Looking for Beta Testers for Computer Graphics Program

Here's something that's sort of interesting. The Settings Control Screen looks best when the Windows property for text size is at the default setting which is the smallest. It looks the worst not at the largest text size but rather at the middle one. You can see how in the middle screenshot the values inside the comboboxes are often showing only partially and the phase labels are too short to center the text. The colors of those a and b phase labels are starting to get on my nerves. I'll probably change them.

default text size
Attachment 83081

middle text size
Attachment 83079

largest text size
Attachment 83080

Pardon me if I'm posting you guys to death. I'm becoming a postaholic. I better go to postaholics anonymous. PA meetings. Anyway I was wondering if you might know if there's anyway to determine from a Visual Basic application what the Windows property for text size is? I posted in the VB.NET forum here but got no replies. If it was at the middle setting I could alter the width of the comboboxes and move them a bit. I don't know what percentage of computer users go above the default value. Maybe it's pretty small. I wasn't even aware of this setting until after I started this thread. If you don't know that's ok. Just want to say thanks again for all your help boops and thanks akhileshbc too for your help.:wave:

RR1.0.45. m screen appears and is maximized. The button texts are readable but some labels are still truncated. The Settings Explained window still has corrupted lines but less than before; can't you give it a resizable border? Context switching (Alt-Tab) now works, but the Settings Explained window remains on top of other programs; probably you should make it an Owned Form of the Settings window instead of TopMost. Closing the Settings window the first time causes the same unhandled exception (Conversion from String "" to Double is not valid); maybe you should check that all fields have default values.

BB

The reason I didn't give the Settings Explained window a resizable border I explained some posts back. I get these hatch marks at the right edge of the form if you scroll down. It doesn't happen when I scroll up or leave the form at the position it opens. I want to give it a sizable border so I'll work on that problem. I could just go ahead and give it the sizable border and we could live with the lines until I figure out how to fix that. They aren't too bad.

Attachment 83095

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probably you should make it an Owned Form of the Settings window instead of TopMost.

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Could you explain how to do that? Setting TopMost false is easy enough but I'm not familiar with making one form an owned form of another.

I'm thinking I should just go ahead and concentrate on rebuilding the Adjust Settings form with a new Visual Basic 2010 windows form. There are a number of things different between this form that migrated through different VB versions and a VB2010 form. Making the conversion may fix a lot of these problems possibly. The one problem I know it will fix is the problem where the form doesn't open if some object is too close to the right edge. I've tested that out.

I was thinking what if I had boops boops computer. Then I wouldn't have to bother boops boops so much. A lot of the issues have had to do with resolution so I could get a new monitor. Maybe that's a good start. I sold a Visio 26" TV less than a year ago that could also be used as a monitor. I wish now that I had kept it and used it as a computer monitor.
Any recommedations about a good monitor would be for my situation? If it was one where I could switch between lots of different possible setups so that it would be like having a number of different monitors that would be good.

I started a thread here about buying a monitor.
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...62#post3979062

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Originally Posted by boops boops

The Settings Explained window still has corrupted lines but less than before;

BB

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Boops could you give me a screenshot of that? The Settings Explained window with the corrupted lines. I might have enough space below it so I don't have to move things too much. If I could see what it looks like then I would get a better idea of how much to move things. The same area of the window that you took in post # 18 would be good. I would see what difference going to autosize made.

Edit entry: I just tested the Settings Explain window after setting the display properties for Windows to the middle size text and I get a lot of over lap from one label to the next. So I don't think I need that screenshot. I'll just make it so it works for me in the middle text size and then it will probably work good for you or at least a lot better for you.

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Originally Posted by EntityX

The reason I didn't give the Settings Explained window a resizable border I explained some posts back. I get these hatch marks at the right edge of the form if you scroll down. It doesn't happen when I scroll up or leave the form at the position it opens. I want to give it a sizable border so I'll work on that problem. I could just go ahead and give it the sizable border and we could live with the lines until I figure out how to fix that. They aren't too bad.

