SmoothText 1.1.8

[Tripo]

Nice I will test the new version later today.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Everytime explorer is started, the memory manager throws an error. (Log attached.)

This may be a hunch, but I remember something about SmoothText changing shared dlls. (Post #153).

Could it be a problem with that? Because occasionally explorer will crash after closing SmoothText, but only once and is not repeated. Could it be looking for a loaded DLL that's no longer there?

Just wondering.

Can't wait to try the skinning features! (I can't get at the SmoothText tray icon now. )

Edited April 28, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[Tripo]

The skinning engine does work quit well.

When open explorer some text are wrong.

as you see in the picture.

is it wrong or is it the default skin that in the taskbar the taskbuttons does not have any icons.

I have made them Iconized could them be the problem.

A I should now try to make an real skin to test with.

Edit:

Do you have an Skin example with pictures to test and maybe edit.

just a very simple skin with images.

not very complex that is copyrighted.

or is there any other skinning engine that is compatible in some way.

I can´t get any images to skin.

if I do it simple just the taskbar not systray or startbutton.

I change the picture name in ID TaskbarHorz in Gridlok.ini to the one I made and put that image in the dir Gridlok.

is that right to do.

then for startbutton is it just one picture or can it be more.

Clicked and not clicked and startmenu opened.

Other than that.

This version works much better than 0.9.0.

Edited April 29, 2009 by Tripo

[WildBill]

Colonel O'Neill,

I've recompiled the SmoothText 0.9.1 DLL with all of Delphi's debugging options enabled. I don't know if it will help, but I'm hoping that it will yield a more complete stack trace when FastMM detects an error. Hopefully this will help me better track down the problem(s).

Unfortunately I'm not seeing any errors at all, so I'm going to have to rely on you to help me. Would you mind giving it a try?

http://www.savefile.com/files/2087811

[WildBill]

The skinning engine does work quit well.

When open explorer some text are wrong.

as you see in the picture.

is it wrong or is it the default skin that in the taskbar the taskbuttons does not have any icons.

I have made them Iconized could them be the problem.

A I should now try to make an real skin to test with.

Edit:

Do you have an Skin example with pictures to test and maybe edit.

just a very simple skin with images.

not very complex that is copyrighted.

or is there any other skinning engine that is compatible in some way.

I can´t get any images to skin.

if I do it simple just the taskbar not systray or startbutton.

I change the picture name in ID TaskbarHorz in Gridlok.ini to the one I made and put that image in the dir Gridlok.

is that right to do.

then for startbutton is it just one picture or can it be more.

Clicked and not clicked and startmenu opened.

Other than that.

This version works much better than 0.9.0.

Tripo,

For each image you want to use, you need an [iMAGEx] section that points to it. It doesn't matter how many "frames" are in the image, it's just a reference to an image file.

Then, for each component you want to display (and each state it might be in), you need a [COMPONENTx] entry. So for instance, in the sample .ini file there are three [COMPONENT] entries for the start button, but each references a different state (normal, hot, and pressed). In this example the frames for those states all happen to be in the same image, so the three start button [COMPONENT] entries has the same image ID in them (Image=StartButton) but have different frame indices (0, 1, and 2, respectively). I did it this way so you don't have to be forced to have component frames organized in any particular fashion; they could be arranged left-to-right, right-to-left, or in a two-dimensional grid, or in separate files, and in any order. As long as you have the right Image=, StartingFrame=, and EndingFrame= entries, it can be made to work.

The ID entries in , [iMAGE], and [COMPONENT] sections aren't special; they aren't magic names or anything, they just allow things to be linked together. So for instance, the start button [iMAGE] has ID=StartButton, and the three [COMPONENT] entries for it all have Image=StartButton in them which links them to the [iMAGE] entry. If the image had ID=BugsBunny and the three [COMPONENT] sections all had Image=BugsBunny, it would still work.

The same applies to colors. For instance, there is a entry with ID=Pink, and several [iMAGE] entries have ColorKey=Pink in them. "Pink" isn't a magic name, it merely links the [iMAGE] entries to the right entry. Using "TasmanianDevil" would work just as well. In this particular example, all the [iMAGE] sections all have Transparency=None or Transparency=Alpha in them, so the color-key setting doesn't actually do anything. If you had an image with pink representing the transparency color, you would need to set Transparency=ColorKey in the [iMAGE] entry to make it work.

By contrast, the Component= entries in the [COMPONENT] section *are* magic values and tell SmoothText which component the section relates to. So for the start button, the three [COMPONENT] sections all have to say Component=StartButton.

