Monday 25 July 2011

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.

Saturday 23 May 2009

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.

Sunday 12 April 2009

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

Thursday 9 April 2009

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.

Saturday 21 March 2009

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

Friday 13 February 2009

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.

Friday 23 January 2009

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.