Notepad

[Les23]

in my opinion it's not so easy to change from the keyboard to the symbol screen... maybe a shortcut :O

[G.Ri]

Originally Posted by Les23

in my opinion it's not so easy to change from the keyboard to the symbol screen... maybe a shortcut :O

I agree. 3 taps for a period or comma is a little frustrating. Maybe you could put the symbols/numbers button where the read mode arrow is and put the read mode in the options list? Also I think it would be better if caps lock was turned on by pressing shift twice. Maybe it could change colors to indicate it's locked on? Then tap it again to turn it off.

[Tetrajak]

These notepad programs are great for coding Lua when I don't have access to a computer. Only problem is such things as automatic capital letters after sentence-ending symbols, and other such automatic fixes for typing. Perhaps this can be turned off in the options menu, along with any other syntax-fixing actions the application takes?

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by Tmd

the notepad works great saving and loading works now.
The options looks nice and the only thing i think would
be nice is some word wrapping. Read mode works great
but word wrapping for that would make it more useful.

The only other things would be side apps to work with the notepad,
like a calendar or planner.

That's good to hear And I see what you mean with the wordwrapping.. wordwrapping is now working when the left-right scrolling is turned off, and it wraps the word to the line below when you reach the end of the line. For readmode left-right scrolling is enabled anyway, and in combination with the zoombuttons I thought that would be enough.
I can try to have it re-wrap everything when you use the readmode, but then those zoom and scroll functions are a bit useless, maybe even bothersome.

About calender or planner.. You can save notes to a file, call it "To do" or something, and then open them with another app, but as far as I know nobody has created such an app. Best thing would be if it can be added to the creative calender, but I don't think that's gonna happen..

Originally Posted by Les23

in my opinion it's not so easy to change from the keyboard to the symbol screen... maybe a shortcut :O

Originally Posted by G.Ri

I agree. 3 taps for a period or comma is a little frustrating. Maybe you could put the symbols/numbers button where the read mode arrow is and put the read mode in the options list? Also I think it would be better if caps lock was turned on by pressing shift twice. Maybe it could change colors to indicate it's locked on? Then tap it again to turn it off.

Hmm personally i got a little used to tapping three times. But yeah that should be easier. Integrating the shift with capslock (two presses) is a good idea, and I have something on my mind for changing the symbols key position.

Originally Posted by Tetrajak

These notepad programs are great for coding Lua when I don't have access to a computer. Only problem is such things as automatic capital letters after sentence-ending symbols, and other such automatic fixes for typing. Perhaps this can be turned off in the options menu, along with any other syntax-fixing actions the application takes?

You can even load the main.lua from an application, and save it back. Then they appear in the loadlist so you don't have to type the folder/file name again.
Only problem is when the lua file is very large (20k+ chars), v2.51 crashes when loading it.

BUT I fixed that Turns out that I was keeping too many variables (every character was saved as a char[i], every pixellength as len[i] ) and that was a little too much for the Zen. After all it must stay "zen".

So I made some changes to get rid of some variables, and I'm now working on the phone keyboard, that was the best idea ever !! It's indeed maybe even faster than typing on those small keys.
I have to finish some stuff and I hope that I can upload it later today.

I'll also try to make an option to turn off all of those "type-assistance" features.

[rplacido]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

Hey that's a good one, I was thinking of adding the keyboard somehow to the portrait view mode, but I didn't want the keys to be really small or become stacked to six rows or something.
I have to make a totally new keyboard for it, but I think it's worth it.

Although, you probably mean T9, right? I'm not sure if I can imitate such a thing.. and if the player is constantly searching though a dictionary it could slow everything down.

Oh and about cheating on tests, don't you think it'll look a little weird that you have your mp3 player on you during tests? I used to print my notes on paper in a really small font, so small that even I could hardy read it, and hid in my pencil or something. But by the time I had the tests I hardly ever used it because I already knew what was on it The preparation of a cheat note is usually enough to remember the stuff.

Aren't there any more errors? I got so used to having something working for myself, and then discovering the faults through you guys that I can hardly believe it's really working fine for everyone now

i dont know what T9 is.. lol, but if its the dictionary thing the cell phone has its not what i was saying.. just the numers wich you type the times needed to get to the letter..

Well, it worked for me in my philosophy test... no one noticed i had it...

i do that to, and it actually helps to memorize things...

[Tetrajak]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

You can even load the main.lua from an application, and save it back. Then they appear in the loadlist so you don't have to type the folder/file name again.
Only problem is when the lua file is very large (20k+ chars), v2.51 crashes when loading it.

BUT I fixed that Turns out that I was keeping too many variables (every character was saved as a char[i], every pixellength as len[i] ) and that was a little too much for the Zen. After all it must stay "zen".

So I made some changes to get rid of some variables, and I'm now working on the phone keyboard, that was the best idea ever !! It's indeed maybe even faster than typing on those small keys.
I have to finish some stuff and I hope that I can upload it later today.

I'll also try to make an option to turn off all of those "type-assistance" features.

Awesome, thank you! I look forward to seeing the next version!

[Brett_val]

Okay I was a little too optimistic.. the new release is taking a bit longer.