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The only reason I asked for resizable was to help diagnose what was going wrong. I can't do a screenshot right now, but it looks pretty similar to before. It looks like you have a series of text boxes stacked up vertically in the window, but on my screen they are overlapping. Maybe you are just calculating the spacing incorrectly for different screen heights. If so you might try putting them in a FlowLayoutPanel and let Windows Forms do the spacing.

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Could you explain how to do that? Setting TopMost false is easy enough but I'm not familiar with making one form an owned form of another.

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Three alternative ways:

Code:

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Form1.AddOwnedForm(Form2)
'or
Form2.Owner = Form1
'or
Form2.Show(Form1)

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In each case, Form1 is the Owner of Form2. That means Form2 stays in front of Form1 and no other windows can come between them. Replace Form1 or Form2 by "Me" where appropriate. Another alternative would be to show the Explanations form with ShowDialog so that the user has to close it.

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I'm thinking I should just go ahead and concentrate on rebuilding the Adjust Settings form with a new Visual Basic 2010 windows form. There are a number of things different between this form that migrated through different VB versions and a VB2010 form. Making the conversion may fix a lot of these problems possibly. The one problem I know it will fix is the problem where the form doesn't open if some object is too close to the right edge. I've tested that out.

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I wish you would rethink the layout altogether. I could make some suggestions, but you have to consider the alternatives. For example, couldn't you use a TabControl with the different phases in different Tabs? Couldn't you split up the Settings Explained window into a series of separate Help texts which show automatically in a panel when a setting is selected? It's always going to be a lot of work with so many settings.

Besides, there are other problems looming. You have to allow for Culture. Some settings lock up when the Windows setting is a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. You try to change the value shown and it throws a new error. Time for Ctrl-Alt-Delete!

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I was thinking what if I had boops boops computer. Then I wouldn't have to bother boops boops so much. A lot of the issues have had to do with resolution so I could get a new monitor. Maybe that's a good start. I sold a Visio 26" TV less than a year ago that could also be used as a monitor. I wish now that I had kept it and used it as a computer monitor.

Any recommedations about a good monitor would be for my situation? If it was one where I could switch between lots of different possible setups so that it would be like having a number of different monitors that would be good.
I started a thread here about buying a monitor.
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...62#post3979062

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A good monitor matters if you care about graphics, and you also need to try your program on different sizes. That's not just for debugging but for evaluating the "feel" of the program. Fairly high-res wide TFT screens (1920*1050 approx.) are cheap now. Dearer ones such as some of the Dell Ultrasharp series with a high colour gamut have noticeably richer colours. It's sometimes hard to get information about that. Here's a forum about displays.

BB

I can see that you get a lot of problem that I don't. It's apparent that you can make an application work nicely on one computer but it may have lots of problems on another.

Edit entry :
I'm starting to work with a FlowLayoutPanel per your suggestion. I tried putting panels into it but didn't see how to paste text into it so then I tried textboxes and then labels. It seems like labels work the best for me. I was having very serious trouble using labels on that Settings Explained form once I put the Windows text size into the middle setting. The text was spacing way out and text was running from one label into the next like the problem you showed. When I tried to space the labels apart from each other it was giving crazy results. When I was in the default text size for Windows everything looks great. It seems like the results that I get using the middle text size in display properties is the same as what you're getting. Do you have the Windows display property set for the middle text size? (Edit entry: I just looked and saw an earlier post from you and you said your settings are default XP so I guess not.)

I'm thinking right now I'll hold off on rebuilding the Adjust Settings form and concentrate on the Settings Explained form. It will take me a while to transfer all the text into a new one that uses a FlowLayoutPanel. I'll redo the form down to the bottom of the A Phase explanations and then put up a new version and you can tell me what it looks like on your computer. I can use a separate FlowLayoutPanel for each phases explanation labels and I think that will help keep things under control more.

Edit entry 2:
Just noticed that if you increase ClearLimit for a Preset screen that changes settings part way through its duration that when the settings change occurs ClearLimit goes back to what it was set to at the start of the screen in most cases. When the next version comes out the Preset screens will keep any changes made to ClearLimit throughout their duration. I'm back to working on Settings Explained form.

