Cliff Bowman schrieb in Nachricht <36c71552.77149607@news.povray.org>...
>On Sat, 13 Feb 1999 20:52:58 +0100, "Rudy Velthuis"
><rve### [at] gmxnet> wrote:
>
>>
>>Cliff Bowman schrieb in Nachricht <36c5c82b.60144781@news.povray.org>...
>[snip]
>>>It got pulled because the poster got jumped on for producing a
>>>non-portable utility. Oh well - try e-mailing him (I have) - maybe
>>>he'll give us copies?
>>
>>He propably will, if there aren't too many requests.
>>
>>And I think it was rather unfair, that he got jumped on. He made a quick
>>hack for himself, thought it might be useful and decided to share it.
People
>>didn't like the interface and didn't like the language (Delphi).
>
>Yeah - I NEARLY extended my explanation along those lines except... I
>*think* the jumper and jumpee have settled their differences and
>understand each other better. I'm all for doing quick lash-ups to
>overcome a problem - I've been known to do it myself more frequently
>than not. From my POV anyone who makes a lash-up available for free is
>doing a good thing. those who use a different platform to the author
>may disagree - but if the idea is popular enough there's always the
>possibility (as with this case) that someone with more
>"cross-platform" abilities will do a conversion.
>
>>BTW, It propably also got pulled because I offered to do a port of the
main
>>program to ANSI-C, to which he agreed. Please be patient for a few days
>>more, until I get to grips with the FreeType library.
>
>Aha! So you're to blame! Die die - oh hang on, wrong group. Ahem. If
>you can, please make a DOS/Windoze binary available (Windoze being
>what I run) as we don't all have compilers to hand :)

See the end of this reply.

BTW the compiler I'm using is DJGPP, which is freeware, and falls under the
GNU Copyleft (or whatever they call it). I used GNU C because this is
freeware and widely available. I could have used GNU Pascal (Pascal is my
favorite language), but I'm afraid not many people would be able to use it.



>>It will be command-line, but the output will be very similar (differences
>>depend on the differences in Truetype plotting between FreeType and
>>Windows). Remco (the original poster) also had some ideas for
enhancements,
>>which I will try to introduce a little later on.
>
>
>Sounds good. Especially enhancements (I always like enhancements) As
>for command-line - well, most of us have been there already and should
>be able to cope.

I could easily make a Windows version with all the bells and whistles you
could ever imagine (brag, boast, <g>). In fact the original is a Windows
version in my favorite language (Delphi), so I'd just have to tidy up the
code and the user interface a little, add a few enhancements and bingo.

The meaning of my excercise was, to create a mostly OS-independent version
of his tool (and to get used to using C and command line again), as this
was, what was asked for. I chose GNU (DJGPP is a GNU port for DOS) and the
FreeType lib, which are both available for many platforms. For DJGPP there
is also a nice IDE, called RHIDE, very similar to Turbo C 3.1.

If wanted (and allowed by Remco) I can also make a Windows(32) version,
using Delphi, later on.

So what I will distribute in a few days (yes!), is a DOS standalone (using
the go32 DPMI server) and the complete sources, so people on other platforms
can build their own versions, if they want to.

The enhancements will come by and by (I hope). I just need some ideas!! One
thing would be to make the blob elements irregular in size, producing a kind
of warty or bubbly effect; another thing would be to use any kind of shape
for the elements (with or without a blob as a parent), e.g. to produce a
text made of bubbles, nails, etc.

What I really need are good suggestions!

--
Rudy Velthuis

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