Toolbox

Toolbox is designed to provide a graphical user interface (GUI) for running software tools (console applications). The concept of software tools is described in a book called Software Tools by Kernighan and Plauger and published in 1976. A software tool can be described as a programme written to do one job as simply and directly as possible. Without going into any detail, they are normally run from a command line and use standard input and output so there is very little code to deal with the operating system. These days one would usually use a scripting language and personally I like to use Python.

Providing a GUI for such a programme is an oxymoron. A GUI is time consuming to develop, doesn’t add much to its functionality and tends to be specific to an operating system. Without one, however, it is more difficult to use. One gets out of practice and, with bigger and more complicated file systems, there can be a lot more typing and greater chances of error.

Toolbox solves this problem. Stripped to its essentials, it displays the available tools in a list and provides a text box into which you can type any arguments. More to the point, you can cut and paste (or drag and drop) a file from other sources such as Windows Explorer. Having set the arguments, all you have to do is select the tool you want to run and double click on it. This process saves typing and eliminates most typing errors.

Toolbox is written using Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition based on .NET Framework Version 3.5 SP1 which are both free downloads. If you want to write a software tool using Visual Basic Microsoft describes it as a console application.

I hope you will forgive me for listing things that are obvious. Over the years I have spent hours of surfing only to find that the answer was so obvious that nobody bothered to say so.

Setting up

Toolbox does not need to be "installed". It makes no changes to your registry and can be completely removed from your system by simply deleting it.

Simply create or choose a suitable folder and unzip Toolbox-exe-1.00.zip into it. This will create:

Put your tools in the Tools folder. A tool can be any executable file that can run from a command prompt: exe files, batch files, script files and short cuts to such files. You can also include ini files, as specified separately. I also have a folder called Cupboard: if the Tools folder gets too full I simply put some of them into the Cupboard.