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Closing the Settings window the first time causes the same unhandled exception (Conversion from String "" to Double is not valid); maybe you should check that all fields have default values.

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I haven't spent any time looking into this problem but I want to be absolutely clear. Do you mean closing the Settings Explained window or do you mean clicking Accept Settings and Run which would be closing what I've been calling the Settings Control Screen? When you say "Settings window" that's a bit ambiguous. I'm thinking you mean when you click Accept Settings and Run because that's the exception you posted before.

Edit entry: Boops I just noticed something I didn't catch before. In that post of yours where you show a screenshot with that exception, post # 18, I noticed that the CC combobox in the upper left corner of the Settings Control Screen is blank. That combobox is set to drop down style dropdownlist which means that if you try to enter a value into it programatically and the value isn't in the drop down list then it will come up blank. So when you hit Accept Settings and Run it trys to convert a blank string to double and that's why you get that exception. It never happens on my computer so I don't know why it's happening on yours but the question is what value is it trying to enter into the CC combobox when the Settings Control Screen loads? Or is it that somehow on your computer there is an incomplete dropdown list that doesn't have all the values that are supposed to be there. When you open the Settings Control screen click on the little arrow that shows you the drop down list for CC. It should look like the below screenshot. You can also take a look at the s list before you open the Settings Control Screen and see what CC is. Is it one of those values you see in the list below and does your list match what you see below? I could put in code so that if the combobox was blank it would enter a 0 or something into CC but I want to get to the root of the problem. :

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Originally Posted by EntityX

I haven't spent any time looking into this problem but I want to be absolutely clear. Do you mean closing the Settings Explained window or do you mean clicking Accept Settings and Run which would be closing what I've been calling the Settings Control Screen? When you say "Settings window" that's a bit ambiguous. I'm thinking you mean when you click Accept Settings and Run because that's the exception you posted before.

Edit entry: Boops I just noticed something I didn't catch before. In that post of yours where you show a screenshot with that exception, post # 18, I noticed that the CC combobox in the upper left corner of the Settings Control Screen is blank. That combobox is set to drop down style dropdownlist which means that if you try to enter a value into it programatically and the value isn't in the drop down list then it will come up blank. So when you hit Accept Settings and Run it trys to convert a blank string to double and that's why you get that exception. It never happens on my computer so I don't know why it's happening on yours but the question is what value is it trying to enter into the CC combobox when the Settings Control Screen loads? Or is it that somehow on your computer there is an incomplete dropdown list that doesn't have all the values that are supposed to be there. When you open the Settings Control screen click on the little arrow that shows you the drop down list for CC. It should look like the below screenshot. You can also take a look at the s list before you open the Settings Control Screen and see what CC is. Is it one of those values you see in the list below and does your list match what you see below? I could put in code so that if the combobox was blank it would enter a 0 or something into CC but I want to get to the root of the problem. :

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I think you have found the problem. The s list shows the value 0,2. That's right, because I use a decimal comma. On opening the m screen CC was blank, and on clicking Accept & Run it crashed as described. When I changed the separator to a point (WinXP: ControlPanel/Regional and Language Settings/Custom/Decimal symbol = ".") it resolved the problem. But I'm changing it back to a comma again because I need it for other programs. You can get the current separator through System.Globalization.CultureInfo, but I have no experience with it. Maybe you won't need to if you are careful about converting strings to decimals. You do have Option Strict On, I hope?

Could you send me all the text of Settings Explained as a file (.txt, .rtf or .doc)? Maybe I can at last read it properly (not just on my tiny netbook screen) and maybe have a go myself at formatting it.

BB

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Originally Posted by boops boops

Could you send me all the text of Settings Explained as a file (.txt, .rtf or .doc)? Maybe I can at last read it properly (not just on my tiny netbook screen) and maybe have a go myself at formatting it.

