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[LitusSaxonicum]

Has anybody given any thought to generating the look and feel of Windows 8 using Clearwin+ If so, have you got advice for the rest of us?

Eddie

[LitusSaxonicum]

Whether Dan or I hold the record for the number of posts that never get a reply is a debatable point, but noticed that this one fell by the wayside, and I did take some time out to look at Tablets and Windows 8, so that I am starting to have thoughts about programming for this sector in FTN95 and Clearwin+.

1. While FTN95 doesn't work in Windows RT (ARM cpu), iPAD or Chrome (unless there is an emulator for Windows), it does work on a Windows 8 (Intel) tablet. RT seems to be unpopular, but there are an increasing number of Win 8 tablets coming out.

2. programming for touch appears to require much bigger controls than we are used to (40-50 pixel). Many of the pads do have physical keyboards and mice. However it does seem that the ability to pop up and respond to an onscreen keyboard is a desirable enhancement to a Clearwin+ application in this environment. Does it need an onscreen touchpad mouse too? (Tablets are supposed to be for consuming content rather than creating it, but �800 seems a lot just to read e mail!)

3. Windows 8 itself uses bigger icons and buttons than we (I?) am used to. Apart from the top-level, most applications seem not to use the Metro-style interface, but drop back into XP/Vista/Win 7 style.

4. Metrostyle seems to be square-cornered, plain-coloured, not-3D-shaded. Mouseover seems to be handled by a semi- greying out of a button, with no on-click response (i.e. no visual effect of depressing), and a selected or default option is just to surround the control with a light-coloured rectangular box. Icons are very simple line drawings.

It doesn't look too difficult to do metrostyle, although to roll it out across a whole application in the absence of something simple like a manifest that does it for you looks like a bigger job.

Now has anyone else got any thoughts?

Eddie

[silicondale]

Hi Eddie - Yes, I've been thinking about this for a while, and just taken the plunge to buy a full Win8 tablet (the HP Envy - was also considering the Microsoft Surface, but the HP seems better and is certainly cheaper).

It would be very nice to be able to try out auto rotation of the application from landscape to portrait, also to find some way to implement the different touch interfaces, though I suspect this will involve a whole new set of CW+ library functions. I think the first step will be to find out if ordinary mouse clicks work from a touch screen.

Your idea of using the Win 8 manifest would certainly make life easier when updating the style of the whole application!

However, the first test will be simply to put an existing Win7 executable on the new machine and see what it does!

- Steve

[LitusSaxonicum]

Steve,

Many thanks for replying. My guess is that the Win 7 executable works the same way in Win 8 - many apps such as Office work the same way in both.

My explorations have gone further, and after wasting a day or so programming up a virtual numeric keypad, I discover that even Win 7 has one (and keyboard) so that if it is enabled it works the same way as a physical keyboard.

Since discovering that the pinch gesture maps to CTRL-MouseWheel, I have been more hopeful about a simple Win8 tablet interface that is Fortran-comprehensible. Some applications have this already enabled for zoom-shrink, and it occurs to me that I need to implement that at the very minimum because it is an emerging standard - I had been using "zoom to area selected" and "zoom in or out in steps when appropriate toolbar button clicked". I expect other gestures map to some key+mouse click.

As I spent ages shrinking toolbar icons etc to smaller and smaller sizes for a PC, I don't think that a manifest solution is very helpful to complex applications - it won't do the toolbars automatically. While this rules out most of my existing apps., I have been working on one for which the tablet is made for. This is an electronic version of a level book for student surveyors (who can't do the necessary addition and subtraction in their heads!). It works fine on a �200 netbook with physical keyboard. But it would help with the look and feel of buttons like OK etc.

I'll be delighted to hear your views when you have tested it out.

Eddie

[silicondale]

Eddie -

You're quick off the mark as always! I take delivery of the new computer on Saturday, and raring to go.

I thought at first that it's wonderful news that the pinch maps to mouse-wheel - until I checked the FTN95 helpfile, and can't find the mouse wheel (let alone CTRL-mouse wheel) anywhere in CLEARWIN_INFO@, CLEARWIN_STRING@, or GET_MOUSE_INFO@. Do you know if there's somewhere that it can be picked up in CW+ ?

I've just tried out CTRL-mousewheel while typing this and it just works, on Win7, within IE10. Zooms in and out without any problems. I never knew that!

One thing on smaller tablets is that the number of pixels available tends to be fewer than on a standard laptop or desktop computer. For example, the HP, which isn't a basic tablet by any means, has just 768 vertical (though still better than my old Samsung netbook at just 1024 x 600). So it will probably need full-screen graphics, and big buttons on popup windows. Fortunately you can query the screen dimensions within the program and set your window size accordingly.

- Steve

[LitusSaxonicum]

Steve,

When you download Paul's latest beta, there is an updated file CWPLUS.ENH - this is a plain text (Notepad) file. Whereas even big changes don't make it to FTN95.CHM, even tiny changes get to the ENH file. By reading all 349 enhancements, you can learn about all sorts of things....

The revelation about "pinch" comes in another thread - at the bottom of screen 3 in "Some suggestions for future enhancements to Clearwin+". (I didn't know, either).

The Windows User Experience guidelines suggest testing against a minimum resolution of 800x600, and netbooks usually exceed that in x. 1024x768 or 1280x1024 were the gold standards for quite a long time. What worries me is that the tablets will come as standard with a different "logical dpi" on their screens. I have only ever encountered a PC with other than 96 dpi, and that was 120dpi. But the Win UX guide suggests testing at 96, 120 and 144. In another post which no-one responded to, I gave the low down on how to detect and deal with this, as the method changed with Vista.

If you haven't found it yet, try %co[client_edge] but only on a white background - nice effect on edit boxes. You won't find that in FTN95.CHM either!

Eddie

[silicondale]

many thanks for the suggestion and the other useful information!

Downloaded the beta yesterday but hadn't got around to unzipping it yet.

-Steve

[PaulLaidler]

Here is the relevant section from the latest cwplus.enh...

%^gr[full_mouse_input] already provides the callback reason "MOUSE_WHEEL". When this event is processed, mouse data can
be obtained by calling clearwin_info@ with any of the following arguments:
"GRAPHICS_MOUSEWHEEL_ROTATION", "GRAPHICS_MOUSE_FLAGS", "GRAPHICS_MOUSE_X", and "GRAPHICS_MOUSE_Y".

A mouse wheel event combined with holding down the CTRL key is usually interpreted as "Zoom in" or "Zoom out". Also when
a pinching movement is used on a mouse pad or on a touch sensitive screen, the system translates this to a mouse wheel
event with the CTRL key held down. To test for the CTRL key state, take the bitwise AND of the mouse flags with MK_CONTROL
(MK_CONTROL has the value 8).