Lost·AS·Tools (LostLayerTool, LDT, LostWiggleTool...)

Imago · Post by **Imago** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 2:54 pm

@ Ramón López:
Yes, it seems I was putting the folders in wrong place.
But there is another odd thing: When I downloaded the zip file, in it I found only two folders with two-three files in each... When I re-downloaded it, I found TONS of images, scripts and other stuff.
Maybe I downloaded the wrong one.

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 3:47 pm

Ramón López wrote:Oooh... Lots of kind words! So first of all, thank you very much for each of them cause, definitely, they are veeery welcomed

Well, now I'll try to follow an order...
heyvern wrote:Had you thought about or tried the idea of using "pop up" floating tool palettes?
Yeah, I think during "About..." window development process I start to consider that kind of possibilities, but maybe not for the entire tool (I tremble only thinking it) but for some kind of controls like layer translation and (when available (if)) scale, rotation, and so, cause they are definitely the more space eating ones... but! One of the things that doesn't encourage me to go in that way is... the known window remembering position issue , that can seem a minor thing but I don't imagine windows appearing in the middle of the screen and having to replace it each time. Of course, if it was an "always opened" bar, it only would have to be done one time per session that can be much more reasonable, but even though I think it could be a little annoying. Anyway, although I'm not totally sure if we will be referring to the same, I remember to have got some workarounds for some kind of limitations you describe so uhm, leaving aside the reposition issue, yeah, it well could deserve some time of study...

ulrik wrote:If you are planning to continue developing LLT I have a small wish, that is to be able to control the "shading direction" as well
Sure! But... what are you exactly referring with "control shading direction"? Hm, let me know if we are not talking of the same thing but you have total control of Shadow/Shading/(even!)Perspective be means of the Layer Effects dialogue window accessible from that little arrow besides Shadows/Motion Blur buttons. If you are referring to the new 3D shading feature... well, that kind of control is simply not allowed for now

Imago wrote:It crashes my ASP7 brutally!

Imago wrote:When I start the application, I can see about six new tools in the bar... a couple of seconds and the screen go white (I'm on Win 7) and then in closes.
This part intrigue me a lot! Not sure what could cause that kind of behaviour, so if you have more/any details I'd like to know it...
Imago wrote:Ok, now after 50 attempts, I managed to install it.
It seem useful! But I think it is a bit slow...
...Great relief! I assume that the resources folder was not placed where it should be when you started the program (or maybe it was still opened during the tool installation?) so you suffer the "hounding " of so much attempts as image buttons on the tool! Nothing serious, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy

Oh, very curious too about the slow issue, as I said I'm in the will of improve the coding to make the tool as much light as possible (that in this case is reeeally convenient ), but for some reason I have been prioritizing another kind of things... Anyway! If you are in Windows 7, I assume you are working with a relatively new computer, isn't?? I'm on Windows XP Laptop with a 2,4 Gz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT and (maybe the most relevant thing due to the size of the tool) a 7.200 rpm HDD, and well, the only slowness I notice, sometimes, is a little (split second?) delay the fist time I select the tool, after that, I think all works as expected, with no noticeable effect over common tasks or even playback (even when all the buttons/controls start to react) so... if you have more detais about that, please, I'd love to know then too.

Well, what more can I say, thank you very much again for your reception, feedbacks and cheers!

about "shading direction, I mean that inside layer settings you are able to use the control wheel to set the direction of the shading, 0- 360 degres, it would be nice to have it in your tool as well but maybe it will be too crowded? maybe a popup for the deegre wheel?

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:21 pm

ulrik wrote:about "shading direction, I mean that inside layer settings you are able to use the control wheel to set the direction of the shading, 0- 360 degres, it would be nice to have it in your tool as well but maybe it will be too crowded? maybe a popup for the deegre wheel?

Do you mean this?

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:33 pm

Imago wrote:When I re-downloaded it, I found TONS of images, scripts and other stuff.
Maybe I downloaded the wrong one.

Hmmm, another curious issue!