BB

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The only way that would be practical for me to send it to you without me having to do a lot of work to convert it to one of those types is to send it to you as a .NET Managed Resources file. (.resx) That's the type of file that is in my Visual Basis 2010 project. Do you have Visual Studio 2010? I see that I can individually copy what is in the resources file for each label but it won't let me copy all of the labels text at once. If you want me to email you the resources file I'll go ahead and do it. Seems like we would be doing duplicate work though. Maybe there's some adjustment on your graphics card that would help you read the Settings Explained window the way I and akhileshbc see it and your laptop computer sees it. ak sent me an email that has a screenshot of the Settings Explained window and it looks good for him.

Well I just tested something. I copied the .resx file and pasted it into a folder. I opened the folder and then using Visual Studio I was able to open it. So I'll email it to you and if you have Visual Studio 2010 you should be able to open it. Even if you are able to open it and use don't feel that you have to do all that work. Only if it gives you some kind of irresistible thrill or something. I plan on pasting the text in that .resx file into labels that I put in the FlowLayoutPanel for my new ExplainSettings form so if you just wait a bit I'll eventually get the work done. But maybe you could do some experimental work to give my efforts better direction. So I do the heavy work and you give me some input on how to do the work. There are a lot of labels on the form as you know. Some of that text I see isn't completely current. I have to update some things. Most of it is current though.

If you take a look at post # 68 screenshot, that's for Preset screen 0. You'll notice that CC = 0.02. So when you use your system if it said CC = 0,2 on the s list and not CC = 0,02 then that means it's deleting the 0 in the tenths place. I'll have to fix that because it could be a problem in other areas. Like if CF goes from being 1.02 to 1.2 that's not good. Not as serious with CC but I'll have to learn how to get it to convert accurately. I added an Imports statement like this

Imports System.Globalization.CultureInfo

I can get it to tell me US-en using this

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.ToString

but haven't figured out yet how to get it to tell me what kind of separator is being used. I do have Option Strict On. I also noticed that

Code:

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TestDb(1) = CDbl("0,02") ' Here TestDb(1) will be set to 2.

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If you looked at the value of CC after the Settings Control Screen opens I'm thinking it may be 2 and since 2 isn't in the drop down list then the combobox comes up blank.

I was just trying to duplicate the settings properties that you have so I could get a comma instead of a decimal point but didn't have any success. When I get to the screen where I select decimal symbol every time I see only one selection possible and no way to select a comma. I was trying different "Formats" but I always got just one choice for decimal symbol and list separator only had one possibility. What "Format" do you have selected?

I just put up version 1.0.46 on my site. This version won't change ClearLimit for the Preset screens once a Preset screen starts when a screen changes settings part way through its duration. There is also a label you can turn on in the Settings Control Screen using Delete key. Boops tell me what you see. The label is right above Aph in the A Phase section. I increased the font size so it's bigger and it shows value of CC and CC.ToString. My guess is it says CC= 2 for Preset screen 0. I guess CC.ToString would be same. Not sure why I put CC.ToString. Since you have a computer that can test this I can't test on my computer unless I can get it to display a comma where I now have a decimal point.

Does it say CC = 0,2 for screen 0 or CC = 0,02 like it should in the s list? If it says 0,2 I have to figure out a way to get it to show 0,02 like it should.

Ray Rover 1.0.47 is up on site. Same feature as 1.0.46 except for the CC combobox I use code to replace , with . You can tell me if it makes any difference and you can still turn on that label with Delete button when Settings Control Screen is open. Label is above Aph .

Boops I'm not sure why you're sending me that zip file. I discovered I can open the resx file and move the text to other labels or textboxes so I don't see how it helps me. Maybe because of what I said earlier. I thought that I wasn't able to copy the text from one label to another but now I see there is a way.

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Originally Posted by EntityX

If you take a look at post # 68 screenshot, that's for Preset screen 0. You'll notice that CC = 0.02. So when you use your system if it said CC = 0,2 on the s list and not CC = 0,02 then that means it's deleting the 0 in the tenths place. I'll have to fix that because it could be a problem in other areas. Like if CF goes from being 1.02 to 1.2 that's not good. Not as serious with CC but I'll have to learn how to get it to convert accurately. I added an Imports statement like this

Imports System.Globalization.CultureInfo

I can get it to tell me US-en using this

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.ToString

but haven't figured out yet how to get it to tell me what kind of separator is being used.

