Re: New Version released - TONS of suggestions

Hello Christian,

Thank you very much for your long list of suggestions, ideas and
comments. This will help me a lot to improve my little tool.

But I have one question to you: If I implement only 50% of your
suggestions, how much will you pay for that? ;-)
Ok, I will consider implemention some of your suggestions. I do this for
fun and if it stops making fun I will not continue doing it.

> And the shape tool needs improvement .. thoose circles are not really round.

You are right - but can you provide an algorithm that draws good circles
(in any size)?

> Something like Arrows are basicly lines with an added arrow.

Yep, I have not had any time thinking about arrows during the last few
weeks. I have improved the other tools so much - I will take care of the
arrows later.

> This also makes the arrow available to freehand drawing (The direction the
> line was going at the very end determines the direction of the arrow).

Already thought about that...

> Fill mode desperatly needs options to fill with other characters than X

You can chose any character (for left and right mouse button) at the
bottom toolbar.

> .. the
> best would be patterns like .. err .. that other big ascii editor .. which
> name seems to escape me right now.
> And shading would be nice too .. you choose a start "color" and an end "color"
> and the direction to draw the shade in

Already thought about that and I will consider implementing it.

> It would also be a good thing if you could draw a line/shape/whatever and have
> the text tool use the line/shape as a path for typing text.
> 
> An example from my shape and styles file :
> 
> [Sentence drawing] - ( Drawing with characters aligned so they actually spell
> something! )
> 
>             ught i
>           ca       n
>         m            a
>        '      ...     t
>       I      .   .     i
>              !         m
>       !       !       e
>        p       !pool
>         l
>          e
>           H

Great idea! It is:
 a) cool
 b) easy to implement
-> You will see it in one of the next releases of Jave.

> BTW I suggest renaming makro to clipart which is a more used and known term
> and besides "makro" is german (and danish btw) spelling .. not english - thats
> Macro .. But as I said - Clipart makes more sense to most people as most
> people know what clipart is.

You are right, I don't know why I did not yet change it...

> Figlet tool needs some form of overview to quickly see what fonts are the
> best.

Correct.

> I suggest moving all dingbat fonts out of figlet and into clipart and group
> the fonts after type.
> They should probably be sorted after size mainly .. since most likely you know
> what size letters you need for your image.
> There is no need to view all the really huge ones when you need a max 4 line
> font.
> I suggest the following groups :
> 
> Small , medium , large/huge , 3D , Special (fx. decimal , hex , digital,
> morse, katana .. etc)

Ok, what about that: For each category write a text file containing the
names of the fonts for it (use all the names from the Jave FIGlet tool).
Send those files as e-mail and I will integrate/implement this feature.
You know: The only problem is _time_. I am sure it will take some
time...

> Howabout a button that opens a scrollable textwindow with all the fonts in one
> group spelling the words you choose.

I tried that feature some months ago: The text bacame far too long to be
displayable in a textbox. The program crashed or so...

> Image to ascii.
> I think better conversions could be achieved (with some images) if Jave had an
> option to find edges (trace contours) in an image like many pixeldrawing
> programs have.

I have played around with algorithms and found that it does not seem to
make sense to use edge detection filters. Adjusting the sharpness will
give you enough control about contours. But we should discuss that topic
after the image2ascii competition (see other thread in this newsgroup).

> When I convert an image I usually find edges or reduce the bitdepth (without
> dithering) to simplify the image so a clean conversion becomes easier.

My algorithms do that automatically during conversion - why should it be
done with the raw image before??

> Also I would be nice to have some control over what character the converter
> can use.
> I usually prefer a very limited amount of characters for shading while the
> typiccal converter uses the entire spectrum of character which can make a
> converted image look messy.
> 
> I mainly use the round and more shape neutral characters for shading.
> Characters like :
> 
> .:%oO8 seem the best , sS&@# also fair .. but LITVE .. etc are not good since
> they aren't so round to the eye and are much more likely to be seen as detail
> than shading.

Have a closer look on my tool: On the right side you can chose 3
different algorithms for conversion. Default is "4 pixels per
character". There it does not make sense to change the characters
manually. But you can chose the algorithm "1 pixel per character" and
then will see a set of grayscales:
MWNHKQDXS65YJtjci=+>!;:~'.� 
You can enter any characters you prefer :-)

> The perfect converter should be able to distinquis (how do you spell that ?)
> between what parts of an image was detail and lines and what parts were
> shading.

Before writing the perfect converter we should find out more about such
kind of conversions - I expect the competition to be a good base for
discussions about better algorithms.

> It would also be nice if the converter could load bmp, jpg , gif and png -
> Correctly !
> ( Jave refuses to load some bmp's while happily loads others .. this must be a
> bug )

No, it is an undocumented feature: I added support for "some bmp-files"
- this is better than none ;-)
I will add other file formats as soon as I find image codecs that are
not restricted by software licences. GPL will not work - I do not want
to publish the source code for Jave.

> Also It would be nice if the load dialog could filter out all non-supported
> filetypes (instead of just showing *.*).

Unfortunately that is a problem depending on Java :-( There is no
workaround. But you might want to have a look at File->Browse.

> And how about the "plasticbag technique" ? .. Showing an image in the
> background of the editor (resizeable and moveable and more or less opague) to
> serve as a guide for making the ascii-version by hand on top of the picture.

Great idea. I will think about it.

> Alignment in the textbox dialog also does nothing since the box autosizes to
> the text.

Try to enter more than one line of text. It will work fine then :-)

You see where there is a very big problem: There is no documentation
available :-( Who wants to write one?

> It would be better to have aligment as an option to the select tool so you
> could select an area and f.x center the ascii inside the selection - Both
> horizontally and vertically.

Good idea.

> Interface-wise I would like to keyboard shurtcuts for most tools
> ...
> Preferably the keys should work as they normally do in drawing programs.
> F.x "CTRL" & "+" or "CTRL" & "-" almost always zooms in and out in drawing
> programs.

I will add shortcuts from time to time - any suggestions are welcome.

> Or like SHIFT always forces a elipse to be perfectly round or a line to only
> draw in major angles like : 0, 45 and 90 degrees .. (ofcourse with ascii I
> think this should be the angles draw as certain styles)

Already considered that - problem is: time.

> I also think a "Snap to grid" option would be nice so you could sure all your
> lines started from f.x the center of a "cell" or on a grid line

What about golden doorhandles? ;-)

> It's getting late and I need to sleep so I will have stop writing soon
> althought I could probably think of more .. and I didn't even get to clean up
> my shapes and lines and post them.

Feel free to post any idea you have. The most useful/cool ones often are
the ones easiest to implement.

> * an option to smooth out freehand curves by having the program try to do them
> as splines or bezier curves

Is 24 carat ok?

> I have several other nice hearts too.

If I may add them as cliparts to the next release of Jave please post
them.

> $ System is going down for maintenance

Mine has run hot...

> Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Credo, quia absurdum.

Good night,
Markus

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