It's nice to be able to save images from the visualization editor
for display elsewhere. This can be done during HTML export, but
that's inconvenient when you just want one image, and doesn't allow
the output size to be specified.
This change adds an Export button to the Edit Visualization dialog.
The current bitmap, wireframe, or wireframe animation can be saved
to a GIF image. A handful of sizes can be selected from a pop-up
menu.
Some tests were duplicated between VisWireframe and the code that
consumed the data. We now expose the Validate function as a public
interface, and invoke it from WireframeObject. Failed validation
results in a null object being returned, which was previously allowed
but not actually checked for.
This converts AVG commands to wireframes. We don't try to track
color or intensity. (This is a disassembler, not a graphics
converter; perfection is not required.) The various rotation and
animation options are still enabled, though they're not terribly
useful for this.
Commands that are meant to be used in series, such as font glyphs,
tend to use (0,0) as their left edge and baseline. This puts the
shape in the upper-right corner of the thumbnail, which makes
everything smaller. The change adds a "re-center" option to the
wireframe renderer that computes the visible bounds and adjusts
the coordinates so that the center of the object is at (0,0) for
display.
We were trying to use the in-file calculation for an external
address, so the adjustment was always zero.
Also, don't pass a fill brush for wireframe rendering. (No change
in behavior.)
Generation of HTML is extremely fast, but compressing thousands
of frames for wireframe animated GIFs can take a little while.
Sharing bitmaps between threads required two changes: (1) bitmaps
need to be "frozen" after being drawn; (2) you can't use Path because
BackgroundWorker isn't a STAThread. You can, however, use a
DrawingVisual / DrawingContext to do the rendering. Which is really
what I should have been doing all along; I just didn't know the
approach existed until I was forced to go looking for it.
Also, we now do a "run finalizers" call before generating an animated
GIF. Without it things explode after more than 10K GDI objects have
been allocated.
Experimented with different orders of rotation for wireframe viewer.
Made perspective projection the default behavior. Removed animation
parameters from the stored Visualization when it's not animated.
Remember how object references from plugins are proxy objects that
time out if you don't access them for a while? I didn't either.
This reshuffles the code to keep WireframeObject references rather
than IVisualizationWireframe.
Handle the remaining visualization editor UI controls, except for
the "test" button. Save/restore wireframe animations in the
project file. Changed the preview from a 1-pixel-wide line drawn
by a path half the window size to a 2-pixel-wide line drawn by a
path the exact window size.
Moved X/Y/Z rotation out of the plugin, since it has nothing to do
with the plugin at all. (Backface removal and perspective projection
are somewhat based on the data contents, as is the choice for
whether or not they should be options.)
Added sliders for X/Y/Z rotation. Much more fun that way.
Renamed VisualizationAnimation to VisBitmapAnimation, as we're not
going to use it for wireframe animation. Created a new class to
hold wireframe animation data, which is really just a reference to
the IVisualizationWireframe so we can generate an animated GIF
without having to pry open the plugin again.
Renamed the "frame-delay-msec" parameter, which should start with
an underscore to ensure it doesn't clash with plugin parameters.
If we don't find it with an underscore we check again without for
backward compatibility.
We extract the data from the wireframe visualization, perform a
trivial transform, and display it. The perspective vs.
orthographic flag in the parameters is respected. (No rotation or
backface removal yet.)
Also, increased the thumbnail sizes in the visualization set editor
list from 48x48 to 64x64, because the nearest-pixel-scaled 48x48
looks nasty when used for wireframes.
I did a bunch of experiments to characterize line drawing. Long
story short: end points are inclusive, and coordinates should be
offset by +0.5 to avoid anti-aliasing effects.
Added some more plumbing. Updated visualization set edit dialog,
which now does word-wrapping correctly in the buttons. Added Alt+V
as the hotkey for Create/Edit Visualization Set, which allows you
to double-tap it to leap into the visualization editor.
Experimented with Path drawing, which looks like it could do just
what we need.
Also, show the file size in KB in the code/data/junk breakdown at the
bottom of the window. (Technically it's KiB, but that looked funny.)
