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goodintentions
Active Member
Well, I'm in panic mode, too, because I just discovered a bug in my new update. Don't know how I missed it in my tests yesterday.
Modern Word Processor Discussion Thread
- Thread starter goodintentions
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lhauser
Active Member
Well, I don't know if your bug is the same as what I'm seeing...but when I open a plain text document, all carriage return/line feeds are ignored...it's one big block of text. I opened the file in another plain text editor and it definitely said the file had Windows line endings (I've worked on Linux a lot over the years, so non-Windows line endings are always a possibility).
I'm certainly not in panic mode over this. It's why I like plain text...there are lots of tools available!
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goodintentions
Active Member
Haha, it's my first try at translating html, doc, docx, and rtf to txt.
The bug I'm referring to is opening doc and docx file. It's just giving a blank page even though the file is not empty.
Saving to the various formats work wonderfully. Saving to pdf works wonderfully. Opening rtf and html works wonderfully. It's just opening doc and docx that's not getting results.
I'm sure it's something like a regression or some other stupid bug.
Regarding MS support, here's something else to think about. I just realized MS hired a bunch of robots for their support team. Why do I say that?
They just put up a sticky telling everybody they are aware of the issue with the support site and that people should use the forum for other problems.
Well, people are reporting some problems on the forum, and their responses are still "please submit a support ticket..." and then the support link, which is still throwing an error.
I find it amusing that a multi-billion dollar company can't even hire human support personnel and instead use robots.
lhauser
Active Member
Well, Google has self-driving cars, I'm sure that makes MSFT want to try out robotic support personnel.
As far as text conversions go, I'm more than willing to be a guinea pig.
And a question - purely out of curiousity, because I haven't written code for close to 20 years but I remain interested - how does one go about opening and saving docx files? Is there a library or API call? Surely you don't have to figure out your own conversion routines, which would seem to be a ridiculous thing to do. But I really have no clue...last time I had to deal with anything like that, I was coding VBA inside of Word 97, so it wasn't an issue.
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goodintentions
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No library and no api call. I wish it was that simple...
I just found the damn bug. 2 lines of code in the wrong order...
As far as your txt thing goes, I'll fix that later tonight. Now, I gotta send out an emergency patch for all the doc and docx users out there.
Edit.
Regarding the library and api, the free ones suck. I tried them. They don't even render images. And the good ones aren't free. They require a subscription. Professional developers would get access to them through their companies. I, on the other hand, am on my own. I'm a structure engineer working for a construction engineering firm. Has absolutely nothing to do with programming.
Heck, up until last month I'd been using VS express (the free version). Last month, I managed to twist someone's arm from IT to get me a license for the pro version.
I must admit that some of the design you see (like the radial menu) I copy from real professional work. I download 3rd party software trials and see how things like the radial menu behave and then try to replicate the behavior with my own code. To be able to use these 3rd party software require yearly subscription of over $1k/year. Unless money can grow on trees...
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goodintentions
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Thought you'd like to know that I just added in a subroutine to render the plain text correctly. It's not a blob of text anymore LOL. Will send out update right now actually.
lhauser
Active Member
I got it, been too busy to come back and tell you that it looks GREAT. Thanks! And thanks for the answers about the programming. You're going good, keep up the good work.
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goodintentions
Active Member
A little update.
Thanks to a 1 star review, I was made aware of a bug that made the app not able to open very long documents. We're talking about something like 20 pages long. It was simply a matter of memory allocation. I have that fixed. So, the app now is capable of opening very large documents. Like 100 pages long. Depends on how much memory your computer has.
Still working on an equation editor. Once this feature tests out, I will include it in the app. Having an equation editor should significantly increase the viability of this app.
I have a few other projects I'm working on parallel to this app. I'm still enjoying cranking out the codes for these apps. A couple of them will be published within the next month or so once I have them thoroughly tested.
On another note, I'm going to start learning how to work with 3-D animation. I want to build games. Anyone here have any pointer on how I should start?
