> Because nobody has the same tastes, it might be wiser to simply > provides the list of defined icons, and allow an unlimited list of association > with any device. > Also, being able to 'dynamically' (no recompile or heavy manipulation) > add new icons to the list of possible value would be greater! This is a good point and will be considered. The way the program is written at the moment it would be major work to allow EACH icon to be specified by the user for each menu etc. Currently, you can specify an inbuilt (large choice) of icons for each program you put on a launchpad program icon, it might be possible to allow Easyptr sprites to be loaded from disk for any given program if none of the built-in ones is suitable. A snga here is that I am having problems with Easyptr when it comes to loading, assigning and displaying sprites, i.e. I can't get that to work at all, it only seems to work if the sprite is an appended one which can be referenced by address, though it should be possible to find the working address of the sprite defintiion and load it there I suppose (back to self-modifying code if the defintiions are built into a program).
Current Easyptr extensions don't seem to allow you to refer to a sprite by filename and don't always work reliably with a name of an appended definition! Try (I think it was) MITEM to assign a sprite to a loose item or MINOB to assign an info object and you'll find that you can only reliably get it work with something like the SPRA function to locate the sprite in memory. I had a correspondence with Albin Hessler on the subject last year and all we really managed to confirm was that my original requirements were not possible (something to do with pointers being lost when attempts to refer to sprites by name were made), but using SPRA (i.e. referring to sprites by address) was perfectly reliable. For that reason, Launchpad refers to sprites using SPRA exclusively for now, making it impossible to load sprites unless either working definitions are overwritten or buffers allocated and addresses of sprite definitions passed like that. My memory of this, though, is a bit distant and I might be completely wrong other than to reiterate that there was some problem or other which prevented me dynamically loading sprites. > For instance: > each icon is a single file in a configurated directory (path set via config block). > reference of the icon is made thru the relative filename > (that is, really the filename, not the path+filename) I see what you mean, assuming such sprites could be loaded at all (see above) this might be a viable option. Another possibility is that the user can put all his/her personal sprites in a configured directory Windows-style and choose an icon as the desktop icon for that program is set up. Unlike QDT, Launchpad will not have a dedicated loader and will not recognise individual programs as such, you simply specify the executable, specify any DATA_USE, PROG_USE, DEV etc if required (back to KISS principles again). > each supported device (listed via system calls) has it own icons: > - either there is another file with the device name somewhere, > which contains the name of the icons to use (but default icons become > strange to handle) > - or there is a well-known text file which contains a line for each device, > and for each device, the name of the icons file. The format of the file is > such that the first line MUST be for the default... (unless default is hardcoded, which is bad!) [but does that file format allow comments ?] > > Of course, instead of filename, other things could be used... Of course. My fear is of creating a monster I could not control if too many features are added. Keep It Simple Sir. > > > Just dreaming... So am I (of finishing this program!) There are some good ideas in this mail, I will see what I can do, but as the program is already so late (I actually started on it quietly in 2001!) I don't want to do anything too drastic to release 1 to delay it too much. Thanks to you and to everyone else who's sent me so many good ideas for this program over the last few months. Although he hasn't yet seen many of his ideas put into practice because it's some time since I last produced a working version, Darren Branagh has contributed a lot of ideas, even if the Users and MyQL sections have caused me most work! Next thing I need is a good free graphic of a rocket on a Launchpad to use as a skin or BGIMAGE! -- Dilwyn Jones
