LateralGM 1.8.6.844

[Goombert]

Thanks egofree and thank you for all your testing as well! Some of those bugs I may have never run across. But we've still got a few more bugs and things, I am planning on an announcement at 1.8.7

I want to do several things still:

1) Get the Code Editor preferences actually working
2) Fix a regression in DocumentLink that is causing errors because of the other useLegacyMergeSort bug you found.
3) Implement print support for JoshEdit

Now as for the search toolbar disappearing no that should not be happening and I can not reproduce it. Go to File->Preferences and see if you accidentally unchecked "Show Tree Filter"

[egofree]

Now as for the search toolbar disappearing no that should not be happening and I can not reproduce it. Go to File->Preferences and see if you accidentally unchecked "Show Tree Filter"

You are right.  In fact it seems it's more a bug related to the 'Show tree filter'.  If the 'Show tree filter' is unchecked and i start the application, the search toolbar is still there, but if go to the settings and i just click on the 'Apply changes', the toolbar disappears. But again every time the application starts it doesn't take into account this setting.

[Goombert]

Alright another update with more bugfixes. This release contains specific fixes for control property links and reverting game information so I would appreciate it if everyone could test the various editors and make sure values are getting saved properly and everything, specifically the room frame and game information frames.

* Fixed issue just reported by egofree, the show tree filter preference is now acknowledged at startup.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/b3821804b51218895c266b725569bf3364be2b4b
* Fixed long existing PropertyLinkFactory disposal issues that were propagating into race conditions in multiple editors. ResourceFrames now dispose of them automatically, custom PLF's will need to be disposed by overriding the frame dispose method.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/8662754845f35486315f178d63c56135cfe9352d
* Fixed a mistake made in Game Information that caused its little settings window to create its controls twice.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/35e3f35ddcd615eaa3b799c23b20f834ad981643
* Fixed the property comparison in the check for changes method of Game Information so it will now properly detect whether a string value has changed or any value type, such as the Window Title setting.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/014d52b2b2d0d74153ed32b3cc5fb206ea3f88e5

You can update with python install.py or manually from the Extra Packages page.
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Install:Extra_Packages

[egofree]

Everything seems fine for me.

[egofree]

If you apply the 'nimbus' look and feel, the textbox in the search bar is tiny :



But if you restart the application, it's ok.

[Goombert]

I really can't do much about that egofree, it's mainly a Java Swing issue with it not updating the layouts properly, that is why the message box states that you may have to restart for some settings to take effect. I think I may in fact disable it automatically updating and force you to restart to change the look and feel, because there are other issues caused by updating it immediately that aren't really fixable.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

Isn't there a pack function in most layout managers that you can call? Or perhaps it was in the frame... I can't remember. The point is, if destroying and recreating all swing widgets is one solution, there's bound to be another.

[Goombert]

Well let me go into a little bit of detail here. First, I am using JToolBar for that filter because I wanted the buttons to render as tool buttons so they are nicer and more compact looking, plus this way you can drag it around and even hide it easily. Some look and feels would not allow the search filter text field to stretch out, one of these is the default Swing look and feel, but the Windows look and feel does let it stretch out. So I decided to use a GroupLayout to get the text field to stretch under all look and feels. Now we update the look and feel after changing it in preferences using updateComponentTreeUI on every Window, at this point I believe the layout is being destroyed or replaced back with the default toolbar layout.

There are also other issues with this currently, switching look and feels with decorated windows will sometimes remove window borders when switching to the Windows look and feel. The event panel layout is also screwed up, but interestingly this is the default way it is laid out under some of the Synthetica look and feels which suggests I may be able to easily fix that. Additionally trees like the one for navigating preferences will show the look and feel default icons for the nodes even though they are turned off for the tree. There are also other inconsistencies when switching look and feels like UI properties, fonts, and colors not being updated and removed.

