New ClearWin+ beta

I have uploaded a new beta version of salflibc.dll to

http://www.silverfrost.com/beta/salflibc.exe

This is a self-extracting executable that produces three files...

salflibc.dll salflibc.lib and cwplus.enh

At the end of the enh file you will find information on...

1. How to display UTF-8 characters.
2. Enhancements to %bb so that it replicates %bt.
3. How to add text attributes to a %cw control.
4. How to use a hexadecimal form for colour options.
5. How to insert a tab character for an accelerator key in %mn.

Paul, Ones again thanks for adding these useful features. I found that order of colors (BGR) is opposite to one accepted in CWP and opposite to what is used in HTML/Java etc. There probably were some compelling reasons for that specific order of colors but i predict that practically it will be big cause for confusion. Since there are no users of that feature yet to break their codes, i'd suggest to invert it to RGB

No problem. I will aim to revise the upload later today.

Amendment: Revised version now uploaded.

Thanks

The latest beta includes a new way of treating the icon in a %bb button when the button is not selectable (i.e. greyed-out). Prior to these recent changes, the icon remained coloured even when the button was in this state; now, the icon is greyed out too. No doubt this is what should happen, and indeed, the algorithm for converting to greyscale is more sophisticated than how a greyed-out version of a bitmap is auto-converted in %ib, but the upshot is that some of my carefully crafted icons have become ragged in the greyed-out state, because the conversion does not respect transparency (I think) in the original icon.

While greying-out the icon as well as the rest of the button does seem to me to be somehow more correct than leaving the original icon coloured, the net effect on a %bb button with a pastel-shaded icon, designed to look OK in active or inactive states, is not all that attractive.

I like to offer suggestions, and here they are:

1. Respect the alpha channel info in the original icon, or
2. Allow selection of either behaviour with a subroutine.

As it happens, one can partly overcome the grey blob effect in a greyed-out %ib button by covering part of the image with a chequerboard effect in the background RGB@(192,192,192) grey colour. This at least gives 3 greys: the foreground, the background and the chequerboard area (which without close inspection looks like a 3rd shade). [Or just use them in situations where they are never greyed-out!]. However, %bb icons are very small areas in which to do this, and the problem is not in the interior of the icon, but round its edges.

Eddie

OK. I will take another look at this.

Paul,

My sincere apologies for whingeing when you have put in a lot of effort on %bb already.

I show both versions below: all the buttons are in a greyed-out state. With the latest beta, it looks like the text isn't greyed, but the icon is, and in the older version the text is greyed and the icon isn't. If the icon has generally rectangular outlines, then the new version is OK (e.g. Save file or Print station), but where transparency is used (as in Select, Parameters or Calculate), we get the effect I mentioned.

The sizing algorithm has also changed - probably for the better.

For anyone wondering what I meant about a chequerboard effect, here is an example for %ib that looks better than a blob when greyed out:

Eddie

Eddie

I have had a look at this and

1. The text is greyed for me so this must depend on the operating system. I have changed the greyed colour to GetSysColor(COLOR_GRAYTEXT) so hopefully this will work better.

2. It is not going to be easy to change the algorithm for greying the the icon but I can provide an option that leaves it full coloured if that helps. Maybe just an extra forward slash... %bb[ICON//Text].

Paul,

Thanks for looking at it. I think that the extra slash is a brilliant way of doing it.

Since posting my comment, I realise that what the icon editor (and I!) is/are doing is taking black and applying lots of transparency to get a very subtle grey shadow to get the anti-aliasing, and what you have done (I think) is to consider it solid black. The loads of transparency makes it work against all types of background, whereas going for (say) a light grey with a lesser amount of transparency doesn't work so well against all backgrounds. No doubt with a lot of effort I could get to something that worked for typical Windows backgrounds with your grey-out model, but as I don't have much artistic ability, such things can consume a disproportionate amount of time. As I said, I think your grey-out-icons-too approach is logically correct.

As far as the greying out of text is concerned, I couldn't even see it either until I cut and pasted the two toolbars into the same image, so I'm not surprised you didn't find it noticeable.

Eddie

I have implemented these changes and will let you know when a new beta has be uploaded.

Many thanks for these updates, Paul! It's great to see this continuing development of CW+ in response to user feedback. Gives us users a nice warm feeling that we've backed the right horse!