I've got the initial alpha release of my Empeg Logo Editor ready for you folks to bang on it.

Right now it doesn't do any actual editing yet, and I haven't implemented the feature which uploads the images to the empeg yet. But it makes a great logo converter (it saves and loads those .BIN files and accepts import from bitmaps or pastes from the clipboard) and it's got a really neat preview window.

It's not the fastest thing in the world, but it works.

Just before uploading the .zip file I discovered that it's got problems if you maximize the main window, so just don't do that. I'll fix that one on the next release. In the meantime, post your thoughts to this thread or e-mail me directly.

The file can be found right here. Enjoy!

___________
Tony Fabris

Ok I tried it but it doesn't work. When I run it a box pops up the says "Illegal Function Call"... so I tried moving the DLL to /windows/system no go... I'm on Win98se 686 cpu and 132 meg ram. Any more info you need?

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

Ick.

You shouldn't need to move the DLL files.

Check for COMMDLG.DLL in your system and system32 directories. If you don't have it, I'm attaching it to this message because that could be the problem. I thought it was included on all windows distributions after 95 but I guess I could be wrong.

Lemme know if that's it.

Heh, this is what alphas are for...

___________
Tony Fabris

Working fine here! I love it! Good work Tony, the preview window looks sweet. I think the mid grays might be a little to bright compared to the real deal, but i haven't done a head to head comparison yet. I can't wait to be able to edit right there in the window. Saweeeet. Keep truckin'!


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

Thanks. I had a lot of fun making that preview window.

I am considering the possibility of making the gray/color shades (as well as the cutoff values when color-reducing) a user-editable thing. Everything is already in variables, so perhaps I'll just farm that stuff out to the .ini file. I've got other stuff I want to do, first, though.

___________
Tony Fabris

No it still doesn't work. I have that file in /windows/system and I copied it to /windows/system32 just in case. The program halts with that error "illegal function call"... I looked at the VBRUN300.dll.. is it ok that it is made for Windows 3.00??? And dated 1993?

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

Yeah, VB3 is the only development tool I have at home. You'd be surprised how much you can get done with it. There's nothing wrong with running it on any of the Microsoft platforms, it should work on everything.

Does the Illegal Function Call appear immediately when you run the program? If so, go to my web site and snag "Tony's Download Calculator", it's another VB3 applet but it doesn't try to do anything fancy with graphics or file I/O. If that one runs and LogoEdit doesn't run, then I'll get you a debug version of LogoEdit and see if I can trace the location of the problem. If dlcalc doesn't run, then I have to look more deeply into why your system doesn't like VB3.

___________
Tony Fabris

Other things to check...

- What is your screen size and color depth? It should work with just about anything, but still...
- Where is the .EXE being run from? It it on a local disk drive with a standard path, or is it on a network drive with a UNC path?
- What are the "international" settings for this machine? I've only tested it on US machines and there might be something about the window size calculations that doesn't take some things into account.

___________
Tony Fabris

Send that debugged version and I'll send you the output.

Attached to this post. Unzip it to the same directory as you unzipped the last file set, and run it (it's a different EXE file name).

I cheaped it, the debug stuff is simply message boxes. Report the text of the last one you see. I think it's somewhere in form_load, so I only put messages there.

Thanks for helping with this!

___________
Tony Fabris

It gets as far as "positioning the PreviewWindow" then "illegal function call"... you may be right about the screen size being a factor.... I'll try different resolutions and get back to you. If any work :)

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

Runs fine here :
Win2k Pro 1280x1024 32bit


Frank van Gestel

I went from 640x480 to 1280x1024 and I always get the same "illegal function" error message.

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

Works fine on my Win2K system with the dreaded Matrox G400 dual head that gives some programs trouble. Great work Tony, very useful program.

For a future release, it'd be nice to have the ability to set thresholds for the gray values, like if you paste in something, to be able to move a few sliders that determine the cut-off points for what shades in the source image get mapped to intensities 0 through 3. And then there's dithering which opens up a whole other can of worms. But this is a great start!

-Tony
MkII #554

Wow, that's incredibly strange. I'm simply setting the position of a hidden form. Lemme look at the code...

Wow, there's literally nothing there that should screw things up. The Illegal function call happens when the arguments to a function are out-of-range. In this case, I'm just setting the upper left corner of the preview window to touch the right side of the main window. The commands are:

PreviewWindow.Left = LogoEdit.Left + LogoEdit.Width
PreviewWindow.Top = LogoEdit.Top

So there's something screwy with the values it's getting for "Top", "Left", or "Width". It probably has something to do with the screen measurements on your system. VB uses a "twips" system, where there's 15 twips per pixel in "small fonts" mode, and 12 twips per pixel in "large fonts" mode. That probably has something to do with it. There is a new debug version attached to this message which displays that value, lemme know what the value is on your system.

Thanks again for testing this for me.

___________
Tony Fabris

to be able to move a few sliders that determine the cut-off points for what shades in the source image get mapped to intensities 0 through 3.

Yes, this is in my plans. First, I want to implement the downloading and some painting tools, though.

___________
Tony Fabris

IT WORKS !!!

But then, what did I expect .

Well, at LAST I got that logo to work. I am just not much of an artist ...

Thanks Tony, great job.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

The next iteration of my logo editor can be found right here. This one lets you click on a menu item to send the logo to the empeg. As a side benefit, you can also upload custom kernel files, too.

I did something lame, though. I'm not proud of this fact, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you: I didn't integrate the uploading code into my program. I didn't even move it to a DLL. I just re-compiled the "download.c" source code to have an extra "port" parameter, and my program just shells to it. Yes, I'm lazy. There were also a few issues that would've been tough to work around quickly if I hadn't done it this way.