- Break up long sequences of visualization images in exported HTML
to avoid horizontal scrolling. Lines don't fold in "pre" mode,
and switching out of "pre" is ugly, so we just break at an
arbitrary point.
- Use a slightly different filename for animated GIFs.
- When moving items up/down in the visualization set editor or
bitmap animation editor, scroll the datagrid to keep the selected
item in view.
- Fix a wayward assert.
As with still images, animations are rendered at original size and
then scaled with HTML properties.
Also, fixed the blurry scaling on animation thumbnails. I couldn't
find a way to do nearest-neighbor scaling in the code-behind without
resorting to System.Drawing (WinForms), so I added an overlay image
to the various grids.
Bitmap animations are composed of a sequence of other visualizations.
This is all well and good until a visualization is deleted, at which
point all animations in all sets in the entire project have to be
checked and potentially changed, and perhaps even removed (if all of
the animation's members have been removed). This turns out to be
kind of annoying to deal with, but it's better to deal with it in
code than force the user to manually update broken animations.
This change adds thumbnails for the animations, currently generated
by offscreen composition. This approach doesn't work quite right.
This adds a new class and a rough GUI for the editor. Animated
visualizations take a collection of bitmaps and display them in
sequence. (This will eventually become an animated GIF.)
Fixed the issue where changes to tags in the set currently being
edited weren't visible to the tag uniqueness check when editing other
items in the same set.
We now generate GIF images for visualizations and add inline
references to them in the HTML output.
Images are scaled using the HTML img properties. This works well
on some browsers, but others insist on "smooth" scaling that blurs
out the pixels. This may require a workaround.
An extra blank line is now added above visualizations. This helps
keep the image and data visually grouped.
The Apple II bitmap test project was updated to have a visualization
set with multiple images at the top of the file.
Various improvements:
- Switched to ReadOnlyDictionary in Visualization to make it clear
that the parameter dictionary should not be modified.
- Added a warning to the Visualization Set editor that appears when
there are no plugins that implement a visualizer.
- Make sure an item is selected in the set editor after edit/remove.
- Replaced the checkerboard background with one that's a little bit
more grey, so it's more distinct from white pixel data.
- Added a new Apple II hi-res color converter whose output more
closely matches KEGS and AppleWin RGB.
- Added VisHiRes.cs to some Apple II system definitions.
- Added some test bitmaps for Apple II hi-res to the test directory.
(These are not part of an automated test.)
Thumbnails are now visible in the main list and in the visualization
set editor. They're generated on first need, and regenerated when
the set of plugins changes.
Added a checkerboard background for the visualization editor bitmap
preview. (It looks all official now.)
The Visualization and Visualization Set editors are now fully
functional. You can create, edit, and rearrange sets, and they're
now stored in the project file.
Implemented Apple II hi-res bitmap conversion. Supports B&W and
color. Uses essentially the same algorithm as CiderPress.
Experimented with displaying non-text items in ListView. I assumed
it would work, since it's the sort of thing WPF is designed to do,
but it's always wise to approach with caution. Visualization Sets
now show a 64x64 button as a placeholder for the eventual thumbnail.
Some things were being flaky, which turned out to be because I
wasn't Prepare()ing the plugins before using them from Edit
Visualization. To make this a deterministic failure I added an
Unprepare() call that tells the plugin that we're all done.
NOTE: this breaks all existing plugins.
Added some rudimentary bitmap creation code. Got a test pattern
generated by the plugin to display in the app. (Most of the time
required for this was spent figuring out how bitmaps are handled
in WPF.)
Got parameter in/out working in EditVisualization dialog. Did some
rearranging in PluginCommon interfaces and data structures. Still
doesn't do anything useful.
Basic infrastructure for taking a list of parameters from a plugin
and turning it into a collection of UI controls, merging in values
from a Visualization object. Doesn't yet do anything useful.
WPF makes the hard things easy and the easy things hard. This was
a hard thing, so it was easy to do (with some helpful sample code).
Yay WPF?
