my current GUI-project

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Rene,

thanks for the updates and the music tip as well! I wrote BASICally complete StringBuilder module when listening to:



Checkout RDio.com for tons of music...

The addition Eros made in 1.9.13.0 will make incredible things possible...


Petr

[ReneMiner]

i'm screwed- the video is not available in germany because the german government wants to have money before i can listen to this - it's a shame and it's only possible in germany .... you still can pay... viva le capitalism...

[Petr Schreiber]

No problem, try to register at rdio.com:
http://www.rdio.com/

It is perfectly legal, no user content, just official releases. Seek for "Avicii - True".
This is somehow not very intelectually challenging album, but it is fantastic for coding...

I have an account there, we can share coding music if you want.


Petr

[ReneMiner]

something else here might be an idea...

currently we do this:

' assume heap hPtrs holds pointers, created alike
Dword hPtrs = Heap_allocbyStr( MKDWD$( ptr1, ptr2, ptr3, ptr4,...) )


' create local pointer-array on this

Local lPtr(Heap_Size(hPtrs)/4) As Dword At hPtrs

'now it comes, lets say all those pointers point some data of type t_myType
Local lData As t_myType At 0

' until this line my function works pretty well without any real local variables. 
' ( hPtrs in reality is noded to some other structure )


' now I need to push the lData-mask forward and place it to the pointers in a loop
' like this

Local i As Long

For i = 1 To Ubound(lPtr)
  SetAt(lData, lPtr(i) )
  ' do something with data...
Next

in many cases i don't need the value of "i" and loop through all elements of Array lPtr anyway and thought about something like this:

For Array lPtr
' from now on lPtr is an overlay at the "current" element of Array lPtr()
  SetAt(lData, lPtr)    
  ' do something with data...
Next

... until here still understandeable ... this does it too- without the need of any real variables, assume hPtrs would be read out somewhere and this were inside some function:

Uses "console"

DWord hPtrs = HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$ ( _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("This is a test"),          _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("only try out"),            _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("if it were possible"),     _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("to bind a few different"), _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("sized amounts of data"),   _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr("to just one DWord")        _
                              )      )

                              
Dim lPtr As DWord At hPtrs    ' this only a virtual surfer

While VarPtr(lPtr) <= hPtrs + HEAP_Size(hPtrs) - SizeOf(DWord)
  
  PrintL HEAP_Get(lPtr)  ' usually would SetAt( lData, lPtr ) here...

  SetAt(lPtr, VarPtr(lPtr) + SizeOf(DWord))
  
Wend

PrintL $CRLF & Repeat$(42, "*")
PrintL $CRLF & "Any key to end"
WaitKey

still easy, just when it comes to multidimensional storage it becomes hard to read when you try to avoid real variables
check this:

Uses "console"

' exxagerate a little bit now
' all noded to one dword:

DWord hPtrs = HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$ ( _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$(  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Name"),  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Mail"),  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("System" & $CRLF ) _
                                               )      ),                  _
                               HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$(                   _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Eros"),  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("@Olmi"), _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Intel i7 M620") _
                                               )      ),                  _ 
                               HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$(                   _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Petr"),  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("@PSch"), _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Intel Core i5-3350P") _
                                               )      ),                  _ 
                               HEAP_AllocByStr( MKDWD$(                   _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Rene"),  _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("@home"), _
                                                HEAP_AllocByStr("Intel Core i5-3330") _
                              )      )         )      )
                                               
                              

' not any real variables used to read out :D

Dim lPtrLine   As DWord At hPtrs
Dim lPtrColumn As DWord At lPtrLine

While VarPtr(lPtrLine) <= hPtrs + HEAP_Size(hPtrs) - SizeOf(DWord)
  
  While VarPtr(lPtrColumn) <= lPtrLine + HEAP_Size(lPtrLine) - SizeOf(DWord)
    Print HEAP_Get(lPtrColumn) & $TAB
    SetAt(lPtrColumn, VarPtr(lPtrColumn) + SizeOf(DWord))
  Wend                    
  PrintL
  
  SetAt(lPtrLine, VarPtr(lPtrLine) + SizeOf(DWord))
  SetAt(lPtrColumn, lPtrLine)
Wend

PrintL $CRLF & Repeat$(42, "*")
PrintL $CRLF & "Any key to end"
WaitKey

barely readeable in the end. the same in future syntax if the world were a perfect place...