While these options-implementations are working correctly, I'm not statisfied about the speed of the app overall.
Also, I want to add a scrollbar, but the way I implemented scrolling the first time, a simple scrollbar doesn't act like it should. So I need to find some time to review the calculations and make a properly working scrollbar for it.

Concerning the speed, I'll try to rewrite the loop and make it more easy for the player to know what it should be doing (right now, as you can see in v2.51, the loop is quite big) I think that will improve speed..

If any of you have any other suggestions about improving speed, I'll be glad to hear about it

[Tetrajak]

Any series of code that is often repeated, whether that be in the loop or by being looped multiple times, should perhaps be in it's own function. That may improve the speed of your app.

I look forward to the next release!

[ThievingSix]

Huh? Calling a function in a loop instead of having the code in the loop? Bad! Function calling overhead is bad! Even if it's a local function.

[Brett_val]

I have some pieces of code duplicated in the loop, because it should use different coordinates when the player is in normal- or portrait mode. (some buttons are in a different place)
Also the coordinates for the scrollbar change, I thought about using screen.width() but I think that's even slower because then it's asking for the screen width all the time..

So judging from ThievingSix's knowledge I'd better leave them all in the loop with different numbers for x and y (from touch.pos) in them, and a if portraitmode==1?

[xConStruct]

I'm also pro-function. I think it keeps the code a lot more clear and structured and prevents you from repeating series of code, as Tetrajak said.
The function call overhead is most of the time negligible in the loop, because major slowdowns are the necessary os.wait() and the drawing of the screen, especially font strings.

In my unreleased GUI framework, I'm using a lot of function calls (you can say there are like 5-10 function calls until any 'real' action is done), nested metatable-lookups for the OOP class-inheritance and recursive functions for the screen-redrawing - still it performs good enough to make my life a lot easier while developing apps.

So, as long you don't experience any performance problems (of which you are sure that they are caused by function calls!), I would suggest not to refrain from function calls.

[ThievingSix]

I'm always a performance pusher, OCD much? But when we get down to apps that need that extra push, it's good to know all the tips.

[Brett_val]

What's OCD? Osteochondrose dissecans? :P

Thanks for the insight xConStruct, I'm going to experiment with images instead of font strings, Zap also posted that that's a lot faster.

[fzbm123]

How bout give us a choice of fonts (don need to be all but jus some good ones is enough) eg. times new romans, comic sans

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by fzbm123

How bout give us a choice of fonts (don need to be all but jus some good ones is enough) eg. times new romans, comic sans

Yeah I thought of that already, when the characters are in an image file it's very easy to change the fonts

But right now I'm trying to get it working. (read: trying to figure out why it doesn't work..)

[Brett_val]

I'm having a hard time with the images instead of strings. It's indeed faster, but for some reason it started crashing again when handling very large files. This time it loaded the large file, but it crashed when I tried to scroll.. No idea why that happens.. I'll play around with that some more. But I think it's going to take a very long time before that's working properly, if at all...

So I decided to upload v2.6, which has all the updates that DO work. No images as fonts yet, so also no font selection..

But, it can handle large files now, and I added sms-style typing in the portraitmode.
I also implemented the suggestions you guys made about the special characters button and the capslock, as well as an option to disable the automatic capital letters and such.
Capslock is now activated by pressing shift twice, and a red ball underneath the shift button indicates if capslock is on.

If you want to use this app to program lua, I suggest that you switch left-right scrolling to YES, and automatic keys to NO.
This way there are no lines being cut, and the maximum scrollable distance from left to right will be determined by the longest line in the file.

Autosave is NO by default.. so don't forget to switch that on if you want that.

I may have forgotten some things in the type assistance, because I had to go back to an earlier version when I decided to postpone the whole images-fonts thing, so if you notice something, I'll change it and make another bug fix update
Same goes for other bugs you might find.. but overall I think v2.6 is an improvement over v2.51.
Have fun with it

[Les23]

mmm i'm not able to switch in the portrait mode, even for reading a txt file even for type in sms mode... maybe i'm an idiot and i don't understand how to do but in a previous version it seems sufficient to rotate the player :O

two advices for the next version you talked about could be the addition of stressed vowels (yeah i'm italian and we use them) and an improved scrolling system (mmm i mean... faster)

it's becoming a great application i love it, thanks for your works

[Brett_val]

The way it switches to portraitmode hasn't changed, it still should do it when you rotate the player.
Maybe exit the app and open it again? (in case the accelerometer did not load properly..?)

[Les23]

i immediately made a test rotating a photo and it works... i'll try to reload the application

ok now it works and the phone keyboard it's easier to tap with the bigger buttons now i'll wait for the next update, keep on working

i noticed that when you you switch to the portrait mode the text is adapted to the screen and that's really useful, it's possible to do that at every zoom in, zoom out?

[Brett_val]

That's a nice idea (for when left-right scrolling is off)

But for that, I first need to find a formula to calculate how the length of characters change with the textsize.. I tried some calculations but they didn't turn out accurate, which is also why it still isn't possible to type or to set the cursor at a specific place when zoomed in/out.
If anyone has any ideas for that it would be great.