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Text File | 1996-10-12 | 18.6 KB | 339 lines

History ======= Texture Garden's history in reverse chronological order ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Notes: * Readers are advised that this file provides information of quite a technical nature in places. * An up-to-date version of this document in HTML should be available on the world wide web from: http://www.varuna.demon.co.uk/tmc/tghist.htm v0.47 • Problem involving JPEG value in options window resolved (bugfix). • Fixed problem involving large complex textures failing to breed due to a lack of allocated memory for keeping track of their internal bracket structures (bugfix). • The hourglass is used when saving and loading textures as text. • Terrible bug (introduced in version 0.45) involving the program producing errors if the "ptr_hand" sprite was not in the WIMP's sprite pool fixed (bugfix). • ZapTexture has failed to work on RISC-PCs up to this point due to memory management problems which would only become manifest when !Zap used dynamic areas. These problems should now have been fixed and ZapTexture should now be fully RISC-PC compatible. Thanks are extended to James Harvey for the initial bug report, and to James Holtom for the use of his RISC-PC (bugfix). • Cosmetic improvements to ZapTexture to slightly reduce problems at low width settings. • Fixed bug causing all the fractal noise commands to never return if they were fed large second parameters. These commands are now slightly slower as a result (bugfix). • Corrected documentation relating to "LinearFieldSegment" (bugfix). • The incorrectly selected icons in various templates have been deselected, and those with incorrect numbers have been renumbered so that textures in them display properly (bugfix). • Added the "Cosmetic improvements" section to the "!ReadMe" file. • Added the "CreateColoursUsingCIEData" command. The PRM's documentation on the SWI used by this command seems to be completely wrong and the SWI itself behaves in a very strange fashion, however, hopefully everything will work. • Terrible bug (introduced in v0.40) involving complete machine lockups if textures were dragged into icons where texture generation had been aborted for some reason has now been completely eliminated (bugfix). • Unresponsive Escape key (from v0.45) made responsive again (bugfix). • Pressing SHIFT and ALT while dropping a dragged a texture into an icon deletes the contents of that icon and frees any memory allocated to it. This may be of use to those working with memory restrictions. • Trying to edit or overwrite textures when they are being bred from is now not allowed as it can cause problems (bugfix). • Operation of F1 and F4 hotkeys slightly improved (bugfix). • Released onto the net on 13-Oct-96. v0.46 • Problem (introduced in version 0.45) involving errors after making or previewing animations resolved (bugfix). • Fixed problem (introduced in version 0.45) with SuperUser's checksum report occurring in an incorrect icon, and causing textures not to be loaded if the pointer is moved away from the current icon while the checksum report is being displayed (bugfix). • "MakeVirtualSprite" and "MakeSpriteFromVirtualSprite" implemented. These commands quietly usher in a new era of texture generation within Texture Garden by providing full support for multiple layer textures. This is described in the "Technical" documentation, and in the "Language" description. • Fixed problems with poor indentation of palette definitions within loops as exposed by new multiple layering feature (bugfix). • Clarified documentation relating to TG_miscop (bugfix). • Preferences now include which preferences window is displayed. • Custom squeezing is now no longer used as this proved not to be StrongARM aware. • Decimal numbers now used for animation frame number. v0.45 • You can now resize textures by dragging their edges as well as their corners. • Resizing and texture dragging are now indicated by appropriate pointer shapes which provide feedback about when the pointer is correctly positioned. • Resizing now works in the control window (bugfix). • Problem involving crashes upon presses of Escape fixed. The key is not quite as responsive as a result (bugfix). • The Escape key now aborts from breeding properly (bugfix). • Longstanding problem involving double-clicks on textures not being recognised and triple and quadruple clicks being required finally tracked down (bugfix). • Problem with animation routines coming to a halt if the desktop failed to multitask for more than a second or so solved (bugfix). • Added the "Getting started" section to the "!ReadMe" file. v0.44 • Fixed problem with using "Write/Click/Drag" icon types in my dialogue boxes which meant the caret needed to be positioned manually inside them by using simple "Writable" icons which the WIMP deals with correctly. The WIMP still cannot consistently cope with situations where it has to borrow the caret from another application (bugfix). • Noticed problems with "Raw" file export to text editors and similar applications. This seemed to be because Texture Garden was taking such a long time to generate the data that by the time it had finished the editor had forgotten all about what was going on. This had the unfortunate side effect that the file was left in the "!Scrap" directory and not deleted. This turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back for the raw file option. It has been completely deleted and replaced by a far more useful array of information concerning the