Chlor

Let's face it

2007-08-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

I don't have the necessary time for Chlor. And i don't think i ever really had. Chlor's progress is too slow. I am not working on it for weeks and months while working on lots of other projects.

If some guys of you are interested in taking over, please speak. I could contribute a lot of ideas but not much code.

There are some nice things in Chlor which i am a bit proud of. The Gimp export filter, the (rough) PDF import filter, the class design, the hopefully readable code. It would be a shame...

Select menu

2007-06-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Chlor 0.0.7 will have a functional select menu.

Chlor 0.0.6

2007-06-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Release early, release often.

The Chlor binary in this release is really a universal binary. XCode managed to fool me with 0.0.5. Then i added shift click to add objects to the selection. Most importantly Chlor files and Chlor generated SVG files do not appear empty anymore after loading them in Chlor. I also fixed th SVG export of the fill property.

The remaining changes are internal ones. Chlor also ships with my TODO list now so that you can see how much there is to do for just a single guy. *sniff*

SVG Unit Tests

2007-06-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Today i added a first SVG unit test. This is source code which is comparing the result of Chlor's SVG import filter with the expectation regarding the result.

For example the in-code SVG document



    NSString* svgDocument =
        @"<svg width=\"300.0\" height=\"400\">"
        @"  <rect x=\"1.5\" y=\"0\" width=\"54\" height=\"260.75\"/>"
        @"</svg>";

should result in a Chlor document with width 300 and heigth 400 while containing a rectangle shape with certain dimensions.

Adding more and more of such tests should make the SVG import filter stable and help track down errors in the implementation. Like the fact that Chlor documents appear empty after loading (the objects are just outside of the viewbox).

Step by Step

2007-05-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

Refactoring source code (rewriting the code without changing or adding functionality) is fun most of the time. But it is really great when you are able to add new features more easily afterwards. At once the effort pays off and you'll know that you did something right.

This just happend to me. After a refactoring session it was quite easy to add that one-click selection while holding the shift key adds objects to the document selection.

Issues

2007-05-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

It's not always easy to find time for Chlor. This time i mostly fixed small bugs and cleaned up the code. I could really need some help of any experienced or inexperienced developer.

The SVG export did not write the fill at all and the opacity was rounded down - to zero. I remember breaking this while reorganizing the paint classes.

There is one big remaining issue with SVG loading: Chlor doesn't load the SVG correctly it writes itself. Why is that? The coordinate system in Chlor is flipped vertically compared to the SVG system. Chlor flips the objects while writing to SVG. On loading this back flipping fails. The objects are loaded but they are shiftet outside of the page. Nested transformations just don't work correctly somehow. Couldn't find out why yet.

Icon draft

2007-04-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

I just vectorized my sketch. That's it. A shitty first draft.

Would be cool if someone with more graphical talent than me could improve upon this.

Chlor 0.0.5

2007-03-31T03:39:00.000-07:00

I just released Chlor 0.0.5, even though it does not contain earth shaking
development. The last release 0.0.4 was in May 2006. That's far too
much time past for an open source project.

Please be aware of the fact that the version number really reflects Chlor's state. I am no fan of the version number humbleness many Open Source projects enjoy. A project version number should be to inform the user and not to please the developers' ego.

Even though i am not satisfied about the shape of SVG import/export
and import in general i think i will focus now on the gui and on the
shape of the core classes soley. Everything else will follow
naturally if the gui is usable.

Inet Problems

2007-03-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

The open Wifi i use is unrealiable since some days. I ordered broadband which should be ready on monday. In the meantime i drew a sketch for a possible Chlor logo. It just popped into my mind after rearranging the letters C, H, L, O and R. What do you think?

About endianness

2007-03-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

I fixed the Gimp (XCF) export filter yesterday after i found out by incident that it produces crappy files on my MacBook Pro. Before that i hadn't thought the architecture would make much difference to Chlor. I was wrong. The byte order was written incorrectly on Intel architectures. Should be fine now. At least the files look good in Gimp while they are empty in Seashore.

Found some time

2007-03-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

After being busy relocating to a city abroad i found time to work on Chlor again. It would really be a shame to leave it stale. It has some features i am really proud of. For example the (yet basic) PDF import filter or the Gimp XCF export filter which preserves the layers. The latter should enable a nice workflow integration between Seashore and Chlor.

Some time ago i started a rewrite of Chlor's SVG import filter. The first attempt was quite naive and simplistic. I am curently completing the rewrite so that SVG import works like before. It won't be perfect and there's still a lot to do in this area. But after that i really want to focus on the GUI. All the nice filter stuff is of no use when the GUI is so bad that Chlor currently looks just like a basic viewer for different file formats. For example Chlor supports object shadows but noone takes notice since there is no GUI supporting this feature.

Stroke/Fill reloaded

2006-06-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

What i found strange when using Illustrator for the first time was that the stroke representation in the fill/stroke selector widget was drawn behind the fill representation - like a shadow. We can only guess why Adobe chose this:

It looks similar to Phtoshop's foreground/background widget

Fill and stroke are easy to click. Compare this to an imaginary widget where the stroke is just a thin frame around the fill area

The meaning of the "<->" swap arrows are easy to grasp

My current fill/stroke widget doesn't seem to be much worse. And it's original (i hope). I tried to unify the following two requirements: 1) the stroke representation should be more clear (not like a shadow behind the fill representation) 2) the stroke and fill should be equally easy to select. That's why the stroke representation is around the fill represenstation but it's right side is enlarge so you can easily click it.

It's an experiment. We need to see how it turns out.

It's a start

2006-06-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

I drew a first rough version of the fill/stroke widget in Gimp. It's much easier to get a nice effect in a graphic application than code wise. Don't worry about those aggressive colors though, they just indicate the areas where Chlor will draw the real fill/stroke.

I thought about finding a metaphor which is different to Adobe Illustrator's but am not sure whether changing a widely accepted widget is a good thing.

I would be very happy if a more talented artist than me (there should be plenty) could donate Chlor a better solution. In any other case i'll have to improve my version.

Fill/Stroke Color Selector

2006-06-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today i concentrated on improving the fill/stroke color selector:
1) The color panel already opens on the first click on the fill/stroke selector. Everything needed was overriding the view's acceptsFirstMouse: to make it return YES.
2) The fill/stroke color are updated in the fill/stroke selector.

Cleaning up the overall source code and fixing long outstanding minor bugs is really fullfilling. Really, i mean it.

SVG: Doxygen Update

2006-06-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

Today i updated the Doxygen documents for Chlor.

Here you can see the structures for the new SVG import. I added those because the SVG structures and the Chlor ones don't match 1:1. Especially for gradient fill definitions it is only clear at a later point in time how to create an Chlor equivalent.

The memory impact should be small since i switched to NSXMLParser and these structures are created instead of the ones by NSXMLDocument. In theory Chlor should also work on Mac OS X 10.3.x now... If it was not for PDF import.

SVG Import Rewrite

2006-06-16T03:55:00.000-07:00

I am currently rewriting the SVG import. The original code was of the kind "just make it work" and became very unclean. Adding gradient fills loading would have made it even worse so i decided to rewrite it.

I had a look at how KSvg, Batik and Qt do the SVG loading. Chlor's needs are slightly different but this was a nice inspiration. It will still take some time until the new SVG import is as powerful as the original one. And this is what's slightly frustrating: recoding what already worked.