So really, the look and feel system was never designed to be switched at runtime. I was honestly considering making the user have to restart for the look and feel to take effect at all, but currently I am looking for solutions to work around these problems. Additionally I would appreciate anyone that can reproduce the JDK Focus Traversal bug which is specifically related to renaming resources on KDE test the jars I have posted to the support ticket.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/issues/124

[egofree]

For the problem with the nimbus look and feel, don't spend too much time on this, i don't think it's really important. Anyway there is an message that informs the user that he may have to restart the application.

I was wondering if by default it would be more useful if the search results would be expanded ? I think that usually the user would like to see all results.

[egofree]

I've found a strange behavior in the user interface : if you want to shrink the main window from below, it is not possible to do it, except with the Resources panel. There is a kind of split bar, which seems to be useless, and which doesn't allow the user to change the window's size :

[Goombert]

I was wondering if by default it would be more useful if the search results would be expanded ? I think that usually the user would like to see all results.

While this is what Eclipse IDE does, they don't have the option to Right Click->Expand All like LGM does. So I am a little undecided about expanding it completely by default.

I've found a strange behavior in the user interface : if you want to shrink the main window from below, it is not possible to do it, except with the Resources panel. There is a kind of split bar, which seems to be useless, and which doesn't allow the user to change the window's size :

Don't worry about that yet, I am not ready to reveal what secrets that splitter is hiding. 

You can update via the extra packages page or using python install.py
NOTE: You will need to update both the new plugin and LateralGM jars!!!
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Install:Extra_Packages

1) Simple JoshEdit print support added, word wrapping is not yet supported like Studio and line numbers are not painted yet. Printing interface is designed to be Java/AWT/Swing compliant and implements the standard feature set.
https://github.com/JoshDreamland/JoshEdit/pull/14
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/6bffacb07b99465840fb8de806395bf2f1f14df6
2) Exception reporting has been improved for file loading errors, GmFormatException and ProjectFormatException were essentially throwing away half of the stack trace.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/c78f55713ab9f1cae4d24e1e722bdc08aa0ce69f
3) Fixed horizontal and vertical snap properties in the GMX writer where they were being written backwards.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/e3cebad0e345e9364ed6b1b424b7ea0bf639d3c4
4) Fixed transitivity in some toolbars.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/befdc03419ad05f438ba956e34b16272438df92e
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/issues/124
5) Window decorations can now be disabled, this means the look and feel will not be able to decorate the window border if you don't want it to, this required fixing the toolbar transitivity first.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/e86d680d5ede0bdd1f42112c5add1ecb4af6c8c5
6) Hardware acceleration is no longer forced off, there are now preferences to force OpenGL or Direct3D on or off or let the Java system decide and there is a similar preference for antialiasing of control fonts. The JVM will detect if your hardware supports hardware accelerated rendering so I recommend keeping the settings left at "default" but for those of us that do have the capable graphics hardware this will seriously improve the speed of rendering for LGM. Testing sprite animation playback was a lot smoother and higher frequency once I implemented the preference to stop forcing it off for everyone, it also reduced CPU and RAM usage significantly.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/ec03f8a16da9f4bb8799b729043ba78d7c048271
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/b86360a18862a77e8b5809b7ee51fa031a584ee4
7) Fixed a component transparency issue caused when using *.lib action libraries from GM, they were supposed to be taking the transparency color from the bottom left corner.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/ae0dc208a0b4bdc2fdd436c66403fcafb2ab5d7d
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/issues/161
8) Fixed the EventPanel layout, it was setting it before actually laying out the components causing it to look incorrect under certain look and feels, specifically the new dark one.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/42828a931c3c948f973314b6876d2ac50fc8cd3f
9) Fixed an old mistake I made in the Game Settings frame mixing up the DESCRIPTION and INFORMATION properties.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/commit/6d581dd3ddd221073102f5862e10aa64adebf83d
10) JoshEdit regression with insert new line hiding the caret fixed.
https://github.com/JoshDreamland/JoshEdit/issues/17
https://github.com/JoshDreamland/JoshEdit/commit/c2b234e6bfde3a4b5ea8e728734c45693b8311d5

On the left you can see me printing one of my scripts for Project Mario to OneNote, you can clearly see wordwrapping is not implemented and text will be cutoff horizontally just like when you print in Studio, I will fix this eventually, and also line numbers do not appear. I recommend sending your documents to OneNote or similar to preview them before actually sending them to your printer if you use this feature, just for the time being until we know my implementation is stable enough. On the right you can see the additional preferences that have been added to allow you to turn off window decorations and enable hardware acceleration.

