Topic: Believe It Or Not !!!

[Fanny Pack]

For the most part, my requirements are simple.  But, from time to time I would like to do some advanced stuff.  But, one of the main things I would like to do is to create a large library of frames that I could give away with Spaghetti so that people have something to use without having to go steal them.  I'd be happy with just some different colored shapes, like circles, lines, stars, squares, etc.  You can go a long way with those when creating beam shows.  Once I have those, I can use Spaghetti to create more complex animations by using the layers and exporting the snippets.

But, I don't want to spend more than 30 seconds or so per frame.  It takes me about that long to open up Microsoft Paint, draw a few circles, and then save them to a file.  I expect the same level of usability and speediness from a laser drawing program.   And I want to be able to do it with one hand while I drink coffee with the other.

All of the windows api documentation has a section at the very bottom that tells what header files need to be included.  For example, the WAVEOUTCAPS structure is documented on this page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms713743(VS.85).aspx
At the bottom it tells which version of Windows supports it(basicall all of them) and that you need to include Windows.h.

You will need the Windows SDK if you don't have Visual C++ I guess.  It is a free download and has plenty of examples.  Here is a wiki link that describes it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_SDK

I am rusty with all of this stuff so calling me would not be much help.  I'd have to do some googling myself to get back into it.  But, just do a search for "windows streaming audio sample" and see what you find.  I found this pretty quickly:
http://docs.rinet.ru/Plugi/ch17.htm
Not examply what you need but will get you thinking.  But, I don't know how all of the Windows specific stuff will work in your development environment or if it will even work.

If you have questions email me and that will give me time to think about it and respond.  I'll be happy to do that.

[Fanny Pack]

PS If you just want to experiment around with the Win32 stuff, the easiest way is to just download and install Visual C++ Express.  It is free and will probably be easier to start.  Once you get a piece of code put together that can load a WAV file and send it to a soundcard you can then worry about making in other development environments.  You might even find that it is fun.

[James]

Microsoft.... Fun ? 

Hah!

I have looked at some examples. The problem is that they are all gooped up with that "visual" garbage! I just want to do it from what you might call a console application!

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

Hmmm.  Not sure what to tell you.  Just ignore the visual stuff. 

Just focus on the stuff centered around WaveOut... functions in the samples. 

[James]

I think I am going to take another serious look at PortAudio.

http://www.portaudio.com

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

Nice find.

[BlinkenLights]

i, like gary, would love to be able to snap out some simple shapes and animate them in LB, my issue has ALWAYS been mouse support..
i do not mind using the keys for some specific manipulation, but using the keys to select a menu item is barbaric...

Laserboy has everything it needs to move forward into a the world of modern interfaces, but it kills me that every time everyone gets excited because james is gonna start the GUI stuff, James STOPS doing the GUI stuff..

I feel like i have wasted my breath for the past year. i have spent so much effort on learning and testing laserboy so i could understand it and be able to help with the  conversion, and more than once along that path the decision was made to start making laserBoy more mouse friendly. Hell james even did a complete restructure of laserboy so that it would work better and make more sense. During that phase james made a specific effort to make some needed changes that would allow laserboy to move forward into the mouse world. But again everyone got excited and again . . . .

James PLEASE understand that most of the time when people get EXCITED about laserboy, its because they hear something about MOUSE SUPPORT. Very few people have had the opportunity to really learn laserbot, not because its not free and available, but because the were put off by the interface.. and you may say that that is their problem, but that goes against your philosophy of bringing a new understanding of laser art to the masses.

Pick a side..


 

[James]

I, like pickles and olives. 

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I don't use LaserBoy because of the lack of mouse and moderness but since it is open source I really don't complain that James isn't doing it (too much).  Nothing is preventing someone else from picking it up and doing it.

[BlinkenLights]

i complain because james is a very close friend and he knows that i love him and laserboy..

that being said, he is dangling the carrot again and i hope he follows thru this time...

[drlava]

Laserboy is a good tool just as it is.. modern-ness?!  What exactly is that?
Sure it could be a little better with a mouse but you can already do tons!  When was the last show you made?

[James]

Gosh Andrew, I'd give you a milliwatt for that, but you already have 19! 

Hey! You're an FLTK programmer!

I want to be able to put a bitmap image into the whole background of a window and then have the other widgets float over the top of it.

I'm starting to get familiar with how this stuff works. I've worked with quite a few dev environments and this one seems to be very well designed and organized.

As you probably know, I already have a bitmap memory object that I manage in my own code. All I need to know is where to put it!

I honestly think the biggest problem with LaserBoy is the fact that you can not browse the file system. Other than that, it is difficult to get to the 10000th frame in a set of 20000 or the 3000th vertex in a frame of 6000.

UPDATE: I think I'm starting to get it now.... 

Gawd! I must be seriously addicted to programming! 

James. 

[drlava]

There is an example of a bitmap in the example code set, but what they call a bitmap is black and white.  There is an example of a colored image (a png I think) of a ferrari symbol or something that should get you going in the right direction.

[James]

This should give Alec a boner! 

James. 

[BlinkenLights]

boing oing oing