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You can get the separator from

Code:

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Dim separator As String = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator

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but is it worth the effort? Consistency is all that matters, and I doubt if decimal comma habitués would care much if you use decimal points throughout the program. Maybe you have to use CurrentUICulture and/or InvariantCulture, but I have no experience with them. Why not ask the VB.Net forum?

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I was trying different "Formats" but I always got just one choice for decimal symbol and list separator only had one possibility. What "Format" do you have selected?

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It's a Windows Control Panel setting -- see my previous post.

BB

Downloaded 1.0.47 (I'm glad it only takes a minute to install!). The w screen no longer crashes. The s list still shows decimal commas, but it can't be hard just to ignore the current culture. This is just a guess:

Code:

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Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture

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Please discard the zip file if you have no use for it.

BB

What I was wondering is when you open the m screen or the Settings Control Screen what does CC show. Is it CC = 0.02 for Preset screen 0 or perhaps 0.2. And if it's blank you can hit delete key when Settings Control Screen is open and it will give you the value off CC. I didn't do anything that would change what the s list is displaying. I was concerned about stopping the crashing. You said in above post # 76 "The w screen no longer crashes." You mean the m screen right?

I added a FlowLayoutPanel to the first ExplainSettings form and am dropping the original labels into that and it's working ok.

Yes, I meant m and it does show 0.02. I regret I made a mistake: my Windows font setting was in fact set to a larger size. I have temporarily changed it to "standard" and now all the labels and combo-boxes fit their contents. I can even see the whole S menu.

I intend to change back to larger size because otherwise too many other things come out too small. If it's too much work to design your screens to allow for different Windows font settings, maybe you could simply fix the problems by specifying a given font and font size for all texts in your program (e.g. loop through the Controls collection setting the Font property).

The m screen can still lock up when the decimal separator is set to a comma. That is the result of faulty error handling. For example, if I select the value 100.01 for PTA(0) it throws an error message because Windows expects 100,01 and it detects a prohibited character. On clicking OK it changes the display to 10001 and immediately throws another exception because the field is too long. Ctrl-Alt-Delete is the only way out. I'm sure this applies to all the drop downs with fractional values. If possible please make the program ignore regional settings, as I already suggested, if you can't fix it to allow for them.

BB

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I regret I made a mistake: my Windows font setting was in fact set to a larger size.

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Man boops I am so glad to hear that. It all makes perfect sense. Well anyway it's good because you forced me to make it work for the middle text size. I completed the work of dropping all the labels into the FlowLayoutPanel. After I got the hang of it it went pretty fast. I still have some work to do because some of the labels don't show the text just the way I want them too when in the middle text size on the ExplainSettings form but there are just a few like that and there are some other issues but it's displaying in the middle text size way way better than it was before so thanks for the advice to use a FlowLayoutPanel. Probably later today I'll have up another version.



The problem of the , versus . maybe you could do a little work on since I was never able to get my computer to give me the option to move to a , instead of a . You could start a new project in Visual Studio and drop a label on a form and see if you can make it display a . instead of a , for a value like CC and do it using that code of yours in post # 76 or something like it. Find out if it works since I would have to end up testing through your computer anyways on that one.

Dim CC As Double = 0.02

Label1.Text = "CC = " & CC

Set your computer as you have so that it would give you 0,02 without any code used to change things and see if you could use your code or something like it to get a result

CC = 0.02 ' instead of CC = 0,02

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The m screen can still lock up when the decimal separator is set to a comma.

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That doesn't surprise me at all. I knew that was coming. I just did the conversion code of using Replace(",", ".") on the string that goes in that CC combobox so that's why it would be good if you could do that little testing for me. Get the application to always use a decimal point instead of a decimal comma and then it should be ok.