[egofree]

While this is what Eclipse IDE does, they don't have the option to Right Click->Expand All like LGM does. So I am a little undecided about expanding it completely by default.

Can you imagine a situation where you don't want to see all results ? This doesn't seem logical to me. Anyway it would be good to have the feedback of others users.

Edit:
For the resources tree, it makes sense to not expand it by default, as the user will likely not work on all resources.

Don't worry about that yet, I am not ready to reveal what secrets that splitter is hiding. 

How do you expect testers (Well, anyway i am the only one really testing here ! ) to achieve correctly their task if the application is filled with hidden and secret functions ! 

[egofree]

I don't see any difference when i switch the setting 'Decorate Windows Borders'. What is the the purpose of this setting ?

For hardware acceleration, what happens if i set to 'on' both Direct3D and OpenGl ?

[egofree]

In general settings, the language is set to English, but i still see the french version. It doesn't seem to be taken into account. It is based only on the OS language.

By the way, as you working hard on Lateralgm, it would be useful to refactor the way objects are stored in the rooms editor. Right now every time you move an object or a tile, you have to select it on the left lift, otherwise it is not correctly updated. This is annoying when for example we are doing a global shift. I copy a message about this from IsmAvatar :

Yeah... That was a stupid thing I did, I was trying to encourage people to learn to use the new instance selector to do stuff, and I ended up hooking everything up to that list rather than an independent model, I think. Do with it as you please. This list was a good idea, but it was a prototype and I never had any better ideas on what to do with it after that.

Do you think you would have the time and motivation to do this Robert ?

[Goombert]

For the resources tree, it makes sense to not expand it by default, as the user will likely not work on all resources.

Well Eclipse don't actually expand the whole tree, the expand the top most nodes and the very first one the whole way. I don't really feel I agree with expanding the entire tree because that can be laggy and the user may find that even more frustrating when they already know where they want to go to in the search tree.

How do you expect testers (Well, anyway i am the only one really testing here ! ) to achieve correctly their task if the application is filled with hidden and secret functions ! 

You can test it when it's ready to be tested.

I don't see any difference when i switch the setting 'Decorate Windows Borders'. What is the the purpose of this setting ?

Left is Swing Look and Feel with decorated window borders. The right is Swing Look and Feel without decorated window borders. The point is some people may want their native window borders, like me. This setting does not effect the MDI area however.

For hardware acceleration, what happens if i set to 'on' both Direct3D and OpenGl ?

Direct3D is always forced on regardless of whether your hardware supports it. If you set it for both OpenGL and Direct3D then only OpenGL is used. On Windows when OpenGL is forced on, Direct3D is forced off and so are framebuffers because the implementation is buggy on Windows. For instance when I tested OpenGL on Windows 8, all frames except the main JFrame were white, such as preferences and open/save dialogs until I disabled framebuffer objects. It's not a driver issue, it's an issue with Java's implementation, I use surfaces all the time in OpenGL namely ENIGMA.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/blob/master/org/lateralgm/main/LGM.java#L2042

In general settings, the language is set to English, but i still see the french version. It doesn't seem to be taken into account. It is based only on the OS language.

No that is not the case, you have to restart for the Language pack to take effect. I just set the French version fine. Though I do hate how badly maintained these translation files are. It would be nice if someone could go through these and update the missing translations. This is specifically why I want to also move language files external to the program and only include English by default.
http://i.imgur.com/f8WGenl.png

Do you think you would have the time and motivation to do this Robert ?

Possibly after I finish JoshEdit fixes, printing, and other stuff, we are currently going through and fixing some regressions we introduced upstream and also fixing existing issues and exceptions I have been discovering and documenting.