WildBill

Glad to hear that you like it. I tried Notepad with an Arial font and it seems to be working fine. Can you give me more details? I uploaded version 0.4.0 tonight and edited the top post. This should have much better performance.

Uploaded version 0.3.9 and edited the top post. The program has undergone a massive overhaul and is way, way better than before (see top post for details). I advise anyone who uses this to grab the latest version.

Just a little update: I *finally* think I've beaten a deadlock issue that was driving me crazy and now version 0.3.6 looks a lot closer. I'm working on it a little at a time...nothing too crazy, but it's already light-years better than 0.3.5.

Uploaded SmoothText 0.3.8 and edited the top post. This fixes several issues and adds some more flexibility.

Tihiy, if you're not developing this any more, would you mind opening the source so someone else could pick it up? Pretty please?

Uploaded version 0.3.7 and edited the top post. Was seeing some weird slowdowns after several hours of usage, and spotted a bug that *might* have been the culprit. In several hours since the problem hasn't come back, so hopefully that fixed it.

Uploaded version 0.3.6 and edited the top post. This should fix some speed issues.

Uploaded version 0.3.5 and edited the top post. This version runs quite a lot faster.

Found a speed problem in 0.3.3 and had to make a small change. Sorry for the rapid version change (minutes), but decided that this had to be fixed immediately. See the top post for version 0.3.4.

Uploaded version 0.3.3 and edited the top post again. This version has some nice fixes and an important new feature.

I tried installing it and it made my PC unable to boot (not even into safe mode). I had to pull my SATA hard drive, plug it into my laptop (thank God I had a USB-SATA kit!!!) and copy the original DLL's back from the laptop. It's possible that I did something wrong installing it, but I don't really know. I saw a lot of buttons on the main window and it wasn't clear what to do when installing.

Posted version 0.3.2 and edited the top post with the new download link. This fixes a visual bug where text would be chopped if you were in Windows Explorer and were scrolling the window while in Thumbnail View.

I saw some weirdness where Firefox 3.0 was crashing on loading, and I narrowed it down to the code that reads the registry settings. I made a minor change to the code to try to protect it from any problems and uploaded version 0.3.1. See the top post for the download link...

Uploaded SmoothText 0.3.0 (see top post). This has some fixes and nice new features.

New update posted: 0.2.9 (see top post for the download link). This should fix problems with Office XP and Office 2003.

Another day, another update. Posted version 0.2.8 today and edited the top post. This seems to fix a lot of problems that crop up where the vertical height of a font is way off (usually way too large).

Uploaded version 0.2.7 and edited the top post. Smayer97: it looks like you have a Pentium III, which would include SSE support. I've made some changes to the SSE code that might help. It's hard for me to tell without a screenshot (maybe exporting it as .PNG would cut the size down for you), but I've tested it on a 1.2GHz Pentium-III-Mobile laptop and it works.

Hmm. I only have Office 2000. Can you post a small screenshot so I can see what's going on? Also, what kind of CPU do you have? That would help me narrow it down a bit so I know whether to look at the MMX, SSE2, etc. code.

LOL, just when I thought I couldn't make it any faster, I made it just a little bit more efficient. As usual, I've edited the top post with a description and updated download link to version 0.2.6. It also looks like disabled text in Explorer toolbars is fixed now, and the MS Word left-margin ruler. I'm not entirely sure what I did to fix it, but I suspect it's that the SSE2 and MMX code isn't forcing a 0FFh alpha value anymore but is simply using what was already there.

I ran into a situation where I needed SmoothText to be as fast as possible, so I put a lot of effort into optimization. I sped up the existing code base, added support for using MMX if possible, and added support for using SSE2 if possible (so if you have a Pentium 4, for instance, it will use the SSE code, and if you have something earlier it will use MMX code if it can). It's MUCH faster now and I can honestly recommend it for general use. I can still see areas for improvement, but I'm VERY happy with how it's turned out.

Uploaded version 0.2.4 and edited the top post.

Uploaded version 0.2.3 and edited the top post. This should alleviate problems with Courier New.

I've decided to take a whack at the next version and I have version 0.2.3 treating Courier differently so that it doesn't drop any characters. It scales the entire font up proportionally and then condenses it back down. The downside is that it introduces some blur into the font. For now I'm only doing it with Courier New. I might limit it further to specific point sizes, but first I need to build in a way to save settings (maybe into the registry?) The Configure... popup might come in handy after all...

Yup, it's just for LCD's. It's great for laptops, but what made me really push hard on it was when I got rid of my CRT and bought an LCD monitor (a BIG one!) You're right, the options panel doesn't do anything yet, it's there in case I need to add options. It's been a really low priority, and since no one has suggested any options, I've left it alone. For some reason Courier doesn't like being scaled to 3x horizontally and it doesn't render properly. I suspect it's a bug in how Windows handles font hinting or rendering. One possible solution would be to scale Courier differently, for instance scale 3x in both directions and scale down vertically, though this would likely add a lot of blur to it -- still, it's better than missing characters! I haven't tried it but will probably have to at some point. I wish I had a Delphi port of FreeType -- that would solve a lot of problems, but it's so much code to port that I haven't attempted it.

I haven't tested it on XP in a very long time, so I'm not surprised. At one point I'll give it a try, but at the moment I have bigger fish to fry... http://www.savefile.com/files/1807085 This is a partial screenshot of my most recent test. It isn't my entire desktop; for testing I'm using a window that covers only part of the screen because at this point I still need access to un-skinned areas. Why? That's because of what this represents. Aside from the fact that I'm skinning a lot of stuff how, this is a "topmost" window that's being painted by Direct3D 9. I'm redirecting GDI painting (not everything, but a lot at this point) to textures that I've allocated, where each window has a texture of its own. This lets me have alpha-blended borders It was done on Win2k SP4, and while there is a LOT that isn't working, I'm making steady if slow progress. I've been working on it just about every day, and to say that it's a MAJOR pain in the butt is a huge understatement. But I AM making progress, and the goal is to reach alpha-blended borders, with a blurring vertex shader -- like a certain other OS we know. At this point I think it's possible, though getting GDI to play nice is giving me fits. I only just got mouse-clicking on menu bars working tonight, and I still have to get clicking on them to close them working. One tiny step at a time, with maybe a million left to go. I doubt that this will work on Win98, though now I have most of a framework in place to share textures so not every application will eventually have to load the skin. It's not in place yet, but I plan to give it a try at some point and hopefully that should at least solve the GDI resources problem. I can't guarantee that I'll do it for the next version, but it's at least in sight now.