Hi Plucker Team,
Some viewer tweaks are available for your feedback. I have been using it for
the last week with no problems, and find it quite useful.
A .prc is available at
http://www.rob.md/projects/plucker/2001_07_16/viewer_en.prc
Icon notes
==========
-Open icon: couple of pixel changes around the shape.
-Find icon: right earhook made parallel to left earhook.
-Bookmark icon: bookmark instead of book, since user changes the ebook with
the open folder icon. 'b' taken off the graphic to ease localization, as the
word for bookmark might not always start with 'b' in different languages.
-Addition of an autoscroll button, with increase (+) and decrease (-) scroll
speed on either side. Autoscroll has a play arrow like the arrow that shows
the tape direction on a cassette player so not confuse with the 'forward'
arrow icon.. Autoscroll play icon changes to a square 'stop' icon while
scrolling.
-Color icons are only mute, lightly saturated colours, so will fade into
background allowing the eye to focus more on the content part of the screen.
A colour screenshot of the icons can be seen at:
http://www.rob.md/projects/plucker/2001_07_16 The colouring of the icons are
easy enough to change at any time with a drop-fill, the
building/slicing/.rcp file of icons takes up alot of time though, so once a
b&w is squared, will do the colours.
Autoscroll notes
================
-Logic is the one that powers CSpotRun, rebuilt to fit into the plucker
viewer's format, to make use of the fact that Plucker already has the
functions to handle many of the items, resulting in a smaller code.
-General Strategy: Keep a autoscroll toggle, speed, and lastdrawntime. If
autoscroll is enabled, use nilEvents at the user-specificied interval and do
a Plucker scroll at the proper time, else use EvtWaitForever.
-Behaviour checklist:
1. Autoscroll buttons reuse the code for other bitmap buttons: OK.
2. "Play" button image toggles to "Stop": OK.
3. Increase and decrease speed with +, - buttons, and save to preferences:
OK.
4. Toggle autoscroll available as an option for a HardKey button or a
gesture: OK.
5. Reuse viewer's built-in code for scrolling to autoscroll: OK.
6. Prevent a power-off when autoscrolling, since will have no user input for
a minute or 2, which would normally cause device to shut off: OK.
7. Menu items added: OK.
8. Stop autoscrolling when other form (Find, Bookmarks, etc.) pops up: OK
9. On calling up of the Viewer menu, don't do any autoscrolling, since it
would be writing overtop the menu, and also would miss some pages as they
autoscroll by: OK.
-Features that will go in:
1. User-selectable ability to set what it is that scrolls at the interval: a
line, pixel, page, half page, etc(currently hard-coded a 1/2 page scroll for
now). A pop up box in preferences will be available. Line scrolling is
another (very non-trivial) request: the autoscroll just uses the viewer's
built-in scroll support, so when line scrolling is available, easy to make
it autoscroll up a line.
2. Command stroke handling, either a pause or stop so "command" artifact
doesn't scroll up in background (what I am doing now).
3. Set a good default for autoscroll speed for a new installation.
-Features that can go in if the people asking for autoscroll functionality
so request:
1. Hardkey/Gesture options to increase/decrease speed.
2. Ability to choose to autoscroll upwards instead of downwards...does
anyone ever do this?
3. Upper time limit on the prevent of power off without user input so that
can't accidently leave it running and wipe your PDA since it ran out of
juice.
4. Others..?
NarrowFixedWidthFont Notes
==========================
-A narrow fixed width font in 4x11 pixels, built in a normal text editor
(ouch!) from the existing narrow font. Can try it out under the font
selector in the preferences. I am happy with most of the characters (palmos
playing card symbols, fractions, and some others are a bit iffy), but I
think overall it looks slick, and the extra 20% real estate for code samples
is helpful. Most useful for code samples in web pages, but also gives a nice
sense of retro-nostalgia when reading the newspaper downloaded onto the
palm.
-This version of viewer has the last entry in the style array for 'pre' tag
removed, so if put back in again, can wire it up to support fixed width font
on 'pre' tag.
-Worthwhile to write a patch to support separate popup selectors in the
preferences form, to allow selection of a font for variable and another to
allow selection of the fixed-width fonts, like Mozilla et al have in their
preferences? Think that it is doable, just carry a pref for the slot in the
styles for fixed width?
Other Misc Notes
================
-Menu separator added between Preferences.... and the Button Action..., Tap
Action...., Gesture Action... group.
-The rubber chicken in the 'About Plucker' form: smoothened up pixel edges.
Best wishes,
Robert
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