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http://debugmode.com/wink/ Wink is sweet. Version 2.0 does audio, too. Huge time saver for demoing problems. Freeware, too. Plus, you can create EXEs for users who don't have Flash.

Why not use Wink?

There's this nifty program called Wink that I use all the time to create GUI animations. It supports making manual shots, input-driven mode (key/mouse actions trigger screenshot) and time-driven mode (makes n shots per second). After recording the scene one can edit the cursor position, add descriptions and insert buttons for play control. In the final animation the cursor moves automatically between its position on two shots. Generates Flash animations or EXE files and can export to HTML, PDF and PS. There's a version for Windows and Linux. I can highly suggest this tool.

There's this nifty program called Wink that I use all the time to create GUI animations. It supports making manual shots, input-driven mode (key/mouse actions trigger screenshot) and time-driven mode (makes n shots per second). After recording the scene one can edit the cursor position, add descriptions and insert buttons for play control. In the final animation the cursor moves automatically between its position on two shots. Generates Flash animations or EXE files and can export to HTML, PDF and PS. There's a version for Windows and Linux. I can highly suggest this tool.

Wink is open source and makes better looking videos than those shown.

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

I have never tried using it with audio though. I always just go with a text note and a next button.

There are several screen capture to SWF generators:

1) Captivate.
2) Viewletbuilder.
3) Wink.

no problem.
So why not contribute by building these tutorials yourself?

Linspire did it also in Flash.
Puppy Linux did it as HTML files.

I don't think your remarks about HTML versus manpages are terribly apropos. For command-line utilities, the --help and man are good for a quick overview. What manpages are you referring to that contain "tens of pages of minute technical settings that are outdated"?

For GUI tools, I have high hopes for Wink-based documentation, though it's by necessity quite task-oriented. What would you consider a decent source-level documentation tool for developers, apart from Doxygen? As in, what's better?

--grendel drago

I use a combination of the Mixonic; custom CD-R printing and Jewelboxing; cases to make up bundles for my web clients. I deliver all of the project deliverables (code, images, initial database loads, etc.) as well as video tutorials on using the content management system, photo galleries and other tools installed on the site (using Wink) . The packaging uses one of my templates, but both the template for the CD and the packaging has slots for their logo and company information, so each bundle is completely customized to their company. The packaging really cements the client's confidence in the work done and it really ends up as an inconsequential cost with much higher benefits. It costs a little more than having 100 CD-R's printed all the same (5x more), but $5 is still dirt cheap for a serious web project. When I started doing this, it actually cut down dramatically on complaints about the bill size. They had something in hand to match up to the invoice. I'm amazed at the number of software companies, web design companies and others that just don't take the time to put a bit of polish into their presentation. I've paid $150 for software that came on a store-bought CD-R with Sharpie marker as the "label" and others with a cheap paper label sloppily slapped on the disc.

I call shenanigans. DisC was specifically written for taking apart Turbo C dos executables. If you were genuinely following a trace like this, you would have almost certainly just intercepted the outgoing call to "_vis.dll" and loaded the truth value inline - not like you wouldn't have had enough room to work in.

I'm really excited about the future of Jashaka, but for now I stick to Wax (Win only, but more stable and usable than Jahshaka at this stage).

With regards the original article - well, that was a bunch of obvious guff really; what you'd expect from high-school geeks of the type I was, some number of years ago. Of note, is that it claimed to decompile C++, when actually it talked only of rather trivial C constructs, something that is a well understood practice already.

Some relatively recent classic decompilation work was done by Cristina Cifuentes who put together a C decompiler that worked to a significant degree for common DOS-based compilers of the time. Effectively the job of "decompilation" can be thought of as "compilation" - instead of compiling C into ASM, you think of compiling ASM into C. Not as daft as it sounds, honest. You can download "dcc" from the above site to investigate further.

Boomerang is a sourceforge project attempting to create a decompiler. Worth a look, as well.

It's worth noting, that there are a number of ways to "cheat". For example, it's often trivial to discover what compiler was used to generate a given object code, and there are usually masses of common library-type code that gives you a leg up. Add to that, the fact that a piece of code was generated by a compiler, and the problem of discovering what a given piece of object code does is drastically simplified - compilers add huge amounts of structure and predictability to the generated object code that can be absent in free-form handwritten assembler (and few people do that anymore!), and much can be made of this.

On the code/data issue mentioned by others in this thread - although separating code/data in general from mixed binaries can be considered hard, in reality it's often quite feasible and even simple. After all, the CPU manages to work it out. Again, the fact that there are so many short-cuts you can take really helps.

Of course, a quick cruise around the cracking community will turn up all sorts of ways and means to shortcut this sort of problem...

Here are the results of a quick googling:

• Univac 494 to 1100 Series Decompiler
• REC Decompiler
• DisC - Decompiler for TurboC