Introducing the Rear Window blog

@trixie

Nice blog, rave sounds interesting

The new post on the blog discusses how my involvement with Enhancer has influenced my personal software projects, and vice versa. It also shares a lot of information about the history and the latest development of the ToolBar Gadget class. Enjoy reading!

@trixie

Wow nice work! Better than the win32 standard toolbar's overflow handling.

@trixie

Great article and keep up the good work.

Looking forward to testdrive a copy of RAVE

@trixie

Awesome, thanks trixie. It's convinced me to use your toolbar gadget for the next program that I'm currently working on, I know who to ask for help

@Trixie
Your work on classes looks pretty impressive had to say :) Wish there will be someday "normaleditor.gadget" from you :)

nice read thanks for posting and kudos for helping make a new demo with your original demo group ( how cool is that!)for our classic miggies as I've always loved watching demos on all my classic miggies and hopefully would love go see some nice demo's for NG miggies too

@gregthecanuck, @Skateman

Thanks for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed the post, and stay tuned for more

@kas1e

Quote:
Not from me I'm afraid I'd love to do that, but it's an awful lot of work. I would have to give up my other stuff, which I believe should now get more priority. People want applications: they haven't bought their expensive OS4 machines to look at my classes

@billyfish

Quote:
Feel free to get in touch! Make sure you have a look at the SDK examples first, and only then continue with the class documentation. It's rather extensive, so the first reading can be overwhelming. The examples will give you a clearer idea of how to get started.

In case you wanted to try out other Enhancer Core classes, I can give you some personal recommendations:

Select Gadget
Has more features than the Chooser Gadget. Can also be configured as a simple button, so it works as an alternative to the Button Gadget as well.

InfoData Gadget
Has no real counterpart in the system class set. Use it to display information lists with items formatted as "Label: Value". This has typically been done using the ListBrowser Gadget, which is overkill and much more difficult to set up.

Shared Image
An enhanced alternative to the BitMap Image class. Unlike the BitMap, it supports image rescaling and colour remapping for 8-bit screens. The class is named "Shared Image" because it really shares the image data across the system. So if one application uses the Shared to load a set of toolbar images and another application does the same, the image data will not be loaded again for the other application - it will simply be shared from memory.

ListViewer Gadget
Easier to set up than the ListBrowser, but unfortunately doesn't support hierarchical nodes. (As these are not going to be implemented any time soon, keep this limitation in mind in case your application needs to grow.)

TickBox Gadget
Has pretty much the same feature set as the CheckBox Gadget, but there's a little hidden gem. It actually supports three states: checked, unchecked, and indeterminate (mixed-state). I.e. something like this:








These are, in my opinion, the most useful classes of the Core set. I haven't used the recently updated Anim Gadget yet, perhaps it's worth trying as well.

Hope this helps.

@trixie
Quote:
Hmm...looking at the documentation, examples and header, I don't see support for an indeterminate state. Is this feature in a non-released version or did I miss something? How do you set it to an indeterminate state?

I've installed the latest enhancer package with Tickbox.gadget 53.14 installed.

@ktadd

Quote:
The TICKBOX_Indeterminate tag was implemented in tickbox.gadget 53.13. The example that shows this feature is SDK:Examples/GUI/TickBox/TriStateTickBox.c

I've checked and can see that the latest SDK files for the TickBox Gadget are included in Enhancer Software Core 1.1 (as well as in the current Enhancer 2.0 beta, but you might not have access to that). Older Enhancer installations may not have them, so if the files didn't get installed in your SDK: path, I suggest you download the Core from the Amisphere website.

@trixie
Thanks for the blog, enjoyed reading it. And thanks for your work!

@trixie
Quote:
Hmm...I have Enhancer 1.5 as the last one I installed. It doesn't contain the TriStateTickBox.c example you mention and the docs are older as well. From the .lha archive:
<Click Here to View Archive>

@ktadd

Quote:
That explains it - the new TickBox was written for Enhancer 2.0 (and given away for free in Enhancer Software Core 1.1). The reason why you have the actual new binary is that it was delivered to you by Updater, but it didn't install the required SDK files along. As I said above, I recommend you get them from the Core archive (see bottom of the Amisphere website).

@trixie
Quote:
Oh...I was thinking "Enhancer Software Plus Edition OS4", which I got from Amistore, included all of "Enhancer Software Core Edition". Maybe it does but I might not have installed the SDK. In any case, I took your advice and downloaded "Enhancer Software Core 1.1 from Amisphere and installed it, including the SDK. Now I have the latest docs and examples.

Thanks for your assistance and patience with me.

@328gts

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We would like to make a new demo this year, let's hope we can make the wheels turning again As for an NG demo, I'm afraid my group mates haven't really warmed up for the NG idea, so this is not very likely

@khayoz

Thanks, glad you've enjoyed it.

My new blog post looks at the recently published book, Demoscene: The Amiga Years, Volume 1 (1984-1993). Enjoy the review!

@trixie

Quote:

looking forward to your groups new demo in 2021! and yes I unfortunately know about mates not warming up to NG yet...my best friend thinks my X1000 is really cool but he refuses to use any Amiga that isn't old blue Workbench 1.3 that old fart

@trixie

Book ordered :)

My new blog post shares the latest about the development of the Rave audio editor. Happy reading!