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Monday, 31st March 2008

Finished updating the timeline duration display to show transition times.  The colors I chose need improving though. ;->  Also broke the swf export function down into smaller and easier to work with sub functions.  Lots of good progress here, and it looks like getting fade ins and outs is nearly complete.
 

Friday, 28th March 2008

Have adjusted the internals of Salasaga to use the time based approach rather than the frame based approach.  Also updated all of the layer dialog boxes to give fade in and fade out options.

Presently updating the timeline display to visually show the transition in and out points.
 

Thursday, 27th March 2008

Making transitions work (decently well) has driven a change to the way Salasaga calculates layer timings.  Instead of being "start frame" -> "end frame", it's now being adapted to "start time" (in seconds) -> "start time + duration" (in seconds).

Also did initial set up for our shiny new Salasaga Forum and Salasaga Wiki! :)
 

Wednesday, 26th March 2008

Fixed a bug pointed out by Terry Stickel, causing export of swf to fail if using a version of glib/gtk without svg.  He's confirmed it's now working. :)

Also started adding the code for layer transitions (fade in, fade out, etc).  Still a lot of work to do there.

Tuesday, 25th March 2008

Altered the screenshot capturing and importing code to always use a filename starting with "screenshot".  This fixes a problem (as mentioned by Bruce Byfield) where screenshots queued for import weren't being found after the project was renamed.

Also put some effort into the layer resizing code, then generated a new development snapshot tarball:

  25th March 2008 development snapshot

Monday, 24th March 2008

Finished the code for cutting and pasting layers.  Seems quite robust.  Then optimised the thumbnail regeneration, as it was taking far too long.  Got it down to 1/100 - 2/100 of a second.  Major improvement.  The rest of the day was taken in getting resizing of highlight layers to work visually.  It's almost ready, but I need to get some sleep :(

Sunday, 23rd March 2008

Finished off the code that handles dragging layers around visually.  Had noticed last night that there was a small problem with the way the area was being calculated for redraw sometimes.  Was pretty easy to fix once I'd had some sleep. :)

Also added code to visually show in the drawing area which layer object is selected, and began adding code to enable cutting and pasting of layers.

Saturday, 22nd March 2008

Major usability improvement today taking many hours.  Reworked the code that handles dragging layers around visually, so now it's very much usable and decently responsive.  Still need to put some time into tweaking how the bounding box is refreshed, as I've noticed it being calculated wrongly in one instance, but I need some sleep first. ;->

Friday, 21th March 2008

Improved the screenshot key binding process, so if a binding for "flame-capture" (the old name) is found, it will be reused.  Updated the program exit, so the screenshot key is unbound every time Salasaga quits.  Put initial code in place to stop the background being visible between slides.  Seems ok, but needs more testing to be sure.
 

Wednedsay, 19th March 2008

For the past few days the project renaming has been taking up most of my time.  Today the SourceForge project rename was done, which is a big step, and will probably break a few people's links. :-(

Now I'm updating a local backup of the SourceForge CVS - having converted it to Subversion first - and making the required renaming changes in it so that when it gets restored to SourceForge, it'll have "Salasaga" in the name of everything rather than Flame.

Sunday, 16th March 2008

Created initial working content for the new website, based on the contents of this one. Feedback on it is appreciated of course. :) Will migrate the archived history and documentation from here to there tomorrow (most likely).

Saturday, 15th March 2008

Took several hours beating into shape a template for the new Salasaga.org website. Firebug absolutely refuses to work on my Gentoo system, so I had to run it though XP (!). Ugh. Also updated the CMS Made Simple ebuild I created yesterday, and added it to the Gentoo bug tracking system as per Jakub Moc's request. Hopefully that'll be useful. :)

Friday, 14th March 2008

Have taken (most of) yesterday and today setting up the new Salasaga.org website. Initial workings for a Wiki (MediaWiki) and Forum (SimpleMachines) are in place. Was about to install Joomla as the front end cms so I can manage it, but it turns out that on my distribution of linux this CMS has such a poor security history they won't support it. Heh. Guess I'd better keep on looking around... they don't seem completely impressed with phpBB either. ;-> Mailserver seems to be working fine, and Mailman is working well too.

Update - Have installed CMS Made Simple, and created a Gentoo ebuild for it which I was hoping to donate to overlays.portage.org. Couldn't find anyone to give it to, and the IRC channel (#gentoo-webapps) was completely dead even after waiting about an hour for someone to actually respond to something. (Grrrr.)
 

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

Installing anti-spam tools and virus checking on the new salasaga.org mail server. Seems to be all working. But I'd better leave it run at least overnight, to see if anything falls over before marking it off as Done. ;->

Tuesday, 11th March 2008

Added the project level preference controlling whether the exported swf has a control bar displaying or not. All in CVS. Still haven't created a new development package yet, as the background colour flash between slides is really annoying me and I'm going to fix that first. ;->

Monday, 10th March 2008

Added the project level preference controlling whether an exported animation starts out paused or playing. All in CVS. No new development package yet, as I want to add at least the toggle on/off of the control bar first. Haven't gotten around to setting up virus checking and spam filtering on the new mail server yet today after all.

Sunday, 9th March 2008

Began the task(s) for renaming the project to Salasaga. Have successfully set up a mail server for salasaga.org (redundant DNS provided by our friends at Hub.Org). Still needs virus checking and spam filtering put in place, so that's probably tomorrow. :)

Friday, 7th March 2008

Very minor amount of stuff done today. Just hooked up the sizing of the highlight layers to the validation system, and added a new few tasks to the task list that I think will help achieve what Don Harden is looking for. :)

Thursday, 6th March 2008

Don Harden of GSU asked whether there's a way to control the looping of an swf animation once it's completed. There wasn't, but now there is. :) Added a project level preference to control the behaviour of swf movies once they've completed (with the code behind it to make it work of course). The options for now are "Stop", "Loop and Play", and "Loop and Stop". All working and in CVS. Feedback encouraged. :)

Also created a new development snapshot (source tarball), as it's been a month since the last one and a lot of useability improvements have happened over that time.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=58083&package_id=53841&release_id=582089 

Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Completed the code to validate project file input, and also the code to validate lock file input for flame-capture. All in CVS.

Update - Just finished a significant usability enhancement... new layers are all created visually by drawing them on the main working area. That's a HUGE improvement and time saver over the previous versions.

All in CVS, and worth trying out. Suspecting that Flame might now actually be reasonably useable. ;->

Tuesday, 4th March 2008

Started adding working code to validate project files when they're loaded (i.e. File -> Open). Making good progress, it's about half done I think. All in CVS of course.

Monday, 3rd March 2008

YAY! The text element positioning bug is fixed! (That took a lot of effort!) Re-wrote the code for it again today, after finding the previous code only worked well with certain project resolutions and output resolution combinations. The new code dynamically calculates all font placement positions and works really well, regardless of project size or output resolution. (Finally!)

All in SourceForge CVS. :)

Saturday, 1st March 2008

Finished the first go at improving the positioning of text elements in the swf output. They seem to be ok now,. The smaller output resolutions (128x96 -> 176x144) I don't have anything to Real World test on though, so I'm just guessing with those.

I suspect the size of the project might have an effect on the element positions (and it probably shouldn't) so I need to test this more before I'm ready to say it's definitely ok.