Edit entry : I found that when I move into the middle text size the ExplainSettings form now with the FlowLayoutPanel takes 20 or more seconds to open. Perhaps it has to do a lot of work pushing things around or something. Earlier today I didn't see that though it wasn't displaying the labels all the way to the bottom nor is it now. Still looks a lot better with the FlowLayoutPanel. Perhaps I should go to separate explain forms. One for Used by All Phases, one for A Phase, one for B Phase , etc. then it wouldn't have to deal with so much text on opening.

Even in the default text size I noticed it takes a second or two to open but in middle text size I counted up to 24 seconds once. Not acceptable. I could just see a note. After clicking Settings Explained button please wait a half minute before form appears.

Edit entry 2: I was just thinking perhaps I could have a separate Settings Explaned button for each section and also have the ability to bring up an explanation with a selection on a menu that is brought up with a right click inside of a combobox.

Amazingly (considering I hadn't even tried compiling it) my guess seems to work:
Attachment 83138

Still, I don't know how reliable it is since it applies only to the current thread. There must be some way to do something similar for the whole application. BB

Next Ray Rover version will be out in July. No not quite that long. I'm making space for a button in every section. They'll be seven Settings Explained buttons and 7 Settings Explained forms, one for each section. I made space for the buttons down to C Phase and am working in D Phase. D Phase was way too crowded so I'm adding more lines to space the labels and comboboxes out and I'll probably add another line in E Phase to space that out more too.

If you want to make suggestions about the improvement of some Preset screen I'm open to that. I know a lot of them could be way better. For instance changing the color mode(CA, CM, CMD, CMC, CME) by itself can sometimes make a big difference. A lot of the Color Rotations or CR's in B Phase as well as the CM's aren't very good but I am reluctant to cut them out for some reason.

Some of the screens look very amateurish but my hope is that they are at least somewhat interesting to watch and no doubt some of them will go bye bye.

All the buttons have been added and the forms each display only the explanations for one section. Breaking the labels up among 7 different forms greatly speeded things up. No more 24 second waits. B phase has the most labels and it's about a second for it to open on my computer.

It is becoming clear that I have to find a way to determine which of the 3 text sizes the computer is using. I'll have to set the maximum size for the FlowLayoutPanel differently depending on which of those sizes is being used. If I use just one maximum size I would either have a giant void area at the bottom of the form in the default size or else not all the labels will display if it's one of the larger text sizes. There's also the problem of the crowding inside the comboboxes on the Settings Control screen and the text not being centered in the labels as well as some labels not displaying completely.

Maybe there's a way I could find out which size is being used without getting it from the property setting but rather testing the width of some predetermined string in pixels if that's possible. There probably is a way to find which of the three sizes is being used though. I posted again in the thread I started before that didn't get any replies. Maybe I'll get some replies now and I'll start doing some searching on the internet again.

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Originally Posted by EntityX

All the buttons have been added and the forms each display only the explanations for one section. Breaking the labels up among 7 different forms greatly speeded things up. No more 24 second waits. B phase has the most labels and it's about a second for it to open on my computer.

It is becoming clear that I have to find a way to determine which of the 3 text sizes the computer is using. I'll have to set the maximum size for the FlowLayoutPanel differently depending on which of those sizes is being used. If I use just one maximum size I would either have a giant void area at the bottom of the form in the default size or else not all the labels will display if it's one of the larger text sizes. There's also the problem of the crowding inside the comboboxes on the Settings Control screen and the text not being centered in the labels as well as some labels not displaying completely.

Maybe there's a way I could find out which size is being used without getting it from the property setting but rather testing the width of some predetermined string in pixels if that's possible. There probably is a way to find which of the three sizes is being used though. I posted again in the thread I started before that didn't get any replies. Maybe I'll get some replies now and I'll start doing some searching on the internet again.