At this point, SmoothText doesn't (yet) support using alternate Explorer icons. I know how to do it as I've already done it for my test version of TClock3, I simply haven't gotten to it yet. The .INI file I included skins everything that SmoothText is currently able to skin.

Does this help? Feel free to ask me any more questions, and thanks for trying it out

[Colonel O'Neill]

I found Overriding Standard Controls made explorer crash in a cyclic manner. Turning it off made explorer freeze but not crash (it works long enough for me to get at the tray icon). As soon as explorer finishes loading, the big dialog box shows up, but never while explorer is loading.

Here's a zip of the logs.

Just wondering, is your install a slipstreamed SP4 install or an RTM install then patched?

[WildBill]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll take a look at the logs.

Mine is a slipstreamed SP2 that's been patched.

EDIT: Unfortunately I don't think the logs will help. I might have to wait until you get another FastMM error log. I suspect that something in memory is being corrupted and that is causing all the exceptions that SmoothText is catching.

Edited April 30, 2009 by WildBill

[Colonel O'Neill]

Okay. I'll try an install of an RTM 2000 in another VM, run Windows Update on it to fully update (DX9 and WMP9) and try it there. Although this will have to wait until next week, after my SAT's and various projects ><".

EDIT: Uploaded Memory log.

P.S. Would an overly protective antivirus defense cause this?

Edited April 30, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[WildBill]

Okay. I'll try an install of an RTM 2000 in another VM, run Windows Update on it to fully update (DX9 and WMP9) and try it there. Although this will have to wait until next week, after my SAT's and various projects ><".

EDIT: Uploaded Memory log.

P.S. Would an overly protective antivirus defense cause this?

It shouldn't, but you never know. If it helps, I'm running:

Norton Internet Security 2002

Norton SystemWorks 2003 (including AntiVirus 2003)

[Colonel O'Neill]

Okay, I tried disabling my (Kaspersky 7) antivirus. Explorer doesn't break until I try to interact with it (desktop icons, etc). It throws an memory error when explorer comes back.

[WildBill]

Okay, here's another DLL. I didn't properly include all the debug information and that's why the stack trace is incomplete. This will definitely give better FastMM stack traces.

http://www.savefile.com/files/2087947

I also found several memory leaks with it, and those are fixed, too.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Downloading now.

A VM install took less time than I thought. Oo

W2K RTM

The older one Throws the message: Runtime error 2 at 51008988. A similar if not exact message shows up on the USP5 install.

The newer one causes explorer to lock up. SmoothText does not start properly, and does not show up in Task Manager. Smoothed text can be seen on desktop icons (but as explorer has froze SmoothText is only operational for a bit). No log is saved at all. Oo Will try updating the VM 2k using WU.

Edited April 30, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[Tripo]

WildBill Thanks for explaining.

I will try test it some more.

And see if I get some picture skinning to work with maybe some gliches.

other on my computer if is very stable and works great.

only was those two text in the picture.

Adress was to much to left and Back button text was strange.

But the back button text was only strange when explorer was open then when browsed around.

then the text was nice after that.

I don´t know whats wrong.

But I have edit the ini

call it test.ini and made a dir called Test.

and put 3 start button pictures, 1 taskbar background, 1 systray picture.

and my test.ini looks like this.

is it totally wrong or why does it not show any picture.

And for the error I told before.

When You have the Taskbuttons Iconized RegTweak.

The button with no icon should be Firefox.

Test.ini

Edited April 30, 2009 by Tripo

[Colonel O'Neill]

For some reason, 0.7.8 was the last version to successfully run on this computer. 0.7.9 throws explorer 0x0eedfade errors.

EDIT: All versions keep giving off Microsoft Internet Explorer errors. Oo

EDIT2: Scratch that, 0.7.8 also kills explorer repeatedly.

I don't know if this has been reported earlier, but I get lots of Runtime 216 at xxxxxxxx errors.

And lots of 0x0eedfade errors.

EDIT3: Okay the Runtime 216 errors are still here, but 0x0eedfade errors show up a lot even when SmoothText is not running. Is it making any modifications to system files that aren't being reversed properly? Because sometimes I have to use Task Manager to forcibly end the SmoothText.exe task tree.

The explorer exceptions tend to appear during file copy (GRR).

Edited May 2, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[Colonel O'Neill]

A bit more success with another install of Windows 2000.

Translucent taskbar works properly, haven't tried skinning.

This is on a completely blank install of Windows 2000, using Windows Update to get SP4, UR1 and everything critical, WMP9 and DX9c, and VMWare Tools.

More crashing with explorer and FastMM. Explorer doesn't crash immediately, but will eventually.

More logs...

I hope I can nail this problem somehow. I'll try installing SP2 only. What version of IE do you have on yours?