Guidelines in Visual Studio 2002, 2003 and 2005 text editors (Thanks to Channel 9 and Sara Ford)

Guidelines in Visual Studio 2002, 2003 and 2005 text editors (Thanks to Channel 9 and Sara Ford): "ver since I fired up Netbeans for the first time I have wanted the 80 column guideline it has in the text editor window. Sure, there’s a control at the bottom of the text editor window that tells you where your cursor is column wise but honestly, a faint line right up column 80 works best.

Of course not everyone likes doing this but I’ve found that my code is the most readable visually and printed if I force breaks at 80 columns, or perhaps 120 columns. Now, thanks to a Channel 9 post here and the original post by Sara Ford here I now know how to add guidelines in Visual Studio. Why this isn’t an option in Tools… Options is beyond me. Apparently it has been a hack for the past several versions.

Here’s how you do it. Close Visual Studio and open up regedit. Navigate to the key below inserting the version number of your VS install where appropriate (ie. for Visual Studio 2005 you’ll find an “8.0” key under the VisualStudio branch).

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER]\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Text Editor

Now, create a new REG_SZ (String) value named “Guides” under the Text Editor branch.

Next, double click the new Guides key and insert the following text as its string value.

RGB(R,G,B) c1, c2… cn

where R, G, and B are the RGB values for the color you want the guideline to be. Mine is set to 255,128,128 which gives you a faint red line that almost appears semi-transparent. The values c1… cn are the column numbers you want guides to appear at. NOTE: the column values you set in the registry are 0 (ZERO) based. IOW, if you want guides at column 80 you’ll need to set it at 79. You can have guidelines at as many columns you like, thus the cn. :-) Mine is set to 79, 119 because I want guide lines at 80 columns and 120 columns.

To bring it all together mine says.

RGB(255,128,128) 79, 119

I’ve attached a couple of images below to help visualize the whole process. Click the image for a larger view.

Screen shot of registry location and string value to insert.

Regedit of Guides at 80 columns

Screen shot of the 80 column guideline (VS2005).
Guidelines at 80 columns"

分析：四大管理软件厂商身陷重围 — 中国信息化 - 赛迪网

分析：四大管理软件厂商身陷重围 — 中国信息化 - 赛迪网: "当今的IT管理四巨头BMC、CA、HP和IBM一直设法与后来者拉开距离，但业界观察家却认为，像微软、甲骨文这样强劲的对手有望将四大厂商之一拉下宝座。

Forrester Research最近发表了两篇报告，探讨哪些厂商最有可能搅乱管理软件的市场格局。尽管很难预测像HP和IBM这样资产雄厚的企业会在它们统治的许多市场中的一个市场失利，但BMC和CA则是规模小得多的公司，它们正在成为关注管理技术的大型厂商的收购目标。

Forrester Research高级分析师Glenn O'Donnell说：“分析HP和IBM的市场份额后，我们发现两家公司都达到了几十亿美元的规模。它们是庞大的公司，没有人会收购它们。但CA和BMC就要小得多，但同样拥有非常诱人的管理技术，并且是甲骨文或微软这样的公司可以吃掉的企业。”

O'Donnell还认为，与IBM和刚刚收购的EDS的HP相比，BMC和CA没有硬件或服务业务，这使得它们在竞争中处于劣势。而甲骨文则有望通过收购成为管理领域的重要领导厂商，甲骨文的全面业务自动化策略将驱动其实现这一目标。对甲骨文和微软而言，CA是一个不错的收购对象。Forrester的高级分析师Evelyn Hubbert认为，CA就好比是IT管理王国中的没落贵族，被甲骨文这样的公司收购对CA来说并不是件坏事，这将为其带来需要的东西。

O'Donnell最近发表了一篇题为“管理IT管理软件资产组合”的报告。在报告中，O'Donnell论述了企业IT经理如何必须改变他们最大限度地利用内部众多管理软件应用的方式，这种方式可能会随着管理软件市场格局的改变而发生变化。而Forrester Research分析师Jean-Pierre Garbani和Peter O'Neill则在一篇题为“IT管理软件挑战者”的报告中探讨了四大厂商目前所面临的潜在竞争对手。

首先，ASG在2007年就着手加大其在业务服务管理（BSM）领域的投入力度。这家自1986年起就开始管理软件开发的公司一直在攻击四大厂商没有完全占领中档市场，并且在该领域取得了强劲的财务业绩。但是，ASG目前仍受到缺少品牌认知的困扰，并且需要将应用管理和IT流程自动化集成到其产品套件中。

作为诸多领域的全球市场领先者，微软持续关注以Windows为中心的数据中心管理。但是，随着Hyper-V和其他虚拟化产品的发布，微软决心在其管理能力方面构建独立于厂商的技术体系。虽然微软可能通过收购成为强劲的竞争者，但Forrester分析师仍认为，微软当前的产品框架将其限制在操作系统管理这个小众市场之中。O'Donnell在报告中指出，随着来自Linux/Java世界竞争的加剧和Google的崛起，我们期望微软能够在异构环境中有所作为。

据Forrester Research分析，NetIQ（Attachmate的一家子公司）是在潜在竞争对手名单中排名靠前。该公司在集成和利用客户已有投资的基础上销售管理软件。NetIQ的另一个优势是，它最近进军了IT流程自动化市场。不过Forrester将NetIQ的销售队伍列为其弱点之一，认为它们过于关注已有的客户，从而不能真正挑战目前的领导厂商。

最后，谈谈甲骨文。甲骨文很久以来一直在谈论其有充分的理由成为一家探索管理技术的厂商。Forrester最近的报告支持甲骨文能够很容易地进入管理市场的假设。作为切入管理市场的优势之一，分析人士指出，甲骨文长期关注IT与业务相适应的问题，同时支持用户更好地利用其他甲骨文的产品。

Forrester报告指出：“甲骨文有可能成为IT管理软件市场中的第五大厂商。不过，这家传统上并不以管理专业技术闻名的软件厂商正在面临着新的挑战。尽管甲骨文的战略在创新和开箱即用的思想方面给人留下了深刻印象，但它必须更多地宣传这些，并利用它提高客户对当前解决方案的兴趣。”"

May « 2009 « Ian Skerrett

May « 2009 « Ian Skerrett: "Insight #5 – Subversion is huge in this community. I knew Subversion was popular but not this popular. 57.5% said they use Subversion as their primary SCM tool, CVS was second at 20%. No other product dominated a category in the survey results.

Ironically, when I hear people complain about Eclipse, the quality of the current Subversion support is high on the list of complaints. There really seems to be an opportunity to satisfy this large user community.

Insight #4 – Oracle DB is very popular in the community. Oracle DB was virtually tied for first place with MySQL at 28%. I expected to see MySQL do well but not tied with Oracle. It is also somewhat timely due to the Oracle acquisition of Sun/MySQL.

Insight #3 – Atlassian JIRA is very popular. I don’t follow bug tracking solutons that closely but I knew Atlassian JIRA was a popular solution. I didn’t realize it was so popular. It tied for top spot with bugzilla.

Also, kudos to TRAC and Mantis for placing third and fourth, even though they were not on the list of options. Enough people specifying them in the other category. I obviously messed up not having them in the list of options."