffer list is limited to 500 entries in which case each new entry will replace the oldest.

Unixtime is the number of seconds which have elapsed from the epoch birth defined as:

01 January 1970 00:00:00.0000

Having an independent metric without bias for convenient timezones is useful for engineers spanning the computation science space, these include database and network administrators, software engineers and other scientists reliant upon computational technologies.



Metrics obtainable from Unix Time Maker include the unix timestamp, its translated universal time coordinated (UTC) and its variant localised shift relative to a convenient timezone.



A timestamp of the form:

1588974242

... is using the "Unix Time Numeric" field translated to the form:

08/05/2020 14:14:02

Unix Time Maker has a batch processor which supports IO and facilitates the prompt conversion of dates and times.



The inputs:

1588974242
08/05/2020 14:14:02

... are mapped one-by-one to the output form:

08-05-2020 14:14:02
1588974242

The output date format uses the regional setting defined in the NPro Power Tools configuration. Multiple date formats are supported in addition to their respective date delimitors. In this particular instance, day number preceeds month numerical and the delimitor used in this context is that of a hyphen.

Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) may be used as pathways into remote execution and having the ability to poll or invoke remote operations is useful for mobile engineers to periodically check the diagnostics of web services or perform systematic operations to keep devop systems in sync.

The process can be configured to be autonomous and the batch operations can carry on seamlessly in the background once configured to keep invoking remote methods remotely.



Uri Cron Manager is a package which supports remote method invocation (RMI) and acts akin to a remote cron manager for all remote computational needs meeting objectives of information processing for vast organisations managing large data capacity requirements.

Five Operations

Uri Cron Manager supports six operation modes. These include polling, substring checking, string/numeric comparison and the numeric checks less than, greater than and not equal to.



For a mode other than a simple polling, the "Data Check" option must be checked and the comparison value can be given into the "Comparison Type" field as new cron jobs are added.

Type Identifiers

The following type identifiers exist from the interface and have the following distinct meanings:

For situations where a test must be performed to see if a response is less than OR equal to, we suggest you simply increase your constant by one to compensate since the context would none the less be equal.