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[Les23]

i can only make suggestion i'm a dumb at programming XD

[ZaPx64]

Originally Posted by 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.

That's why I tried a bitmap font instead of text.draw() because it has a fixed character width. It's a bit tricky to use but it's faster at all.

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by ZaPx64

That's why I tried a bitmap font instead of text.draw() because it has a fixed character width. It's a bit tricky to use but it's faster at all.

Yeah I've noticed a few times already that it's better to let all the characters have the same width, but I think it looks better when they have their own width. Even when I was playing around with bitmap fonts I made it draw the "i" for 3 pixels and the "w" for 13, for example.
That is what you mean, right?

I measured all the characters manually, so I will stick to it

[G.Ri]

Love the new version. Some nice improvements. Just a few things:

-When typing in a file name (save/load) and the player is turned portrait, the phone style keyboard comes up and the file naming dialog box disappears. You can still type but you can't see it. Then when you turn back to landscape it looks all glitchy, but if you press a letter the dialog returns over the glitchy screen. It'd be nice to see the SMS keyboard useable in these screens though. But temporarily disabling it there in this version would be a good fix for now.

-There's no indication when the capslock is on in the SMS keyboard. That would be helpful.

-When left-right scrolling is off and you zoom in on view mode, the text goes off the screen and you can't scroll to it. Enabling word wrapping while zooming (like was mentioned above) would be an optimal fix, but maybe left and right scrolling could automatically turn on when you zoom in (but not right when you enter read mode, if that's possible) for now?

-This one might just be a preference thing, but the hide keys button with the arrow behind it looks kinda weird to me.

Overall, nice work. I hope my notes help. And good luck figuring out word wrapping in zoom mode!

[fzbm123]

nice app jus some suggestions here:


1) how bout give some feedback wen typing in SMS mode (eg. highlighting the buttons wen u click on them)

Originally Posted by G.Ri

There's no indication when the capslock is on in the SMS keyboard. That would be helpful.

2) ya true, make us able to see whether we r typing in caps lock mode or not wen typing in SMS mode
(eg. make the characters in the button small mode (eg. abcdef) wen capslock is off n make the characters in the button capital mode (eg. ABCDEF) wen capslock in on)

3) give the ability to move the curser wen in SMS mode

4) im not sure abt this cuz it will takes up space so its up to u. anw its abt giving more features in SMS mode (eg. enter button, shift button etc)

5) can the buttons in SMS mode also be coloured (eg. wen we choose the buttons colour green in the menu, the buttons in SMS mode becomes green)


Thx i hope my suggestions won go to waste. im not a programmer so i can only give suggestions. im trying to learn to program now so wish me luck

[nipico]

Hello Brett_val

Congratulation for your app

I'm interested in your sms mode because i want to put it in my app to ask for name of player.
Is it possible to have access to your code because when i open your main file in Lua Edit, I can't see anything.

Thx

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by G.Ri

-When typing in a file name (save/load) and the player is turned portrait, the phone style keyboard comes up and the file naming dialog box disappears. You can still type but you can't see it. Then when you turn back to landscape it looks all glitchy, but if you press a letter the dialog returns over the glitchy screen. It'd be nice to see the SMS keyboard useable in these screens though. But temporarily disabling it there in this version would be a good fix for now.

While reading your post I thought about disabling the portraitmode while saving/loading, but I think you have a good point that it should be useable. Disabling it for now would be an option, but I think that it is just as easy as making it work properly v2.61 will have this fix, thanks!

I'll also make something to indicate that capslock is on.

I also really like the idea of rewrapping everything when zooming out, but until I figure out a formula for the length of the characters in function of text size, I'll just enable left-right scrolling when you have zoomed in, to make everything viewable.

(I broke my head over this for a few hours while playing around with paint and test-apps, but it really is a mystery to me... If anyone else is also interested in this, maybe I can make a development thread about it?)

-This one might just be a preference thing, but the hide keys button with the arrow behind it looks kinda weird to me.

I really liked the arrow key at the bottom left, like it was before. So I had to place it somewhere else instead of removing it.. I agree that it looks a little weird though, I was also experimenting a little with images behind text, like the red ball behind shift which I personally really like. But yeah, the arrow needs to go.. I’ll take it out sometime..

Originally Posted by fzbm123

nice app jus some suggestions here:
1) how bout give some feedback wen typing in SMS mode (eg. highlighting the buttons wen u click on them)
3) give the ability to move the curser wen in SMS mode
4) im not sure abt this cuz it will takes up space so its up to u. anw its abt giving more features in SMS mode (eg. enter button, shift button etc)
5) can the buttons in SMS mode also be coloured (eg. wen we choose the buttons colour green in the menu, the buttons in SMS mode becomes green)

1) and 5) it would indeed be a lot nicer if those buttons have the same color(s) as the normal mode. I'll try and find some other keys for it. And with that, I'll think of some indication when you click on them

3)I know that that's missing, and I tried to add that piece of code, but it resulted in the app going nuts when I clicked it. (really, it flickered to options screens and such, as if I clicked everything at the same time) But, I understand that it’s needed, so I’ll give it another try, it must be something I overlooked before…

4)Well, I wanted to add that, but I don’t really know where to place it..
Should I place the Enter button above the keyboard?