Painting tools aren't implemented yet, but they're coming soon.

Also, we haven't gotten to the bottom of Liufeng's problem yet, so there are no code changes which relate to that.

___________
Tony Fabris

Thanks, glad you like it!

___________
Tony Fabris

Ok you're not going to believe me. In fact I wouldn't be suprised if you hired someone to come and kill me for this... but... your Debug2 program works great.... now your going to say I'm lying and just trying to cause trouble.. but the other ones still don't work (same message even for the newest version). Did you change any code in the Debug2... because it says:

Mytwips is 15
Logoedit.left is 1850
Logoedit.width is 8100
Logoedit.top is 5190

Then it runs as intended.

By the way I think some of your colors are a little far from the real thing.. of course if could just be my monitor settings... Especially Amber

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

Edited by Liufeng on 14/10/00 00:39 AM.

Just had a look...cool.... I checked Photoshop 4's cut and paste and it works fine....

rgds

Bill

-------------
MK II, (Blue but should be Amber) SN: 118

no no, you're going about this wrong Tony. You're supposed to announce your laziness / bugs and drawbacks as features. For example, you can spin it as an advantage, "the upshot is when download.c is upgraded, my editor will remain compatible, in addition to being able to send kernel files..."

Calvin

Thanks, I was wondering about photoshop.

Truth is, I'm just lazy... I work in a software development house, and we've got an entire department devoted to graphics and multimedia. I could have just walked it over to the desk of someone who had photoshop installed, and then tried it. Somehow it seemed easier to get one of you poor saps to try it for me.

___________
Tony Fabris

Did you change any code in the Debug2

Yes, I commented out the commands that I thought might be the problem: The commands that tried to reposition the preview window before showing it.

As far as I know, I should easily be able to set that window's coordinates before showing it. There shouldn't be the slightest problem with doing it. As you can see, it works on everyone else's computers.

I have to head out for a while tonight. But when I come back, I'll try to figure out a way to get around your bug while still positioning the window properly for everyone else.

By the way I think some of your colors are a little far from the real thing.. of course if could just be my monitor settings... Especially Amber

They were just guesstimates, but they should be fairly close. I only own a Mk1 blue and green, and I only saw the red in an early prototype before they changed it, so I really have no accurate reference points other than screen shots on web sites. In the future, I plan to make those colors adjustable. Once that feature is in place, I can get folks to send me their ideas of what's the most accurate colors for the preview. Then I can plug those in as the first-time-run-defaults while still allowing the users to edit them and save them in the ini file.

___________
Tony Fabris

Okay, try out the attached Debug3 on your system. In this version, I'm not trying to position the preview window until the first time you try to show it. The position code is in its form_load routine instead of the main window's form_load routine.

Try it out and make sure you can show/hide/re-show the preview window.

If this works, I'll refine it for the next version (and probably add saving/restoring window positions while I'm at it). And I'll curse Microsoft a bit, too, because there's no reason it should've worked on everyone else's system but not on yours. I hate all this FM you have to deal with when you code for Windows.

___________
Tony Fabris

At least you're honest :)

Another feature to think about - and it's simple to implement. In the edit menu, have an option to swap the home and car logos. Also, how about the option to export home and car to BIN separately? Then they could be transferred to the Empeg and output to the display on demand (I think there was source floating around to output a raw image to the display.) Then it not only becomes a startup logo editor, but an editor for any image you want displayed on the screen.

New version is nice. Preview is still quite slow, even on my SMP Win2K box. Probably has to do with it being written in VB. And as mentioned previously, long file names would be nice.

-Tony
MkII #554

Preview is still quite slow, even on my SMP Win2K box.

Interestingly, there are some speed issues that don't seem to be related to processor power or VB, rather they are related to video drivers or OS. The preview is reasonably fast on my Celeron at home, and only slightly slower on my NT box at work which is half the speed. You'd think it would be half as fast but it's not. Jut for the heck of it, if you're running in 24 or 32-bit color, try dropping it to 16-bit color and see if the preview is faster that way.

I have, in the past, written C DLL's to handle images that get displayed on VB3 forms. If this program ends up being used more widely, I might consider porting it to 32-bit (for long file names) and shuffling the time-critical stuff off to a DLL. We'll see how the painting tools go, and if they're too slow in VB I might have no choice.

Swapping the images should be fairly simple, I'll work on the painting tools first though.

Exporting to BIN is an interesting idea, but then I'd need to allow different image sizes as well (since you seem to be looking for a universal editor). I'm not sure that's what this program was designed for, but we'll see how it goes.

___________
Tony Fabris

Perfect! It works with no problems. I could change the size, minimize, zoom, preview, etc. It crashes hard if you try send it to the car and download.exe doesn't exist. :)

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

It crashes hard if you try send it to the car and download.exe doesn't exist. :)

Upload.exe. I renamed it.

Snag the 0.7 version to get that file, and you should be all set. My next release will incorporate that code change officially.

Now I'm off to write a Quake mod where you get to shoot Microsoft programmers...

___________
Tony Fabris

Now that sound like a mod half the world would pay SERIOUS cash for ... Hell, you prolly would be able to buy Empeg with the wads of cash you could charge for that one ...

No, thats not sarcasm you hear but the god-honest (yet sad) truth. People who have went to TechEd 2000 in the Netherlands this year probably agree with me. You should have heard the roars of dismay from the crowds every time one of the 'Microsoft Evangelists' made a disparaging remark at the address of Linux and its users.

My god, can you even imagine having 'MicroSoft Evangelist' as job title on your business card ?

Anyways, going to try and get that BMW logo to actually look round .

Tony, thanks again.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431