sprite which is to be saved. • Added "Rapid exit" option and preference. • Added "Resize and "ResizeSprite" commands. These take all the effort out of resizing textures. • Added front end to exploit the new "Resize and "ResizeSprite" commands. You can now resize textures dynamically by dragging their bottom right-hand corners. • Released onto the net on 05-Oct-96. v0.43 • SWI "XOS_SynchroniseCodeAreas" called where self-modifying code is used. If there is a performance hit on older machines as the unknown(?) SWI is passed around the modules, it is quite small. This means calling SWI XOS_PlatformFeatures is probably not needed. • New style "OS_File" commands used for loading code. Whether the program works on StrongARM chips now depends mainly upon: * Whether all the self-modifying code has been identified. * Whether Acorn's directives have been correctly implemented. * Whether "Absolute" files compressed using "!Crunch" work. * Whether any PC indexing needs adjusting (unlikely). Proper testing will occur at my earliest convenience. • Memory reorganization so that the limit of 32 third party extensions is eliminated. This change has also has the pleasing effect of shaving about 2048 bytes from the "GardenSpt" module. • Added "TwoDimensionalStore", "TwoDimensionalSwap" and "TwoDimensionalMask(Type)" commands. New internal "TG_miscop" Texture Garden call added with two reason codes for memory allocation. • !Zap mode updated so it recognises the new commands. "Resize", "MakeVirtualSprite" and "MakeSpriteFromVirtualSprite" also added at this stage so the user should not need to update their !Zap mode too frequently. v0.42 • Messages routines updated to fix severe problems in a small number of cases. • Released to those who had problematical versions on 22-Sep-96. v0.41 • Messages routines revamped and "Messages" file closed properly. • Message compression routines optimised, resulting in !MsgPress application. • Palette files moved into a Textures directory inside !TexturGdn so the !Zap mode does not need to treat files beneath a "Palette" directory specially. • Interactive help for greyed out menu entries added. • Released onto the net on 19-Sep-96. v0.40 • Pre-interpretation memory restrictions on the length of file that could be dealt with without producing address exceptions reduced and error checking of file size implemented (bugfix). • Menu structures now behave better if "small_diro" and "small_appo" sprites are not in the WIMP's sprite pool (bugfix). • Removed bug that meant that memory in the internal sprite area was never released. This caused playing an animation to make Texture Garden's Wimpslot to grow by several hundred kilobytes unnecessarily (bugfix). • Split resource sprites into two areas in the hope of slightly improving performance. Removed some unnecessary palettes from these sprites. • Elusive bug in mutator causing long texture files to give address exception when breeding finally tracked down (bugfix). • "Textures.!ReadMe" file modified so that it is more aesthetically pleasing in the new !Zap mode and it has a "Checksum" which enables it to be loaded by unregistered users of Texture Garden. • Animations may now be applications (i.e. start with a "!"). • Pressing "Escape" now stops animations and breeding as well as aborting drags. • Caret handling improved so hot keys work more intuitively. • Memory handling made more effective so Wimpslot minimised. This is now down to 224K. • Private version released to JK on 13-Sep-96. v0.39 • Bugs discovered in recently changed hotkey routines, entailing a comprehensive rewrite. The WIMP is not expecting to encounter menus arising from dialogue boxes, and this still causes problems. These are as follows: * Most hot key generated dialogue boxes temporarily disturb a few pixels in the corner of the screen with their hidden parent menu. * The "Palette" and "SaveAni" dialogue boxes are brought up with a small leading menu. This involves unlinking the pointer, moving the mouse over the sub-menu pointer , and then moving it back again. This is a bit ugly. There may yet be ways of hiding the leading menu, though making it vanish looks very difficult. The problem is that the "Wimp_DecodeMenu" SWI fails to keep track of sub-menus if they are opened directly by the program, and not by the WIMP. I therefore have to pretend that the user has selected the sub-menu themselves. Totally bypassing the "Wimp_DecodeMenu" SWI and writing code specifically may solve this, but means doing all the work in the program. * "Wimp_DecodeMenu" relies on the fact that the window handles of the dialogue boxes encounters in menu structures remain unchanged from when the sub-menu is created to when the "DecodeMenu" SWI is called. Because my palette window needs to be deleted and recreated if its sprite area changes position in memory, the WIMP's menu decoding has forgotten about the dialogue box because it has changed its handle. At the moment this causes the entire menu to collapse. * Icons in previous dialogue boxes cause subsequent menus to collapse in an unintuitive manner. • Palette box redesigned again, this time to prevent the icons in the dialogue box from acting as items in a previous menu and causing palette selection menu trees to vanish too easily. v0.38 • Laborious and complicated fix for RISC PC icons in menus. These now work with all current versions of the WindowManager module. The problems of the truncated menu widths were solved by padding the filenames with CHR$160s (a hard space). The only side effect of this for the user is that palette and animation directories