ExQueues Shell Queue

ExQueues Shell Queue is an application that allows a user to 'queue up' various file operations using the Windows Explorer (through the Context Menu) or in other file managers such as Directory Opus (using DDE). In particular, multiple sequential PAR2 repairs & RAR extractions are supported along with source file deletion, as well as sequential file moves and copies, and deletion.

Version 0.3.9 Released!

I believe the par2.exe issues have been resolved. The problem was the par2.exe handles files with case sensitivity since it is cross-platform. However, one of NewsLeecher's new 'features' (and it is helpful don't get me wrong) is to make the filenames ALL CAPS if the file is incomplete. This causes a problem when using par2.exe if you specify all of the files on the commandline using wildcard, like my_files.*. ExQeueues uses my_files.* in order to deal with those cases where the par2 repair actually rejoins the files into one (001, 002, etc files that were split AFTER the parset was created). So I have released a (god I hope it's) working par2 version 0.4.1 that resolves this.
In a previous point release, the config.xml option 'ExtractMinItemsToFolder' to folder was actually implemented. If your archive now contains this settings number of items in the root folder, it will always extract it to a subfolder. So if you ALWAYS want your files extracted to a subfolder set this value to 0 or 1.

Version 0.3.5 Released!

The default configuration file is now called config.default.xml in the c:\Documents & Settings\%username%\Application Data\Exqueues folder. If you wish to customize the config file, copy it to config.xml before making changes if you wish to preserve those changes the next time you install/upgrade ExQueues.
Made a change the the par2.exe patch as sometimes the repairs wouldn't succeed. The file sharing issue is still resolved.

Version 0.3.4 Released!

A deadlock bug when using DDE Drag and Drop in Directory Opus was resolved.
A patched version of par2.exe is now included in the ExQueues installer. This patched version fixes a persistent logic problem in par2.exe that would cause file locking access issues and would cause ExQueues repairs to fail with 'Repair: Unknown Error' frequently.

New Version 0.3 Has The Following Bug Fixes And Enhancements

By popular request, special folder destinations have been added: Here, Browse, & Derived Subfolder. Derived Subfolder is the only one that may need a little explanation: It chooses the current folder plus the root of the filename as the destination folder. For example, Repair Then Extract->Derived Subfolder on a file called 'c:\folder\MyFile.par2', would extract the files to a subfolder called 'c:\folder\MyFile\'. Please note that you may only select one file for processing at a time when using these special folders. Ie., you can't select 5 different par2 sets for repair then extract to 'Here'.
Repair then Move works properly. It no longer moves the original selected file, it moves the files that were repaired.
Error messages are now displayed for failed repairs and extractions (unrar).
Deletion Confirmation is now handled properly. If you had disabled it in your Recycle Bin because of ExQueues, please remember to re-enable it.
Removed ace and zip extensions until they are supported for extraction to prevent errors.
Hopefully version 0.4 will contain an all new PAR2 DLL I am working on for much tighter integration and getting rid of the par2.exe dependency. I will also try and write this DLL in such a way as it may be useful for other applications needing to repair par/par2 archives. par version 1 files should be supported if/when I get this finished as well.
Updated these docs with new Subversion version control information, as well as correcting an inadvertent error in the explanation of how to do the Directory Opus DDE configuration. If you had tried the DDE instructions before without success, please try them again with the corrected instructions.

Main Features

You don't have to wait to queue up additional operations.
The list of operations allowed is automatically detected based on the file types. So for instance, right clicking multiple PAR2 files shows repair and repair then extract options, while right clicking a set of files (example.PAR2,example.SFV,example.NFO,exmaple.RAR) just shows the move and copy operations.
Automatically detects the number of files in a RAR and will decide to extract into a subfolder if too many files are found. For example, extacting a RAR named example.rar containing a single ISO file dummy.iso to y:\burn\ will result in a file called y:\burn\dummy.iso. The number of files is an option in the config.
Extracting a RAR containing a VIDEO_TS folder will always put the extracted file into a sub folder based on the RAR name. This is a default option in the config.
UnRar is built in, as is some par2 processing (though currently the actual repair processing occurs externally using the par2 commandline application).
Source file deletion. After a successful repair, most PAR2 files are deleted. After a RAR extraction, RAR files are deleted. This is an option in the config.
DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) allows for a number of other applications to interact with ExQueues in new ways.
XML based config with variable substitution, and self reference, allows for a wide variety of configurations. Additional command line based operations and DDE based operations can be added.