Thanks to a 1 star review, I was made aware of a bug that made the app not able to open very long documents. We're talking about something like 20 pages long. It was simply a matter of memory allocation. I have that fixed. So, the app now is capable of opening very large documents. Like 100 pages long. Depends on how much memory your computer has.
Still working on an equation editor. Once this feature tests out, I will include it in the app. Having an equation editor should significantly increase the viability of this app.
I have a few other projects I'm working on parallel to this app. I'm still enjoying cranking out the codes for these apps. A couple of them will be published within the next month or so once I have them thoroughly tested.
On another note, I'm going to start learning how to work with 3-D animation. I want to build games. Anyone here have any pointer on how I should start?
lhauser
Active Member
OK, so I am not a programmer, though I once played one on television (not really). But I've gathered a little knowledge here and there, and since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I will ask a question that will out me in danger of being laughed at:
Why is document size limited to available memory?
I know working with documents larger than available memory is possible; Wordstar did it back in the 1970s, creating one or two swap files on disk, one for the portion of the document "above" what was currently in memory, one for the portion of the document "below." Naturally this meant there were disk access delays when pulling data from disk into memory, but it allowed Wordstar and similar programs to work with documents much larger than the miniscule amount of free RAM present on most CP/M machines.
Is this something that has gone out of style, simply because most machines have loads of RAM and most documents aren't all that big, or is there something else that makes swapping like this difficult?
Why is document size limited to available memory?
I know working with documents larger than available memory is possible; Wordstar did it back in the 1970s, creating one or two swap files on disk, one for the portion of the document "above" what was currently in memory, one for the portion of the document "below." Naturally this meant there were disk access delays when pulling data from disk into memory, but it allowed Wordstar and similar programs to work with documents much larger than the miniscule amount of free RAM present on most CP/M machines.
Is this something that has gone out of style, simply because most machines have loads of RAM and most documents aren't all that big, or is there something else that makes swapping like this difficult?
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goodintentions
Active Member
It's not really a problem or difficulty. In fact, it shouldn't even be an issue as most computers these days have way more memory than they need most of the time. The problem was purely artificial due to my own experiment. One of the goals I've set for myself is trying to be a minimalist with this app. So, I thought let's be a stingy with the memory. Ehhh, didn't really work out the way I imagined. Next update will remove all limitations.
My main issue right now is trying to make the program more fluid going back and forth between the formatting languages. I don't care anymore how much memory the file takes up.
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goodintentions
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Another update 
Just sent in an update to do a few more things. 2 specific things I want to bring up.
2 of the most common questions I keep getting in my email are: (1) Can my app delete saved files and (2) can my app email a document? Up until tonight, my answers have been (1) no, you need to use windows explorer or a file explorer app to do that and (2) no, just open up the email app and attach the saved file.
Well, as of tonight, my users can now (1) delete the files directly from the app and (2) email the document directly from within my app. No need to switch back and forth between the apps.
Just sent in an update to do a few more things. 2 specific things I want to bring up.
2 of the most common questions I keep getting in my email are: (1) Can my app delete saved files and (2) can my app email a document? Up until tonight, my answers have been (1) no, you need to use windows explorer or a file explorer app to do that and (2) no, just open up the email app and attach the saved file.
Well, as of tonight, my users can now (1) delete the files directly from the app and (2) email the document directly from within my app. No need to switch back and forth between the apps.
There are several 3d engines available (Unity3d, SharpDX, Delta engine, etc.) that would speed up development. Though, some have sales based fee associated with them.
Certainly, re-acquainting oneself with Linear Algebra would pay dividends. 3D anything requires a good understanding of Trigonometry, Vectors, Matrices, perhaps Quaternions. A couple of the Windows.Devices.Sensors also make use of those Objects/Structures/Disciplines.
Xaml has some rudimentary 3d capabilities via managed code (apparently, unmanaged c++ is required for full access to Direct3D). XNA would have been the ideal tool – as it stands, however, it is not available via WinRT.
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