Well, I've revised the files just to be sure nothing was wrong during compression or something like that and all seems to be correct, but now that you say it... won't be an issue related on how your file application treats the contents of the *.zip files? Cause I remember some cases (opening zipped files directly from Windows Explorer? If I remember well...) were all the content of a certain zipped file, don't ask me why, was entirely showed at a time not taking into account the folder structure... I usually use 7-Zip to manage compressed files but (don't ask me why again...) I compressed this ones using the native Windows option, so I hope it doesn't have something to do with that... Although, as I said, all the content and file structure seems to open as expected in this case, whatever be the program I use to do it.

Just to clarify, this is the folder structure everyone should find to get the most direct and unattended instalation:

rl_lost_layer_tool_xxxxxxxx_xxxx.zip

Code: Select all

Resources
----ScriptResources
--------rl_lost_layer_tool
------------rl_3d_defaultColor.png
------------rl_3d_edgeColor.png
------------rl_3d_edgeOffset.png
------------rl_...

scripts
----tool
--------rl_lost_layer_tool.lua
--------rl_lost_layer_tool.png
--------rl_lost_layer_tool_cursor.png

----utility
--------rl_utilities.lua

Readme.txt

And about the shading issue agai- [previewing...] Oh, wait! selgin do it again

Jaja, so thanks for the saved time (again)

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 12:26 am

selgin wrote:
ulrik wrote:about "shading direction, I mean that inside layer settings you are able to use the control wheel to set the direction of the shading, 0- 360 degres, it would be nice to have it in your tool as well but maybe it will be too crowded? maybe a popup for the deegre wheel?
Do you mean this?

I cant find this panel, this is how it looks like at my computer, running osx on mac. I don't have that triangel to the right of motion blur.
http://www.musikboden.se/asfiles/LLT.png

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 1:10 am

ulrik wrote:I cant find this panel, this is how it looks like at my computer, running osx on mac. I don't have that triangel to the right of motion blur.
http://www.musikboden.se/asfiles/LLT.png

wow, that's weird. Try re-downloading and re-installing the script.

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 2:37 am

Oh this is the kind of issues I expected to happen in some or other way... Really I've not had the chance to try the tool on any other OS than Windows, so I suppose that finally could be some difference in the way that AS interface is showed depending of the operating system... I can see, in example, how your menu/dialogues gadgets (that with the little arrow) are are slightly shorter than the image buttons (as well as some other (ugly!

) inconsistencies), a thing that well could be related with, i.e, font size/type differences between platform versions or... or something like that.

At first sight... well, I really have the feeling that a simple solution could be applied, by means of tweaking in some way the curious tricks I used to get that special GUI gadgets "superimposements" and splittering, all for the sake of the space saving, you know... but! The very bad thing around this is that I simply can't experiment or test without one of that "Mac OS X" things, so... at this moment I really feel a little "powerless" respect this specific issue

, although I'll continue thinking on it...

PS: BTW, another one OSX user experimenting similar interface issues? Cause I'd like to as much info as possible...

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 3:19 am

Ramon,

I will look into this on the Mac OS. I just got my new mac mini and have your script installed on that version. I can play around with it and try to figure out the issues with the mac. At worst you may have to have a slightly different version for mac.

Since I can have both win/mac running on the mac at the same time with VMWare I hope I can figure this out for you.

-vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:11 am

Ramon,

I need a little help to help you!

There seems to be only one spot that is not showing correctly on the Mac. It is the "pop up" or drop down for all the layer shading options.

It is the section between "layer blending modes" and "masking modes". It is between those two dividers. The triangle image to pop open the menu for the layer shading is "hidden" or out of view on the mac. The problem for me is I am having a hard time finding that section in the code.

Maybe you could post a code section here in this topic I could use to find it so I can experiment for the mac version.

-vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:25 am

YEEEEHAAAA!

Nevermind Ramon. I think I fixed it on the mac! I found that section.

This is the line causing the problem:

Code: Select all

layout:AddPadding(-101) ---340

do a search for that spot in your code. Change the padding to -80 or -70.

