Blog


Beta 2.9 Released

Download it here.

Fixed problem with previous image being shown if ramp changed on invalid size
Added ability to change tabs with Ctrl-1 and Ctrl-2
Added ability to switch to a fullscreen view via F11 or the menu
Added check to prevent saving on an empty ramp
Added right click menu option to show or hide the selected area fill
Added toolbar button to switch to and from fullscreen

Also, I added some links at the top of this page.


Beta 2.7 Released

It wasn’t enough for a major version number change, but it was too much for a minor version +1 so I skipped a couple of minor version numbers.

Change log:

    Removed the extra border when moving the selection rectangle
    Fixed bug with widgets sometimes moving on startup
    Changed the look of the application
    Removed sharpen, stretch – use right click to change them
    Added ability to close widgets
    Added new &View menu section to change current tab, and show/hide widgets
    Moved Output size, ASCII ramp and Font to a toolbar
    Made About dialog resizable

There were also a ton of other little bits that broke when I made the changes. I think I’ve gotten everything sorted, but let me know if you see a bug.


Update

The project has been kind of dead for the past month as I wasn’t getting anywhere with it, so I took a few weeks off to get some perspective. I also learnt php + sql (so easy!), tried out Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 (nice but not worth me changing until it’s at least out of beta), and played a lot of gunz (awesome game).

Anyway, I’m back and I’ve decided that the interface needs to be changed. It’s just a little too… blah? and there’s something not right. I’ve already altered it a little in the cvs, but there are still some changes needed. The brightness/contrast widgets need to be a lot smaller, and the bottom part of the text page needs to be removed all together. Ideally I’d also like to get rid of the tab control, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything better.

There are also a lot of internal things that need to be changed before I can do things like batch processing, running from the command line and saving/loading conversion settings.


Beta 2.4 Released

Nothing major, just finishing off the selection area stuff and reorganised the code a little.

Download here.

Change log:

    Moved all globally used variables into a separate class
    Moved all resource code into a new class
    Moved application Main() into it’s own class
    Added right-click “Lock Selected area” to the image
    Moved all remaining Windows-specific code into NativeMethods
    Mouse cursor now changes when over the selection rectangle or modifiers
    Added an extra semi-transparent border when the selection area is being moved
    Removed modifier handles while moving the selection area

Please feel free to leave comments or email me: J (at) jmsoftware dot co dot uk. If you want to, you can use more then one word.


Beta 2.2 Released

New version released, adding the ability to move, and alter the size of the selected area. I’m not totally happy with how the white squares look, but it’ll do for now.

I didn’t mention 2.1, but that was just a quick bug fix, and an optimisation when you are resizing the form horizontally or vertically and the image size doesn’t change.

I should add that the bug wasn’t mine: There’s a problem with the DrawImage function in .NET which offsets the image by (-0.5, -0.5) when the image is smaller then the drawing area. A couple of hours were wasted combing through my code before I worked out what was happening. If anyone is here after googling it, a workround is to set the Graphics.PixelOffsetMode to PixelOffsetMode.Half (and then recheck the size because it goes off a little).


Beta 2.0 Released

(There were not as many things to fix as I expected)

At last, here’s the first major version change. You can now click on the image, and drag a rectangle while holding the button down to select an area of the image to process. Clicking anywhere once will clear the selection. It’s pretty basic at the moment, but improvements will be made over the next few weeks.