Topic: In case you had not heard.

[BlinkenLights]

ok i hope im not letting the cat out here..

James put laserboy in a blender and broke it up in to tiny bits and pieces which he is putting back together.

he is fixing allot of the issues that were keeping laserboy tied down to that wonderful interface and hopefully soon he/we will be able to wrap it in a real gui..

Now i have gotten my hopes up before and been let down, but this time it actually looks promising.

[drlava]

That's great to hear.  I have suggested this for a little while as a necessary start to the GUI porting process

[BlinkenLights]

yeah.. i have been all over james about it... I really believe that laserboy has a chance if its presented well.
It does so many cool things... adding an interface that is intuative would be tits.


the best thisng is that he finaly decided to break the whole f'ing thing and not try to keep it in some usable state durring the rebuild..

as of right now (or last i heard) laserboy IS NOT compilable, but the point is to make it work right, not just make it work right now..

[Lazerjock]

Sweet Go James Go. I can't wait.

[James]

It's actually coming along rather nicely.

When I first translated the whole project from Linux-only to SDL, I had to solve several problems at one time. LaserBoy and the SDL got very tangled up together.

My approach this time it to get the core of LaserBoy to just do its job in its own classes and then let the top level class (an SDL GUI wrapper) do its job.

It's going to take a couple more code files, but it will make everything easer to find. Everything is much more in its right place. It should also compile WAY faster.

James. 

[BlinkenLights]

and the SDL wrapper will be much more easily replaced with FLTK

[James]

That's the idea.

Every time I look at a class and all of its members and methods, I ask myself "Is this core information or does it have to do with displaying the information?"

It's kinda' neat!

I'll be glad when it's in a better arrangement.

I'm going to put everything SDL in the top class only. That way, it is the only part that needs to be replaced with another platform development kit.

BTW how's the RNR coming along?

James. 

[drlava]

James, while it's apart, consider this:

instead of using the 'one and only' ez_uail_pointer to access variables, modify each function to pass along and accept (ez_uail_frame_set* base).
this way the variables can be accessed in each function with base->variablename

for example (in as few lines as possible):

ez_uail_segment::add_dwell_points(ez_uail_frame_set* base)

is called from ez_uail_frame:

ez_uail_frame::add_dwell_points(ez_uail_frame_set* base){
at(i).add_dwell_points(base);}

is called from ez_uail_frame_set:

ez_uail_frame_set::add_dwell_points(){
at(i).add_dwell_points(this);}

the benefit is that more than one base ez_uail class can be used at once with its own set of parameters! it increases portability and flexibility.

Instead of ez_uail_frame_set* you should probably pass ez_uail* so that the palettes would be accessible as well. But I don't have time to re-type the examples

[BlinkenLights]

damn, you beat me to it.. i was gonna suggest the same thing

[drlava]

[James]

For better or worse, none of that exists anymore!

I am still going with the magic sign in the sky, visible to everyone, that points to the top level object, but now the whole application is wrapped in a class called LaserBoy_SDL_GUI

LaserBoy_space is-a LaserBoy_frame_set _and_ LaserBoy_palette_set
LaserBoy_system is-a LaserBoy_space
LaserBoy_SDL_GUI is-a LaserBoy_system

There is pointer to LaserBoy_SDL_GUI (GUI), a global extern.

I still have to deal with the idea that LaserBoy waves and LaserBoy_bmp are an integral part of all of this but are not part of the LaserBoy_space memory construct.

It's blowing my mind a bit, but I'm still enjoying it and figuring new stuff out.

James.  

[drlava]

Ok, the names are different, but the original idea remains. 
That doesn't support multiple framesets with different parameters such as sample rate, lit_dwell_overhang.  see where I'm going?

[James]

Sort of...

I'm still trying to figure out the last couple of layers.

I don't think there is any difference between a LaserBoy_space and a LaserBoy_system.

James. 

[BlinkenLights]

well...

[James]

That's one skeptical cat you've got there drlava.

Blinken..... what is that?

James.