[WildBill]

Ah. Yet more ETO_OPAQUE/ETO_CLIPPED subtleties. I fixed it and posted version 0.4.7, which has another improvement as well. We're cooking with gas now.

I've been looking at SmoothText's internal architecture (which is really clean and modular), and I'm thinking that a much better way to do skinning would be to add a skinning behavior to SmoothText rather than fight with TClock3 anymore. SmoothText has a concept of separate behaviors that have their own configuration, ability to be turned on or off, etc. It's really very clean. I'm still on the fence, but I'm investigating the possibility. A lot of TClock3 code would be ported if I took that route (actually rewritten from scratch, but using TClock3 as a template).

[hpj2]

Hello WildBill,

although SmoothText is getting better and better, here is an error I found.
It's a dialog box in SpeedCommander 10.54 (Delete a file).
0.4.6 OK
 SmoothText_0.4.6.jpg (15.08K)
Number of downloads: 6
0.4.7 NOT OK
 SmoothText_0.4.7.jpg (11.12K)
Number of downloads: 6

by the way: Happy New Year

[WildBill]

I downloaded the demo of SpeedCommander (and I think I got the right version), but I couldn't reproduce the problem. That said, I fixed a number of issues and posted version 0.4.8. I still have more things to fix, but would you mind checking to see if this at least fixes the problem you posted?

[Colonel O'Neill]

I did notice a similar thing to hpj2's dialog box. Virtual PC 2007 showed me a dialog that looked like that for a second. Reflexively pressed Enter before noticing it. Anyway, I think it's not program specific. Both occured in a dialog box. From my experience of dialog boxes in Reshacker... The word that shows up there is just filler until the program puts the proper text in. Not sure though.

But I did have a hard lock up in 0.4.7. Had a temporary lock-up using 0.4.8 while opening Photoshop.

BTW, did you see the Cleartype in 98/ME thread by Tihiy? I think SmoothText has gone beyond Cleartype's capabilities... Although IMHO... The SmoothText algorithm could use a bit more pixel boundary snapping. Tahoma is rather blurry ATM.

Enough rambling for now.

[WildBill]

Some days I just can't win. I missed a potential crash problem in 0.4.8 and I've posted version 0.4.9 that takes care of it. I wouldn't be be surprised if that was your problem, but could you try it out? SmoothText also can override tab controls now when tabs are painted as buttons (see your Windows taskbar).

Wow, I didn't know about the ClearType thread. I'll go take a look at that now before I get to bed (it's late! )

[hpj2]

Hello WildBill,

Thank you for your new version. I tested SpeedCommander with 0.4.9 and the problem with the copy-dialogbox is gone.
But I found another error. It's always the same with 0.4.6 - 0.4.9!

Without Smoothtext:

 Without_SmoothText_0.4.9.jpg (44.81K)
Number of downloads: 10

With Smoothtext 0.4.9:

 SmoothText_0.4.9.jpg (40.91K)
Number of downloads: 10

It's the optionsdialog menu: extras => options

[Colonel O'Neill]

Confirm similar bug. The Time/Date dialog is resized weirdly.



Other than that... No other incompatibilities seen so far.

It'd be nice if one could adjust the boldness (weighting) of semi-filled pixels. That would be awesome.

[WildBill]

Hmm. That's very strange. I'm seeing that on my PC as well. Oh, well, it's yet another thing to investigate.

I posted version 0.5.0 tonight, which should fix a lot of issues. I'm probably going to slow down development a little bit (these nightly releases are killing me!). That sizing bug is definitely going to be high on the list, though.

I've been looking into the possibility of tuning the text output, but I haven't worked out all the details yet. It has to be done in a way that wouldn't harm performance. A few versions ago I made some preliminary steps toward it, but I haven't figured it all out yet.

[Colonel O'Neill]

WOOHOO Tahoma is normal width now. In the before time it looked way way way too narrow...
IMHO Segoe UI is a smidge too thin. Could you add a way to use the old algorithm for certain fonts?

Tried to look at your source for the Subpixel.pas... Found Assembler, Nice!
Unfortunately I don't understand a word of Assembler.

I'll try to decipher the logics of it... See if I can port the frameworks it to VB to test speed if weighting is added...
ATM... Very confused.

Don't kill yourself over SmoothText... It's not worth it!
It won't hurt us to wait a while before getting updates.

(Can't get enough of the MSFN emoticons. )

[Colonel O'Neill]

Oh my. SmoothText seems to have messed up controls within frames.



Also, whatever Wikipedia's article font is, it looks too thin at Ctrl+0 (Normal Size) in firefox.

[WildBill]

Thanks for finding that. Version 0.5.1 is posted, which should fix at least some of the issues. The one with SpeedCommander is still escaping me, though.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Awesome! The frames show proper controls now, really quick bug fix too!

[Colonel O'Neill]

Hmm... I was wondering why certain things were looking off. MS Sans Serif (or some other similar font) when put through SmoothText ends up thinner than usual. Other fonts, like Segoe UI, are wider when put through SmoothText (actually more pleasant due to it's wider proportions).



Some diagrams drawn in Paint are included.
Not a major problem, just a heads up.

[WildBill]

It's pretty much inevitable that some characters would change in width, since I don't have individual character-width control (only the average width of the entire font). Anyhow, version 0.5.2 is posted, and it fixes a lot of issues.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Awesome new interface!
Everything looks great! It even works on XP

[WildBill]

Version 0.5.3 is now posted, with a minor bugfix.

That's amazing that it works on XP, though I have to wonder why anyone would want to use it on XP since it already has ClearType. Neat, though, anyway.

This post has been edited by WildBill: 19 January 2009 - 08:25 PM

[Colonel O'Neill]

Awesomeness. My Taskbar is replaced by ObjectBar, so it's all good.

Too bad TClock3 fails to work on my computer... It walks the tightrope and usually falls off.

[WildBill]

I've fixed a major bug in TClock3 tonight and I'm running it right now. Hopefully I'll be able to release a new version soon, but I first have to port a lot of SmoothText bugfixes back to it and fix some other issues.

[Colonel O'Neill]

You could always seperate the TClock3 and SmoothText aspects.
Or distribute them together but run them as seperate programs?

[WildBill]

Version 0.5.4 is posted, which has some nice fixes and internal improvements.

There are both benefits and drawbacks to having skinning in TClock3 and antialiasing in SmoothText. I'm a little on the fence as to whether they should be combined. At any rate, TClock3 development is continuing; I'm currently cleaning up a LOT of code, and then I have to nail down a few more bugs.