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Maybe you are trying to solve the wrong problem. Structuring the information better would give you much more room to play with. For example, you could organize all the setting names into a TreeView instead of a host of separate labels. Then you would only have to show one ComBobox at a time, for the selected node. When it's more logical to group several settings together, such as all the PTA settings in the A Phase, you could take advantage of an unbound DataGridView with one or more ComboBox columns. The fields could all be autosized, and you would have much more space to play with on the form. Then, for example, you could display an explanation of the setting under the ComboBox, instead of a separate window for all of the explanations.

I realize that a layout like that would be very different from what you are doing now, and controls like the TreeView and the DataGridView take a lot of learning. My knowledge of the DGV is pretty rudimentary. But I expect I could produce a mockup of a settings layout like the above, if you are interested.

BB

I'm going to stick with my general plan the way it is. I'll always try to make things look better but as I said before I like the Settings Control Screen the way it is. I found a way to distinguish between the 3 different Windows text sizes and I got it looking good for both the default and the middle text size and the largest size always looked pretty good. Maybe I'll have another version out in a day or two and you can tell me what you think. One of these days after much work I'll get the Settings Control Screen to a state where you'll think it's just bad and not disastrously bad. :)

Edit entry :
I was just thinking on what you said in your last post. I'm going to continue work on making the Settings Control screen display properly in the different Windows text size modes so I'm satisfied with how it looks on my computer. At some point in the future I think I might have an alternate Settings Control Screen that you could bring up if you were just interested in adjusting one setting or a small number of settings. If you opened it while you had D Phase on for instance then it would give you the list of D Phase settings and you could click on from 1 to up to perhaps 5 or maybe more settings and then you get one or more comboboxes on a form that you could use to adjust just those settings that you want to. The screen would open faster and it could hold a memory of which settings you last selected so that if you left it and went back to it a minute later it would come up the same way until you altered which settings you wanted to adjust. So it would have a memory for each of the different phases. That's something I'll put on hold for now but it makes sense because for one thing the Settings Control Screen has so many objects on it it takes a while for it to open. Once someone gets some screen that they are experimenting with in the Freestyle mode the way they want it then they can bring the big Settings Control screen up and save it as a Personal Screen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EntityX

I'm going to stick with my general plan the way it is. I'll always try to make things look better but as I said before I like the Settings Control Screen the way it is. I found a way to distinguish between the different text sizes and I got it looking good for both the default and the middle text size and the largest size always looked pretty good. Maybe I'll have another version out in a day or two and you can tell me what you think. One of these days after much work I'll get the Settings Control Screen to a state where you'll think it's just bad and not disastrously bad. :)

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OK, but I should add (in public) that I think the screens themselves are very good indeed. I hope you will find other people who like the UI:D.

BB

Ray Rover 1.0.48 is up on my site. I still have plenty of work to do getting the S list to display properly in the Windows middle text size but the Settings Control Screen looks a lot better and so do the Explains Settings explanations.

1.0.56 is up now. ( From version 1.0.49 : S list is better. Displays wider in middle text size and some B Phase keyboard controls were moved to P list.) CC setting was changed. Preset screens will hold changes made when settings change part way through a screen. They used to revert to the settings that the screen started with whenever a settings change was made. Just the one or two or however many changes take place when will occur and all the settings won't be returned to what the screen started out with.

I do plan on creating an alternate Settings Control Screen where you could just play around with one or two or a few different settings.

1.0.57 is up.

Boops just want to say thanks again for all your help and if you never help me again anytime in the next 500 billion eons, ( I like the number 500 billion ) I owe you. Back in an earlier post I was saying that in my attempts to get a decimal comma to be used on my computer I couldn't find a format (language and country) that would give me that option but I finally did and was able to duplicate the problem you were getting on your computer and then I used your code and it worked perfectly changing the decimal comma to a decimal point. Only had to use it in two places so I don't think there's a need to search anymore to solve that problem. Thanks again.

Ray Rover 1.0.62 is up on my site. Some Preset screen settings I discovered got messed up and have been corrected and various other improvements have been made. 1.0.62 shouldn't require any prerequisites. .NET Framework 2.0 is used. Found out on library computer that 1.0.61 was asking for .NET Framework 4.0. Never saw that message because my computer has it. Hopefully anyone that doesn't have 4.0 won't have a problem downloading it now.

