crunch@well.UUCP (John Draper) (11/17/86)
GADGET EDITOR PROGRESS REPORT
-----------------------------
For those wondering how we are coming with the Gadget Editor, Here is
a brief summary of whats going on.
About 3 weeks ago, I hacked together all the code fragments being worked
on by Brent Southard, Dave Milligan, and Ray Larson. I got everything
to work fairly well minus a slight memory de-allocation problem which has
since been fixed.
I released copies towards the very END of the Amiga developers conference
in Monterey. It was a crude release, but is useful in assisting one in
generating custom images for their gadgets. IntuiText was left out,
because all my time was spent in integrating things together. Now that
the integration is behind us, and tighter source code control has been
implememted, there won't be as many headaches caused by more than one
person working on the same module.
Ray Larson has agreed to do the IntuiText portion and I just downloaded
his work this evening and will be playing with it later. Our next and
final push will be the cosmetics so Gad_Ed will work from the WorkBench
or from CLI. When started up from WorkBench, a nice greeting screen
(yet to be designed) will come up giving credit to the 4 authors of the
program. When used from CLI, it just comes up immediatly into the
functional part, because most serious programmers will be using it from
CLI.
WHAT GAD_ED DOES:
-----------------
The Gadget editor allows developers to interactivly draw the gadgets
on a window and immediately play with them. Gadgets can be added, deleted
and an entire "user interface" can be created. After it's done, you
can save the gadgets to disk for later, or start up a different set of
gadgets.
You can make BOOLEAN, STRING, or PROPORTIONAL type gadgets and render
images with them, add IntuiText, and do just about anything you want
under the guidelines of Intuition.
Another very nice feature, you can also save C Source code with all
the structure initializations which you can compile and link into your
program. So you will NO LONGER have to spend hours cutting and pasting
up the wazoo and figuring out what numbers to put into the code.
HOW WE PLAN ON DISTRIBUTING IT:
------------------------------
Our primary means of distribution will be the Fred Fish Disk set.
We will also have an ARC'ed version of the Executable and an Accompanying
documentation file on Compuserve, and if the Net administrators don't
mind, I can post ALL 20 source code modules here on UseNet. Compuserve
and the WELL will also have the Source listing and it will also be on the
Fred Fish disks. I am including the Souce code in the hopes that other
people can hack on it and make it even better, Also it is the GRAND
tutorial on Amiga programming because the program uses just about ALL
of Intuition, and the Amiga resources. Included will be the "make" file
so it can easily be compiled under Manx.
WHEN IT SHOULD BE AVAILABLE:
---------------------------
I Cannot really put an exact release date on it, because as everyone
knows, it's impossible to predict such things. I will say that it should
be available within a few weeks, and sometime this evening, I will be
testing out the stuff that Ray Larson just added. He wants to do more
stuff to it, so it shouldn't be much longer.
I want to thak everyone who participated in the "Gad_ed" project
and we will be looking for "beta testers" who would be willing to spend
a lot of time hacking on it. I'm NOT looking for someone who will
stick the disk in his disk-rack and not use it. If anyone is interested
in hacking on it, send inquirys to the net address below:
John Draper - Programmers Network
WELL: crunch
BIX: crunch
UUCP: ihnp4!ptsfa!well!crunch
CIS: 76703,4322