Friday, September 28, 2007

Update

I know of the disappointment... so... I spent all last night and this morning coding like crazy and finally I can actually display movable layers and draw fills and frames on them. The window class is nearly complete. I need to finish the drawing of the title and the window borders. Note that the font engine is not implemented, so I wont be seeing any text displayed any time soon but I will get the UI up and going in every other sense. All the code is done on windows, however there are a very few key files that need to be rewritten for the entire code to work on PalmOS. Most of the logic is platform independent so I know that the way it looks on my computer, it will look on my handheld. The drawing model is simple. I first send an 'update' message to all elements which they draw themselves onto thier layers and then I send a 'draw' message which layers respond to which they draw themselves on the display. I know its not much, but its the best I can do so far.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Update

Hi, Sorry for the lack of updates... I am still working on Screens but I just did not have anything to say. I dont think that 'still working' posts are needed. Screens Environment development is realy moving forward but painfully slow. I feel that the time I have something to release, no one will be interested in it. While the object storage is fine so far, I am now working on the graphical user interface stuff like drawing shapes to the screen. It has been nice to do all different drawing designs and test them very easily. I need to think of a concrete model before I can move forward to the window & control classes. You might say great you are nearly there, but that is so untrue. There is so much to do... ok... enough of that. To be more informational, I am working very hard on the drawing model to be fast and easy to use. I hope some spark will arrive and I will able to tell you that I am working on the window stuff, but so far... nothing. The performance is nice so far, it was worth the rewrite just to see that the object storage is not tied to a file but works rather by periodically syncronizing the objects to a file. This gives great performance increases and I will see it mostly when moving a window around the screen. About the forum, I dont think I should do that untill I have something to show you all which will last more than a week. Also I did not solve the problem with concrete objects, so you wont be seeing that feature anytime soon in the object storage. In fact, the multi-tasking side of Screens is not implemented yet. So, what is? Not much... basicly the object storage.