My new monitor is arriving today so I'll get to see how Ray Rover looks on a 1920 x 1080 resolution screen.

And all my many beta testers please don't pester me to death with all your posts. Try to control yourselves.

Edit entry :

Changes in recent versions

PTA(0) to PTA(4) allow 3 digits right of the decimal point instead of just 2 so longer stays at each pen
thickness are possible now in version 1.0.66 and afterward. If you made any Personal Screens in A Phase that
used those settings you would want to add a 0 in the tenths place to get the same result now.
So PTA(0) = 60.60 in previous versions should now be converted to PTA(0) = 60.060 to get the
same result.

PTA2(0) to PTA2(4) and PTA3(0) to PTA3(4) now use 3 digits in the tenths,
hundredths and thousandths places to control the duration of increase or
decrease of pen thickness whereas in earlier versions only two digits were used
in the tenths and hundredths places. To give an example if you have a Personal Screen
with PTA2(0) = 222.2020, that should be converted to
PTA2(0) = 222.02020 to get the same result.

In version 1.0.70 Findstep function is no longer used for VPT2, VPT4 and VPT5. Those VPTs use more digits right of the decimal point now. Greater precision and range of adjustment is now possible for those settings. Refer to explanations of settings for more details.

In version 1.0.71 VPT0, VPT1 and VPT3 use 3 digits right of the decimal point to determine pen width upper limit. See explanation of settings for details. Some new Preset screen were added at the end.

Was just replacing CSR = 2 or 3 or 4 with CSR = 1 in Preset screens. I used 2, 3 and 4 for CSR because back when I wasn't using a picture box or double bufferring I found that I got a better result with those values sometimes but now it seems that CSR = 1 always looks better. Next version 1.0.72 won't have any CSR = 2, 3 or 4 screens in it.

Looks like I'm posting about 95 % of the posts in this thread. Went to library again today. Was very surprised to see the message still asking for .NET Framework 4.0 when Ray Rover is only using 2.0. I'm not going to go into all the details and why I was so surprised but anyway I uninstalled 4.0, 3.5 and 3.0 from XP so I could duplicate the situation at home. I'm using InstallShield now and the problem has been solved. Maybe I don't need to be posting to my non-existent beta testers anymore.

Lots of boops boops Ray Rover wishes are coming true. There's a go to window now. Shift+Enter brings it up. If you see a space between keys for the keyboard control list that means you press and release one key and then the other but if there's a + between them then you hold them down at the same time. So hold Shift down and then press Enter to bring up the go to window.

There are also bookmarks now. It will start with a list of 106 bookmarks now that has a lot of my favorites but you can clear those all out or add to them if you want. F9 to bring up screen to manipulate bookmarks. F8 to clear bookmark or set bookmark. F10 to enter and exit Preset Bookmarks mode. Refer to S list. A lot of the F1 to F12 keys are used differently now.

Any window that starts maximized can be minimized with F11 so F11 works for Instructions, graphics display, Settings Control Screen and Manipulate Bookmarks Screen as well as Activation Screen.

Many of the Preset Screens numbered below 30 have been switched with screens from other places and some of the others numbered below 100 too.

A new milestone for Ray Rover has been reached. I finally got a code signing certificate for it. Once I signed Ray Rover with it the SmartScreen Filter no longer said it was an unsigned program but it still said, "This program might harm your computer. SmartScreen Filter has little or no information about this program. Running this program might harm your computer." A couple days back I stopped seeing that message so apparently once your program is signed and enough downloads take place without anyone reporting a problem then the message saying this program might harm your computer, disappears.

I don't see that message anymore. If anyone else does, let me know. I have an ebay listing back up for Ray Rover but haven't spent any money on advertising it. Anyone that has donwloaded Ray Rover and used it, let me know if you think $ 16 is a good price for it. Do you think I should try to tune it up more, like add some better Preset Screens or something, before spending money on advertising it?