Thx i hope my suggestions won go to waste. im not a programmer so i can only give suggestions. im trying to learn to program now so wish me luck

Hey if you want to program for the Zen, just look at the wiki for the commands, and view some apps to see how those commands are used, combine that with some math and a lot of common sense, and you will get pretty far

Originally Posted by nipico

Hello Brett_val
Congratulation for your app
I'm interested in your sms mode because i want to put it in my app to ask for name of player.
Is it possible to have access to your code because when i open your main file in Lua Edit, I can't see anything.
Thx

Thanks Nipico,
And yes I compiled the code with the app from ThievingSix. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to look into the code, but I thought it would be a little faster this way. At least I think it’s faster..
Anyway I pm’ed you the sms code.

If anyone wants something from my code, I'll be happy to supply it. Even when it's not compiled I don't think it would make a lot of sense if you search through it, because it's full of variables I made up and they all connect to eachother in some way. So just pm me and I'll try to explain it.

I really appreciate the nice comments That's really what keeps me going to keep improving this app. Just to let you know, I'm working on a copy/paste option. While I was trying to program a little game with it, I thought it would be very useful if you could select strings and delete them, or copy them somewhere else. That would also replace the touch.hold for the backbutton, which isn't working properly anyway.

I also noticed that my wordwrapping is not solid. When you just keep pressing one button it starts doing strange things. So I'll be working on that too.

[kushndonuts]

this is so cool

[G.Ri]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

I really liked the arrow key at the bottom left, like it was before. So I had to place it somewhere else instead of removing it.. I agree that it looks a little weird though, I was also experimenting a little with images behind text, like the red ball behind shift which I personally really like. But yeah, the arrow needs to go.. I’ll take it out sometime..

I like the red ball behind shift too. It looks sort of similar to how my caps key looks on my real keyboard.
You could switch the positions of menu and hide keys, and the put the arrow below the text and make the button bigger. It might be helpful to keep it to make the function of the up arrow in zoom more obvious to someone who hasn't used your app much.

4)Well, I wanted to add that, but I don’t really know where to place it..
Should I place the Enter button above the keyboard?

Above the keyboard would look a little funny imo. Maybe split the backspace and put it there? I don't know the exact dimensions but you could practically use the same backspace and enter from the qwerty keyboard, couldn't you?

Copy/paste sounds awesome! That would be pretty useful.

fzbm123 also suggested shift on the SMS keyboard. You could integrate that into the caps key like on the qwerty keyboard.

Also, I just noticed the 0 key on the SMS keyboard doesn't actually let you type 0. haha you might want to add that.

[bad.boy]

Ik vind het een handig programma, het menu kun je inderdaad wat beter maken, maar voor de rest vind ik het wel goed.

P.S. Kun je niet een apart bestandsformaat maken, dan kun je het makkelijk op je pc maken.
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I think it's a good program. You could improve/make a menu, but it's ok.

P.S. Could you make a fileformat, so you can edit it better on your pc?

P.S.S. I'm not good at English

[RobertsAccount]

Originally Posted by bad.boy

P.S.S. I'm not good at English

"If you are good enough at English to apologize, then there is no need to." - Habhome's friend.

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by G.Ri

I like the red ball behind shift too. It looks sort of similar to how my caps key looks on my real keyboard.
You could switch the positions of menu and hide keys, and the put the arrow below the text and make the button bigger. It might be helpful to keep it to make the function of the up arrow in zoom more obvious to someone who hasn't used your app much.

Yeah that's what I thought, it helps to recognize the arrow key in the keyless-mode.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it and see how it looks

Above the keyboard would look a little funny imo. Maybe split the backspace and put it there? I don't know the exact dimensions but you could practically use the same backspace and enter from the qwerty keyboard, couldn't you?

Yeah those buttons would easily fit, but the point of the sms keyboard was to have larger keys. But okay I think splitting it in half would work, the sms keys are 80x80, and 80x40 is still larger than in the qwerty board.

Copy/paste sounds awesome! That would be pretty useful.

fzbm123 also suggested shift on the SMS keyboard. You could integrate that into the caps key like on the qwerty keyboard.

Oh I forgot to mention that, yes ofcourse, I will keep the one press shift/two press caps function, it's very handy.

Also, I just noticed the 0 key on the SMS keyboard doesn't actually let you type 0. haha you might want to add that.

Haha totally forgot about that.. I'll add the 0. I think the "/" has to go then.. or one of the "+,-,="..

Originally Posted by bad.boy

Ik vind het een handig programma, het menu kun je inderdaad wat beter maken, maar voor de rest vind ik het wel goed.

