Not an emergency bug fix, I just got on a roll and there was no point waiting longer before putting this up (don’t get used to daily releases).
Added storing and loading of a default font to the settings file, and a few fixes.
Changes in this version:
Added default font to the variables
Added reading and writing of the default font to the xml
Added pinvoke function to fix problem with some variable width fonts being identified as fixed width
Fixed minimum size of valid characters dialog when the font size changes
Added handling for System.Argument exception raised on some fonts
Having some difficulties with inputting ramps with special ANSII characters. I inserted the &#???; and &???; code at times, and I also noticed a ? or similiar character appeared at some juncture, so I tried using that instead of code. The save file always seem to become corrupted, maybe even after I removed that validcharacters entry. I’ve given the xml input a bit of a rest for now. Any chance you can someday have it insert ANSII characters from the xml minus the code?
Also, the Valid Characters alterations is a bit confusing. Easy to understand but adds confusion to the interface and software, I find. I like it, though, just wish there was as little change as possible as I find it causes a little strain. The description of the text might not be important; `input’ I think would suffice. And you could have a menu entry for Valid Chars / Ramp for Input and get rid of the Auto button. Even for monospace fonts, I find I mostly use `auto’.
I’ve tried ansi characters in it, and haven’t had any problems with either entering them directly or with &#???; codes.
Can you post your xml file? It’s only a text file so it doesn’t get corrupted, you’ve probably deleted part of a tag or something.
I’ll have to corrupt it anew, but can’t do so immediately. Will try to get it done tomorrow, and try several things out.
I think I found out what software was triggering that Divide-by-Zero error in AscGen. It was a freeware program called AllChars for making ANSI code easy. It was also triggering the Module 10H illegal operation errors in some games. I just went back to 4.3 and tried getting it to crash with and without AllChars running. Both times failing. Then I hit the CTRL key to signify input and tried selecting an area and right away got Divide-by-Zero! Done… a second time just now. And a third. It’s it. The only problem is that I don’t recall ever touching the keyboard when getting the crash earlier, let alone hitting CTRL.
Just thought you might be interested to know. I’ll try and look into the .xml thing in a little while!
Okay, I got it the xml working with just two charaters #160 and #182 using their number codes but not directly using the symbols in the xml file.
The problem I was having the other day was putting into it all ANSI characters. I didn’t go through all the codes but I suppose it would have been better if I had.
I notice that once I enter in the # codes in the .xml, and load up AscGen and save settings as default, the text file has the characters replacing the # code but with a ? on the left side of each character. So, what I done with the multiple ANSI characters was tried to just insert the ? to the left of each character. I’m not sure, but I think it worked once I dumped about half the ANSI characters but failed later on… And not sure why! I’ll try and insert the ANSI characters by their number codes, which I should have done!
I just load the xml in wordpad and rather than have the A symbol on the left of each character, just the character itself. I saved it in text mode and the information is corrupt. That was probably causing a bit of confusion with me the other day. So Wordpad (at least of Windows ’98) is something I should stick away from.
I tried inputting all 255 ANSI codes, pretty large, and probably the reason why it was rejected. I managed to get it functional with 128-191 but not when I added 192-255. It’s not really important. I might just output all the number codes and work from text file. I want to just play around a little with the non-standard characters, or whichever ones will work!
I don’t know if this idea has occured to you before, but it just did me: merging multiple styles into a single image. I think you could merge bold and italic styles fairly easily. In terms of image outputs, it would work fine. Text outputs would require a HTML or document export (bold, italics).
Or branching out further and encompass a wide array of typefaces, as well?!
(I could work with the style alterations on my message boarding but not the typefaces. In the valid characters, it would have italic and bold signifiers.)
Anyway, that’s just a thought I had.
“In the valid characters, it would have italic and bold signifiers.”
In the XML. If possible, you could have a option to make Italic/make Bold when you highlight a text in the Valid Characters or Ramp entries. Just switching between bold and regular in my generations, I notice how bold on it’s own is not very dynamic and regular on its own is not very dynamic either. Having the two together would create a highly improved image capability I imagine?!
There are a few problems with mixing different types since the whole conversion is geared to output to one type of font. It might be possible but it would need a change in how the output is handled
Plus I’d assume that displaying it would be really slow like the colour text output, since it would have to loop through and set each character and the RichTextBox is a piece of crap (I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to fix a crashing bug).
I think I’ll output all the characters in Times New Roman 12 in bold and regular and work out a ramp and some kind of search-replace procedure, and I’ll provide you with an example if the combination of reg and bold works out! I’d like to have something like that anyway, whether you can implement it or not. I think it should prove very interesting, even if it’s a long time away or never manages to get implemented. I think I’ll go through the Valid Characters in bold first, and reduce it down and experiment around first.
Not sure how it would turn out, I’d have to use a monospace font (for the ramp feature) and use, for instance, Lucida Console size 6 regular and size 4 bold to keep the width a constant. It wouldn’t be a good demonstration.