and filenames are now not allowed to end with this character. v0.37 • Name of task registered with task manager now "Texture Garden". • Multiple running now prevented. v0.36 • Numerous modifications as a result of feedback from Tom Hughes: * Options dialogue made less chunky. * System sprite pool now no longer interfered with. Request for comments notice modified as a result of positive RISC PC test results. • Preferences and options for hiding and killing the "Options" menu implemented. • Errors when trying to use batch files eliminated (bugfix). • Released onto the net on 10-Sep-96. v0.35 • Hot dialogue boxes now have had their parent menu reduced to only a few pixels. They have still not vanished. • Palette box redesigned so "Add" and "Delete" icons are less prominent and "Select palette" has been moved to the left and is consequently quicker to access. • Five more hot key functions added and the option to load the texture generation program into a text editor has been moved from F5 to F9 to retain the logic of the layout. • Problems with template workspace solved by loading all templates into memory at the same time. • !Help file made more coherent. v0.34 • More major changes to the options and preferences windows. These are now split from one another into two distinct regions. Options are specific to the version of the program running, whereas preferences may be saved to disc. Preferences may only be accessed through the icon bar icon. • Option for setting the options to the preferences (Prefs... Set). • Preferences can be copied to the local options [Options.CopyOpts]. • Style-guide style "Cancel" icons added to the dialogue boxes. v0.33 • Options window completely redesigned with new "Output" category. • Added "Open main window" and "Open options window" options. • Added "JPEG" and "Mono" options, and a backend that uses these in conjunction with a JPEG quality variable. This was done to shield the user from some of the complexities of !ChangeFSI's command- line options. • Palette and animation menu structures now conform to the protocol I have inverted for handling clicks in menus arising from dialogue boxes: click with adjust and he whole menu tree is redrawn, click with select and the tree collapses as far as the last dialogue box. • !Sprites22 and !Sprites files updated with more 3D icons. v0.32 • Major changes to the way F5 exports its file. Now it goes via a "Textures" directory within !Scrap. This means that: * It will now work with !Edit and all other editors. * The file's status is not set by the editor as changed. * !Zap can now use the fact that the file is within a "Textures" directory to set the editing mode correctly. * Unfortunately, the title of the editor's window is set to the ugly path within !Scrap, and if it is saved from the editor then that is where it goes. * If it is saved from the editor into Texture Garden then the title of the editor's window changes to <Wimp$Scrap>. * Dragging from Texture Garden to the icon bar icon of an editor has also been "fixed", but using some dodgy code that could have unexpected side effects if more than one program is being run which accepts text files at the icon bar. This problem can be demonstrated by loading two text editors and dragging a file directly from Texture Garden into each in turn. As this kind of circumstance will probably occur very infrequently, this problem has not yet been addressed. * Using a directory in shared workspace is not ideal. However, short of applying for a Texture Garden filetype allocation, this is the best solution envisaged so far. • "•" marks and trailing "."s added to this file for clarity. v0.31 • ZapTexture syntax colouring mode for !Zap released. • Various bugfixes associated with the crunching method employed. • Palette and animation windows stay open after all menu clicks. • Hot dialogue boxes now open better on RISC PCs, though now underneath each dialogue box is hiding a small menu that generates it. This should vanish, but how? • !Sprites22 and !Sprites files updated with slightly 3D icons. • Released onto the net on 05-Sep-96. v0.30 • Version number confusion cleared up. • !Sprites22 and !Sprites files updated with better icon versions. • Textures can now be dragged properly at all times (bugfix). • The order of this file reversed and its format improved. • "ptr_hand" sprite used for drags. • Texture dragging improved (bugfix). • Templates improved for low eigenfactor modes. • "Options" templates improved to provide more room. • Messages file adjusted in line with above. • Default animation settings improved (bugfix). • 24 bpp and 16 bpp colour options in any mode on any hardware. • Floyd-Steinberg potential problem side-stepped. • Documentation updated to reflect the above changes. • Released onto the net on 27-Aug-96. v0.20 • First version released on the net in the hope of getting feedback from RISC-PC owners. • Released onto the net on 10-Aug-96. v0.10 • Interactive help on menu entries debugged. v0.07 • Corrections to template file. • Symmetry x,y and rotational, x2, x4, etc. • MessageTrans used for text. • MessageTrans used for menus. • Size of artefacts option. • Development version issued to a friend. • New templates designed. v0.06 • Menus debugged. • Added Extension modules for 3rd party extensions. • Better memory management. • Animation added. • Registration checksum introduced. v0.05 • Kaleidoscopic options added. • Palette options added. v0.04 • Artefact options added. • Language improved. v0.03 • Hourglass used. v0.02 • Desktop front-end, etc. v0.01 • Original FFT prototype.