Very little progress since the last release. Mainly because my main computer’s monitor decided to go ever so slightly but permanently out of focus, and the first thing I knew about it was from the blinding headaches after using the computer for more then a few hours. One lovely big new Samsung TFT later and things seem to be ok (:touchwood:), now I just need something to fill the huge inaccessible gap on a corner desk specifically designed for a deep monitor.
This has all let me find out about Cleartype, and the problems it causes with the program. Having Cleartype turned on gives a different output, and it also slows down the display speed when you adjust the text image. I can’t really say if it’s better on or off, since either way the auto-ramp stuff gives the best output. A quick search shows that it should be possible to turn it off for the textbox and all the image stuff, so I’ll look into an option for that, it’s just annoying that there’s another thing to consider when you post the output as text.
I couldn’t figure out how to capture a scrollable screen, until I just found a piece of software and here’s something that turned out rather succesfully using TNRx12 and the grey scales for the 8 colours available to me on that forum (6 of which I utilise):
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a307/Dwayne2005/kermit.gif
And a bit of Jan Svankmajer just for fun 🙂 :
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a307/Dwayne2005/ASCII-darkness-light-darkness.gif
…on another note, I’m not finding any use for the brightness control anymore. Maybe you could have the text output brightness control deactivated on start up? I haven’t use it myself in a long time, and have only accidentally adjusted it instead.
I’ll be happy to try out whatever new features you have in mind; weight up the difference in output. When posting on the particular forum in preserve tags, I’m restricted to 70 characters width in Courier New. If it gives slightly different output in such small gens, I’ll be happy to explore it.
Turns out cleartype isn’t easy to turn off, so I’m putting that on the todo list and ignoring it for now.
I’ve been meaning to write something to allow you to specify the start-up settings. Probably having the program check the exe directory for a xml file that can contain the default ramps, output sizes, characters, font, window settings etc.