Resurrection

Resurrection.

After far too long I have decided to return to my pet project.

Going to start from scratch.

Lots to do, little time to do it. I want the first release of wxScreenplayWriter to be before years end 2011, giving me a little over 5 months.

Only time will tell.

The End of wxScreenplayWriter - the beginning of wxPage2Stage

After several mailings between myself and David Thielen the author and main developer of Page 2 Stage, which is now an open source project, coupled with the fact that I now have a job and so my development time has been drastically reduced, I have decided to cease work on my own (commercial) project.

Instead I will spend my time (what I do have of it) between two projects.

page2stage and wxPage2Stage

The first will be a straight up continuation of the current Page 2 Stage Windows based program, removing the licensing issues and replacing the spell checker/thesaurus with a suitable Open Source variant. Hopefully correcting any bugs along the way.

The second will be based on the P2S codebase and will be an attempt to recreate the program in a cross platform wxWidgets based method. I will obviously be using wxDev-C++ for the design of the dialogs which will be initially a simple copy of the current P2S dialogs. In order to use the current translation files, I will be implementing a different approach to the current wxWidgets standard multilanguage method, but am not sure quite which one at the moment. This will require investigation.

Hopefully I will be able to use a large part of the current source code to implement a speedy initial development.

So I'll use the basic code from wxRTC ...

... so that my component "should" be plugin compatible with wxRTC. The idea is that I could develop the program such that on the one hand I can use wxRTC if this correctly works, and if not I can use my own component.

The development will again stall while I develop this new component, but hopefully not too long.

The custom control should be source code compatible so that I can use a preprocessore directive to decide which I will be using.

#if _USERTC_
#define MyCtrl wxRichTextCtrl
#else
#define MyCtrl wxScreenplayCtrl
#endif

then I should be able to develop using (MyCtrl *) ... in my code.

Time will tell

So we go with a Custom Control and Doc/View

So I decided to continue development using a Custom Control.

This would be descended from either a wxControl or perhaps a wxTextCtrlBase since this is a different text control.

Decided on the file format, and have decided on a new options dialog.

And unfortunately....

Changes in wxRTC between 2.8.7 and now have seriously screwed up my initiation code.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like I will have time to find out what caused the change, so I have given some thought as to the program.

Do I still want to do a Sophocles like program? Or should I make it more like a word processor? By this I mean should the user be allowed to change the background colour/font for the edit window? Why not? I decided to allow the user to do this, since I like it. It also means that the division of a screenplay can be easily seen. I am not sure exactly how I will implement this yet, but I think it should be do-able.

Do I stick with wxRTC or should I try and design a custom component? I actually think that a custom component will be the way to go here, since I should be able to design it in such a way that I can use it in wxWidgets doc/view system.

I'll need to give some thought to how best to do this, but I think attempting to push through some wxAui doc/view classes would be the way to go.

I'll have to start working on a doc/view program soon.

ttfn

Progress thy name is wxDev-C++

Moving along now.

I have added several components to the SVN-HEAD of wxDev-C++ which allows me to continue development of the main frame.

Currently I need to implement some sort of Auto-Completion for several styles. Character names certainly. How much further should I break the Scene Headers down? Should I have a single list? Break it down into several sections/lists? (INT./EXT. - Location - Time of Day)

I also need to think about which method will be the better? Should I present a ListBox with all options, or should I just fill in the nearest match and add the text to the editor?

I'll throw something together and see if I can present the two options, with screen shots.

Move along...Nothing to be seen here!

It's been a while, but I have added wxAui support to wxDev-C++.

So I should be able to move ahead with implementing the design of wxScreenplayWriter in wxDev-C++. I also need to add a wxRichTextStyleComboCtrl, a wxRichTextStyleListBox and a wxRichTextStyleListCtrl, but since these are basically simple enhancements to their base classes, this shouldn't take too long.

I also implemented wxAuiToolbar already, so unless I have missed something obvious (which isn't unheard of I must admit) I can already begin designing the GUI again. Since I have a working version of the GUI already, it shouldn't take me much longer to have it designed in wxDev-C++.

Also a great deal of the code can be cut and pasted into the new design, so hopefully I can move forward with the development.

My aim is to have the program in a useable position before the end of March.