Dim lPtrLine(Heap_Size(hPtrs)/4) As Dword At hPtrs
Dim lPtrColumn() As Dword At 0

For Array lPtrLine
  Redim lPtrColumn(Heap_Size(lPtrLine)/4) At lPtrLine
  For Array lPtrColumn
     Print Heap_Get( lPtrColumn ) & $TAB
  Next
  PrintL
Next

Listen to this while thinking about the above...

[ReneMiner]

i ran into some issue regarding negative coordinates when printing TBGL_PrintFont2D.

Attached image shows twice the same TBGL-window and within you see a box captioned "GUI.tBasicu" on the left with some text inside.
On the right image i dragged the box a little left so it starts outside left of the visible TBGL-window-client. Drawing the box from negative coords is no problem as you see but it won't print the text



Now do I have to render the text onto a texture or cumbersome calculate the very left visible char or use some viewport?
Any simple suggest anyone?

[Petr Schreiber]

Dear Rene,

thank you for your question - this is sadly a behavior of the OpenGL implementation when working with this kind of fonts. It is very annoying, but I found no way around it.

But there is a light at the end of tunnel - you may render the text to texture. How?

You just clear the frame, render the text into positive coordinates, copy the graphical output to texture via TBGL_RenderToTexture and then you map this texture to your window.

I hope this will help you, I will investigate options how to avoid this limitation of Windows OpenGL.


Petr

P.S. I am leaving to Slovakia till Sunday, so I might not be able to reply in that time.

[ReneMiner]

i was anxious to get an answer like that because it means to re-think about the mechanics of my gui. perhaps in general it could be better to have no window-alike boxes that just get drawn as now - but each box (i.e. "window") just is a textured quad. would use up quite a few texture-slots but will certainly draw faster if the surface-template of a box/window gets only drawn again if it changes and else use the existing texture again...

the final "printed" font would look better too (automatic anti-aliased) due the usage as texture.

...but...

i'm not sure about sizes, imagine we have a box 100 * 200 pixels, i would need to use a texture of 128 * 256 ( the next power of two) for it to be on the safe side ? that would occupy a lot of unused memory on the graphics-hardware if it were this way...

My other idea was that maybe TBGL_PrintFont2d can be changed in behaviour when negative x-value is passed? I planned to create a function alike that:

TBGL_SetActiveFont 1
PrintFont "Hello", X, Y, Align1, Align2, MaxWidth


Function PrintFont( ByVal sText  As String, _
                    ByVal X      As Long,   _
                    ByVal Y      As Long,   _
           Optional ByVal sAlign As Long,   _ 
                    ByVal aAlign As Long,   _
                    ByVal maxW   As Long )
                    
  Local i, lW, lH As Long
  
  While X < 0 
    If i >= StrPtrLen(StrPtr(sText)) Then Exit While
    TBGL_GetFontTextSize( Memory_Get(StrPtr(sText)+i,1), lW, lH )
    X += lW 
   ' totalTextwidth += lW  ' >>> startX for maxWidth-calculation !
    i += 1
  Wend
  
  Select Case i
    Case StrPtrLen(StrPtr(sText))
      Exit Function
    Case 0
      Nop
    Case Else
      sText = Memory_Get(StrPtr(sText)+i, StrPtrLen(StrPtr(sText))-i)
  End Select
  
' don't bother actual alignement nor passing maxWidth for this example
' this approach only works for left-aligned, else much more complicated

  TBGL_PrintFont2D sText, X, Y, sAlign, aAlign, maxW ' - totalTextwidth
  
End Function

[Petr Schreiber]

Stay tuned Rene,

I am investigating


Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Haha! I think I got it!

Let me know, if tbgl_PrintFont and tbgl_PrintFont2D works for you as expected now
If yes, I will update help file and binaries for next ThinBASIC...


Petr

Attachement removed.

[ReneMiner]

sadly does not print any text at all now

attached latest version - Attention, needs thinCore.dll from other thread, use version of september 10th !