The difference in the spacing for Mac and Windows is considerable. however for all the other items the drop down was still visible enough to be clickable. For the layer shading spot, the "-101" padding caused that one to "vanish" completely on the mac.

The -80 makes it a quite a bit wider on the PC and just barely shows up on the mac.

there is still an issue with the long thin layer masking images I haven't figure out. They get chopped off at the top but are still visible.

-vern

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 5:12 am

Well, THANK YOU for the offer!

But, Arg! I'm not sure if I'll be able to explain it with the time I have right now. Well, I'll try:

The first thing I'll tried if I'd have one of that beautiful "minis" is acces to this twisted part of the code where I was playing with negative paddings combined with hidden space to minimize the da¡ialogue control caller size at the same time that the dialogue window was displaced to the left to avoid, as much as possible, dialogue windows "superimposemets", thing that I'm planning to eliminate if finally has something to do with the cause of the problem. Here is the part of the code (line #3258 in ASP7 version) in cuestion :

Code: Select all

	layout:PushH(LM.GUI.ALIGN_CENTER, 0)
		layout:AddPadding(-101)
		self.dlog = RL_LostLayerToolShadowsDialog:new()
		self.popup = LM.GUI.PopupDialog("_                   ", true, self.DLOG_BEGIN)
		self.popup:SetDialog(self.dlog)
		layout:AddChild(self.popup)
	layout:Pop()

And well, maybe I'll do more tests looking for a workaround to maintain the dialogue displacement, but to simplify things I think you could try to simply replace that code for this one...

Code: Select all

	layout:PushH(LM.GUI.ALIGN_CENTER, 0)
		layout:AddPadding(-18)
		self.dlog = RL_LostLayerToolShadowsDialog:new()
		self.popup = LM.GUI.PopupDialog("", true, self.DLOG_BEGIN)
		self.popup:SetDialog(self.dlog)
		layout:AddChild(self.popup)
	layout:Pop()

...to see what happen at least in a first try. Hmmm, I hope that, in the worst case, I only have to prescind of the dialogue displacement... Well, thanks again! I hope it really have something to do with the problem cause now I think I really have to go to sleep again

PS: BTW!!! That I have been updating the ASP6 version of the tool and it's now available as usually be means of the "Archive" link of the "Lost Layer Tool" blog entry, just in case you planned to make some tests with that version too, BYE!

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 5:25 am

D'oh! Jeje, I should have been imagined that you'll realized it before I could write an entire post!

...YoOo-HOoO!!! So no necessary Mac OS X versions of the tool at the moment! (fingers crossed) Well, thank you very much again! And yeah, it seems that finally could't be necessary eliminate ALL the window displacement but only untill the little arrow appears, although it will not appear exactly where I want and I'm very "manioso" (wondering how can you live without that word!) Jeje, but I think I'll assume

Of course I'd like do it right now, but I'll update the links with the changes as soon as possible... bye!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 5:41 am

Overall there is some very pronounced differences in the Mac and Windows versions when it comes to the push/pop and layout of the tools. I noticed that in some areas those "arrows" for the drop downs seem to be cropped or smaller on the mac than on windows.

What I plan to do is set up a "tool template" very very very simple and experiment with the layout settings to determine EXACTLY what the difference is in pixel values.

This reminds me of designing web sites using CSS. Every browser, every platform has small differences that have to be changed based on what the user is browsing with. I can target those changes with alternate style sheets.

I am hoping there might be a way to target the different platforms in the lua code. Lua supports platform checking so it should be a simple matter of adjusting values based on mac or windows. Once I know exactly the differences it should make it easier.

-vern

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 10:23 am

I changed the layout:AddPadding(-101) ---340 to -70 so now I am able to see it

, thanks for the help

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:46 pm

Wow. Thanks for this Ramon!
I'm using 6.1 - will this version work? i saw the "click 'archive' link" at teh bottom of your post, but i can't find an 'archive' link? Am probably being stupid... can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks again!