P.S. Kun je niet een apart bestandsformaat maken, dan kun je het makkelijk op je pc maken.
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I think it's a good program. You could improve/make a menu, but it's ok.

P.S. Could you make a fileformat, so you can edit it better on your pc?

P.S.S. I'm not good at English

Thanks for that, I'm glad you like the app
What about the menu? Should I make it more obvious where you are?
And about file formats, I choose not to automatically append .txt or something after filenames, because sometimes you want to save it as .lua. And in the app file extensions aren't necessary at all.

But if you want your computer to recognize it as a text document, you can just type "filename.doc" (for Word documents), or "filename.txt" in the "save as" screen.

[Brett_val]

I'm revising the whole code, implementing things I have learned about LUA, and I'm also trying to make it a little faster.
The wordwrap as it is now contains some faults.. I'm really sorry about that.. I spend hours testing it and I think it's almost foolproof now Just have to do some more testing..
I really want this app to be stable, user friendly, foolproof and fast, and I won't stop working on it until I'm 100% happy with it.

While loading different textfiles I found some new characters (again) that the Zen displays as Chinese signs. This time it was because of this little bugger: “. The he also has a little brother that usually joins him at the other end of the sentence: ”
And I found this one: ’

They seem like normal quotation marks and an apostrophe, but they are different from these: " and ' , and the Zen doesn't want to display them properly, and I also can't find these on my pc keyboard.

Do any of you know about the difference between “ , ” and ", or ’ and ' ?

[chieldeblock]

I really have to say that you did a GREAT job!! It's really amazing and it works perfect (you're updates are getting better and better ^^)!! THANK YOU

[bzdbbb]

Do any of you know about the difference between “ , ” and ", or ’ and ' ?

As far as I know theres no differerence apart from the ASCII value - what kinda difference were you looking for?

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by bzdbbb

As far as I know theres no differerence apart from the ASCII value - what kinda difference were you looking for?

I'm pretty sure he's figured out the ASCII value is different He wants to know what the grammatical difference and usage of those are. And I can't really say that I know of any difference.

[Les23]

cursive and not is too obvious?

[samarkand]

Thanks for the great app! I did want to say that the new version has been crashing my Zen after I load up a stored file. The file will load, but from there, it locks up and I have to hit the reset button. I'm just going to go back to the older version, which seemed to work fine (and I don't need the lost accelerometer functionality).

Originally Posted by Brett_val

While loading different textfiles I found some new characters (again) that the Zen displays as Chinese signs. This time it was because of this little bugger: “. The he also has a little brother that usually joins him at the other end of the sentence: ”
And I found this one: ’

They seem like normal quotation marks and an apostrophe, but they are different from these: " and ' , and the Zen doesn't want to display them properly, and I also can't find these on my pc keyboard.

Do any of you know about the difference between “ , ” and ", or ’ and ' ?

I think the problem is smart-quotes. It's something that Word does automatically (though the user can turn it off) that creates the fancy close and open quotation marks, which then get carried over as unicode, which apparently the Zen is not fond of. I've just been going through the text file and find-replace-ing the smart quotes with regular quotes.


I'm mainly using this app as a reader. Is there anyone working on an app that is only a reader with no other functions? I just want to be able to load in a txt file and read it on the go.

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by samarkand

Thanks for the great app! I did want to say that the new version has been crashing my Zen after I load up a stored file. The file will load, but from there, it locks up and I have to hit the reset button. I'm just going to go back to the older version, which seemed to work fine (and I don't need the lost accelerometer functionality).

Thanks for the compliment, and the error that you speak of is new to me. I'd like some more details about it.
I have to say that I uploaded version 2.61 because version 2.6 would crash if you have firmware 1.12.08 installed. It's not that the accelerometer isn't functioning, but the old way of calling the accerometer would crash it anyway, or at least it did on my player. I may have understood that wrong, so I PMed you for some details.

Originally Posted by samarkand

I think the problem is smart-quotes. It's something that Word does automatically (though the user can turn it off) that creates the fancy close and open quotation marks, which then get carried over as unicode, which apparently the Zen is not fond of. I've just been going through the text file and find-replace-ing the smart quotes with regular quotes.

Okay that makes sense I did already find the codes for the characters, but the Zen doesn't like it indeed. My solution for now, is to have the app change those fancy quotes into regular quotes. (although that version is not available yet, I'm still working on it)

Originally Posted by samarkand

I'm mainly using this app as a reader. Is there anyone working on an app that is only a reader with no other functions? I just want to be able to load in a txt file and read it on the go.

I don't know of anyone working on such an app. You could just hide the keyboard, which turns it into a reader.

Another thing you could do, is to edit an xml file from an existing RSS feed on the player. Just replace the text between <description> and </description>. Funny thing is, the RSS reader does display the fancy quotes... which makes me wonder how the RSS reader manages to do this .

[nikc4]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

Funny thing is, the RSS reader does display the fancy quotes... which makes me wonder how the RSS reader manages to do this .

Maybe the player itself can read it, but the lua interpreter can't.