Lose Your Mind Development

So… what are we working on this week?

• Font file management functions, such as Copy, Move, Delete and Rename via the context menu.

• Font File Rename works right inside the list view.

• Here is the destination folder dialog for Copy and Move operations.

• And I’m implementing Vista-style TaskDialogs() rather than plain message boxes.

• Are you absolutely sure you want to trash those fonts?

The fourth beta was posted on 2/5/08. There are not a lot of visible changes in this release because most of the coding has been going on behind the scenes. But I’m steadily making progress.

I’ve been trying to get to the font group functions for a while. But in application programming you often have to take care of smaller tasks before you get to attack the big one. It is like a series of small stepping stones.

In Printer’s Apprentice, a font group is simply a folder full of fonts that can be manipulated all at once. For example, you might want to install the entire group for a project. Font groups are represented by a tree view on their own tab.

But displaying the font groups really serves no purpose unless I have code in place to organize fonts into a group. So this has led me to work on file manipulation functions. On the Font Files tab, the Delete/Copy/Move/Rename functions are available from a context menu. I have the Delete code working. And I started work on Copy & Move last night.

Anyone who has coded file manipulation functions knows that the path is dangerous. At any given time access can be denied, CDRs become unreadable and drives run out of space. 

So you need to have robust error checking in place. I can’t have Printer’s Apprentice come down just because a font can’t be moved from one folder to another.

I then started working on improved error trapping and feedback dialogs. The common method for alerting the user is the often-ignored MessageBox(), shown below. When presented with this little gray monster, most users instinctively hammer the OK button or the ESC key. Plus there is hardly any room for anything else besides a few lines.

For Printer’s Apprentice, I coded a new dialog based on the presentation used by Microsoft in the Vista TaskDialog API. I don’t know if users will actually read the displayed information, but it sure beats a stock MessageBox. And if you look closely, there are links to copy and send an email to our support address. This dialog will be integrated anywhere in the code where there is potential for an error to occur.

So in a rather convoluted way, I am working on support for font groups. But I have to lay the foundations down first. Stay tuned. — Bryan