Topic: Heathcliff

[drlava]

In 2001  German programmer wrote a windows GUI laser frame editor that previews your frame via sound card and can write the frames out to wav file.  Carmangary had been posting the name of this software over on PL for a while, but I don't think anyone ever noticed...

Check out the author's page here.



This looks like a good start, unfortunately other than wav it appears to only use Yoghurt files whatever that is..  Any info on the Yoghurt .LC1 file format would be appreciated.

[BlinkenLights]

yeah i have seen that..

its kinda nice as a gui, but functionality was lacking..

if that guy and James were in the same room im sure something might happen...

[CCRDude]

Hi there,

I'm the author. While clearing out some stuff I came across by blue laser yesterday and out of nostalgia I searched a bit for my old software, coming across this thread and wondering that someone still talks about it 8 years later...

My time is filled with so many other projects that adding more functionality does not really look like something I have time to plan even, but if its still known somewhere, I thought that maybe I could release it as open source, to be extended by anyone who wants to do so.

So I took a look at the source, and noticed that it indeed is... old. Its typically RAD with most separation between code and GUI missing. It's how I have written code ten years ago - lacking lots and lots of things I would do differently today. But hey, it's working and probably can be improved a lot with a bit of refactoring alone.

Anyway, since I wanted to test Launchpad as an open source platform, I decided to go ahead with it here:

https://launchpad.net/heathcliff

As for the format of .lc1 files - it can be found in there.

[Lazerjock]

If I understand, CCRDude is releasing his code.

James here is your GUI. GO JAMES GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BlinkenLights]

this could get interesting...

[BlinkenLights]

and heathcliff could never be the front end for laserboy.. they are 2 completely different animals.

[BlinkenLights]

is there no way to download a zip or tar or bz2? the source browser sux..
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ccrdude/heathcliff/trunk/files

[BlinkenLights]

i opened an LC1 file after  changing the extension to WAV and it worked...
the interface is not that intuitive, but it is completely gui so its not all bad

[James]

Heathcliff is written in Delphi; which is object oriented Pascal. It's not even close to C or C++!

Let's give some love and attention to CCRDude, who wrote Heathcliff, joined our forum and gave his project to us in open source!

Thank you, CCRDude!

James. 

[axoduss]

Hi all!!  I'm new in this forum, and in laser :-D Obviously, I have some trouble! :-(

I downloaded the source code, all file. Now I need to compile it and I had downloaded Embarcadero Delphi 2010, but at the time to simply open the project I receive a lot of errors! Missing resources file, and so on. Any idea?

thanks
Kindest regards

[drlava]

Hey CCRDude, you are great for opening this up.  It's a pretty capable program, with morphing capability, variable angle dwell, multi-frame editing and a technical GUI.  Nicely done.  If someone were to bring it up to date I think two important additions could be 1) ILDA format support or LaserBoy Wav format support 2) color for controlling at least R G and B lasers in a projector.

By the way, I hope everything worked out with 'the one you love'

[CCRDude]

@axoduss: I'm sorry for the incomplete upload 

The missing resource file was probably Heathcliff.res - thes gets recreated by the IDE and is no problem at all, but I've included it in a new upload.

Another thing I just noticed is the dependency on snlUIVista. I made this optional, so that all forms are now standard TForm unless you say otherwise (new unit UnitHeathcliffHelpers.pas).

One thing you'll probably notice is the dependency on Toolbar97. You'll have to install these components for now, otherwise Delphi will complain and not display the forms correctly. I plan to remove the dependency on them and replace them with standard Delphi toolbars, but haven't found the time to do so.

For more ideas, please paste the error messages from the compiler!

@drlava: thanks for the praise
Everything worked out indeed ^^

[axoduss]

ok, compiled toolbar97 and toolbar2000 for required dcu files in lib folder. Now I have these errors:
[DCC Error] FormUnitMain.pas(1983): E2010 Incompatible types: 'Char' and 'AnsiChar'
[DCC Fatal Error] FormUnitHelpLines.pas(99): F2063 Could not compile used unit 'FormUnitMain'

and some other warnings and hint
thanks :-D

PS: why you don't release "setup.exe"? Not all have delphi compiler and adeguate skills

[James]

I don't know Pascal or Delphi, but it looks like you are dealing with the difference between an 8-bit standard ASCII char and a 16-bit wide char.

Look at your compiler for a setting that will revert your compiler back to a time when there was no such thing as a wide char!

We have the same issue in C/C++, but the former is assumed, not that latter.

I can understand the idea of internationalization for output strings that the user can see, but involving it into the core concepts of the language is ridiculous!

Computer Science is in ENGLISH! 

James. 

[BlinkenLights]

blah blah blah.. where is my friken mouse