ExQueues Configuration

While the beginnings of an in-application editor for the XML configuration is in place, it is currently not complete, and may not be for a while. So here are the important changes you need to make to the XML config. This file will be located in your c:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\ExQueues\Config.default.xml file. If you make extensive changes to this file, and wish to keep them the next time you update ExQueues, copy or rename this file to config.xml and the installer will not overwrite your changes.

The config file itself is fairly well documented in comments and tips. The key areas to change are shown below. Setup your basic directories for the Extraction, Copy and Move destinations in the varDests variable. Note that individual paths may be enclosed in double quotes if needed. You may also use the new special folder indicators when specifying folders in either the varDests varaible or any of the <MenuDestination>s in the config file. These special folders are specified by _here _subfolder and _browse. Use commas to separate them from other paths as you would any other folder.

A patched version of par2.exe is now included in the installer. The following paragraph refers to previous versions that did not include par2.exe, or if you are having some conflict with different versions of par2.exe on the same machine.

The only other area that really needs to be set or checked before using ExQueues is the par2.exe location. If it is in the default path already you can leave it as is. Otherwise, you will need to change the path to the par2.exe. par2.exe can be found from the links at the bottom of the page. The current version you would need on Windows is 'par2cmdline-0.4-x86-win32.zip' from the downloads page. At some point I may move more of the par2 code into ExQueues to get rid of this external dependecy. Leave the commandline options alone unless you know what you are doing.

There are a number of other options and changes that can be made by poking around in that config file. You can even add your own custom commandline based action that may be queued in the same way. Additonal info located in the config docs.

Explorer and Directory Opus Usage

The ExQueues application must be running for the right click context menu to work properly in both Windows Explorer and Directory Opus, otherwise the context menu will show a grayed out message indicating it is not running. Simply ensure you have started the application. Using the Drag & Drop features in Directory Opus will automatically start an instance of ExQueues if one is not already running.

When ExQueues is minimized it goes to the System Tray on the taskbar. Click the icon on the system tray to show the window.

Example using the Explorer right click context menu to queue up two par2's for processing. (Note: You don't have to pick the small PAR2 file, any of them will do, including the ones with 'vol01+1' in them. Just pick one from each set though.)

For Directory Opus(DOpus) Drag & Drop(DnD) features, my preferred method of using ExQueues, a number of changes can be implemented.

Under Settings->File Types, doubleclick 'All Files & Folders'. I personally use Shift DnD in DOpus to queue up actions in ExQueues. So doubleclick 'dropshift' and paste the following in the text area (the space after {allfilepath} may be important unless they have fixed the bug). Please note this is corrected with the proper line break after 'ddetopc ExQueues'.

ddeexec [queue( {destpath} {allfilepath} )] ddeapp EXQUEUES ddetopic ExQueues "c:\Program Files\ExQueues\ExQueues.exe" /dde

Under Settings->Customize, doubleclick or create a key shortcut for Ctrl-Delete. Set the values as indicated and paste the following in the text area (the space after {allfilepath} may be important unless they have fixed the bug). Please note this is corrected with the proper line break after 'ddetopc ExQueues'.

ddeexec [delete( "" {allfilepath} )] ddeapp EXQUEUES ddetopic ExQueues "c:\Program Files\ExQueues\ExQueues.exe" /dde

Finally, I find it useful in DOpus to set up a custom toolbar with my favorite paths, so I can easily shift DnD one or more files at a time to be automatically queued up in ExQueues with that folder as the destination. More info can be found in the DOpus manual, but here I have created a new toolbar by right clicking the toolbar area and choosing customize, and then adding and editing a button.

At some point I make look at trying to automate some of that setup with DDE calls to DOpus.

ExQueues Shell Queue

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