SmoothText 1.1.8

[Tripo]

The skinning look great.

is it me that can´t find.

or when do you have first version with skinning support to share.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Yes! When can we start testing the skinning engine?

[Tripo]

yes to test it would be nice.

but I understand that you want to wait until it is quit stable.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Some dire news:

I installed a fresh Windows 2000 Pro USP5 in a VM. SmoothText will crash explorer repeatedly. Will try to post logs soon.

[WildBill]

Here's another update: (added shadowing/glow effects)

At a minimum, I need to add Start button support and try to fix a glitch or two. It would be nice to also have the ability for the skin to set the font, but I'm willing to release what I have before then.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Wow! Cool glow effect behind the time! Hope that's available for the window frames (for a you-know-what theme )

Couldn't SmoothText intercept the text painting calls to the Taskbar and pull it's own text output in the correct font?

I'm no specialist in Windows API and system messages, but that's as far as I can reason about it.

Btw, you are running SP4 , not USP5? Could it be something in USP5 that causes it to crash?

Windows 2000 Pro SP4 Slipstreamed installed to VM, then VMTools, then USP5'ed. SmoothText causes explorer crash on first run. Taskbar translucency half works, but causes lockup.

Oh, ViOrb works on Windows 2000, unless they've released a newer version which breaks compatibility.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[WildBill]

Changing the font will be really easy, I already do it in TClock3. It's just a matter of creating the font before I paint. Adding support for animated images will be the harder job, for instance. Even then, most of the code is in TClock3 already, albeit in a different form that requires some changes when I bring it over. I'm being very careful to not sacrifice any stability when I bring it over, so it takes time.

SmoothText will be able to handle "orb" start buttons, too, I simply have to port the right code from TClock3. I already have the non-orb portion mostly working.

There will be four shadow settings:

- None

- Simple

- Soft

- Glow

The example above shows the simple and glow settings. Each image component can have its own text color, shadow color, and shadow setting, so you'll have complete flexibility. I'm not skinning window borders yet, but when I do, these settings will follow just as they do with everything else.

I'm running plain-vanilla SP4. I once tried a clean install of SP5 on another box maybe a year ago, and it crashed repeatedly. I've tested this on multiple SP4 boxes with few/no problems, so you might want to try it on SP4 to see how it treats you.

Here's where I am tonight:

Edited April 14, 2009 by WildBill

[Colonel O'Neill]

Loving the glow and that bluey gridlike skin.

Am I right in assuming that the top bit of the orb is being drawn?

But here's an issue I thought maybe significant: SP4's toolbars cannot lock. USP5's can. Is it a Microsoft hotfix or a custom patch?

[WildBill]

I honestly don't know how to lock the taskbar. Actually, I hadn't even noticed that they couldn't lock until you mentioned it

No, the top part isn't being drawn yet. I have to add a generic overlay window manager first. A lot of that code will come from TClock3, though I'm pretty sure that I can greatly simplify it by changing the design.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Could the patch/fix/registry change for lockable taskbars be affecting SmoothText's operation?

I haven't had time to reinstall 2000 SP4 to a VM yet, but I hope to have some time this weekend.

[WildBill]

I honestly have no idea. I suppose you could try undoing it. Is it just a registry change, or does it involve patching the file? Either way, it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that should cause problems, but you never know.

[Tihiy]

IE6 adds toolbar locking, ehm.

[Colonel O'Neill]

That would explain it.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Logs from a new VM install of Windows 2000 Pro.

Appears to be a conflict with Active Desktop?

EDIT: Interesting tidbit: SmoothText will work on NetMeeting's shared desktop's text. Oo

Edited April 21, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[WildBill]

Logs from a new VM install of Windows 2000 Pro.

Appears to be a conflict with Active Desktop?

EDIT: Interesting tidbit: SmoothText will work on NetMeeting's shared desktop's text. Oo

I'll see what I can figure out. I found that some of the "Could not send message" errors aren't really errors. The way Behavior's work is they first activate their message "group" and then set themselves as Active. This is on purpose, but it also results in a race condition where they can receive internal messages without actually being active yet. I stopped logging errors for that case since there's really nothing wrong with it.

I've made some progress with skinning, by the way...

Edited April 22, 2009 by WildBill