Bliss / Cas-Stunts track editor

[Cas]

Oh, I'm starting to see where the problem likely lies and I don't like it much. Anyway, for GNU/Linux, I'll soon add the possibility to display the other accents in the program screen. On Windows, it looks like my assumption that the key input function was taking special characters for that platform was wrong, so if I want them to be available, I should research on how to interact with the Windows keyboard libraries just like I did for GNU/Linux keyboard.

I remember having tried a program compiled for Windows in my computer under Wine and it did respond to those special characters, but now maybe that's something only Wine does. Or perhaps older versions of Windows do work that way?  I don't know. Since I don't have Windows in my computer since 2005 or so, I have no other way to test this than Wine. I'll be reading about this and testing with Wine to see what happens. In the meantime, if anybody else can test on another Windows computer or with another version, that'd be cool (with Wine, it'd also be interesting to know). If it works with Wine, but not with Windows, I'm afraid I'll have to drop special character typing support under Windows (of course, UTF-8 file reading and storage will be available) because I'm not willing to install Windows any more, ha, ha.

[afullo]

In the meantime, if anybody else can test on another Windows computer or with another version, that'd be cool (with Wine, it'd also be interesting to know). If it works with Wine, but not with Windows, I'm afraid I'll have to drop special character typing support under Windows (of course, UTF-8 file reading and storage will be available) because I'm not willing to install Windows any more, ha, ha.

I just tried with both Wine and Vineyard (W&V): same behaviour as with Windows 10, even by trying to reproduce Windows 98 (do I have to try with even older versions?). Furthermore, insertions with Alt do not work, but this is because W&V are not emulators, but rather compatibility layers, so you are basically running a Windows applicative under a Linux environment.

On the native front, I have also a partition with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, but I don't keep it in a very good shape, so it is really slow to boot; anyway, I can give it a try in the next few days.

[Cas]

This really calls my attention. I remember having initiated a topic in the FreeBasic forum about keyboard input and arguing that, while the InKey function worked well in DOS, catching even extended characters and in Windows, was able to read UTF-8, it failed to do so in GNU/Linux, so I was forced to use system functions. FB was never updated, but the thing is, if I wrote that, I must have seen it work with Wine. Maybe, as you say, it's because Wine is not an emulator and perhaps how it works depends on the GNU/Linux distro or something. If you can later try it on true-Windows, let me know what you get, but if it doesn't work there, I'm afraid I wouldn't be fixing that anytime soon. It was complex with GNU/Linux and it's the system I'm using. It'd be super complicated with Windows. But maybe... who knows... ha, ha.

One thing that Windows users will have anyway is that, when Bliss loads a track and the metadata is already written in it, it will correctly display both in the program window and on the window title... I expect. That can also be checked by using the split-file text mode.

Anyway, thank you for testing. I'm going to see if I can fix the characters to look better now

[afullo]

If you can later try it on true-Windows, let me know what you get

I tried also on (real) Windows 7, same issue.

One thing that Windows users will have anyway is that, when Bliss loads a track and the metadata is already written in it, it will correctly display both in the program window and on the window title... I expect. That can also be checked by using the split-file text mode.

I can try to create a track with Linux, to name it with accents, and to finally load it in Windows. As soon as I will be possibilitated, I'll do it. 

Anyway, thank you for testing.

I'm glad to be of some help. 

[Cas]

Alright. The new version of Bliss, that is 2.5.5, is ready and up at http://r4k.fnhost.org/bliss. Feel free to mirror it and of course, to download it and try it. I encourage anybody who's using Bliss 2.5.4 to switch to this new version. There are a couple of bug fixes, plus the new features I had mentioned. I intend this to be the final version of Bliss 2, although I may have to go one more bit if important bugs are found, but I won't be adding any more features. The code is already too bulky.

In particular, for what Afullo and I have been testing, you may have problems with entering special characters under Windows, yet UTF-8 support in all other respects should be OK (even on Windows). I'll update the main post on this thread to reflect this.

[afullo]

I have still to try what in my previous post, sorry but they have been very busy days. I will proceed asap!

[Cas]

Don't worry. I think if it fails, I anyway don't have the tools to fix it right now. Of course, it'd be nice to know. But at worst, the Windows version will only be able to enter ASCII, yet it will recognise UTF-8.

[afullo]

Indeed, I had still to try whether Windows would have properly recognized UTF-8 or not, and the answer is positive, even if it is unable to enter at least several non-ASCII characters. I tried to save in Ubuntu a track with the same title as of my 8 June post, and by reloading the track with Bliss via Wine, its title is correctly displayed.

By the way: as I said on the shoutbox, if I try to download Bliss 2.5.5 from http://r4k.fnhost.org/bliss/bliss255.zip, it redirects me to https://ifastnet.com//. The download of the version 2.5.4 from http://r4k.fnhost.org/bliss/bliss254.zip does work, though.

[Cas]

Thanks for checking that!  And I hadn't noticed the error in the download page. The issue was that I had incorrectly named the file. It's fixed now and Bliss 2.5.5 can be downloaded from http://r4k.fnhost.org/bliss

[Daniel3D]

I've found a little bug in the load track part.
When you click in a track name the cursor moves but name blanks out and it doesn't load.
If you manually type the name it loads fine.

can't make a screenshot of it,
But i use Bliss 2.5.5 in W10.
Bliss 2.5.4 did not have this problem.

Its not a big problem, easy way around.

[Cas]

Thank you for pointing it out, Daniel!  I have already found this problem about a couple of days ago and I fixed it. At first, I was confused, because I was attributing the problem to something else, but then I realised it was a very simple thing that was causing it: Bliss looks up its files in the directory called "bliss" or ".bliss" under your home directory in GNU/Linux or %APPDATA% in Windows. Only if it can't find the configuration file there, then it falls to looking them up in the same directory as the executable. When I made the UTF-8 update, I included a new font file and at the moment of loading it, I forgot to make it so that it was read from those same directories. Instead, Bliss was looking it up wherever it was run from. The file can't be loaded, so the font is empty. There was another bug that contributed to the problem and I fixed it too. On next release, this will not happen

[Cas]

Alright. So finally, I uploaded the version with the bug fixes. I had fixed it weeks ago, but I hadn't uploaded it till now in part because I want to give it time in case I (or somebody else) found another bug and in part because I was super lazy, especially about having to compile the windows version with Wine on the other computer (I don't have it installed here currently). Version 2.5.5 was very buggy, so if any of you guys is using that version, I recommend you to switch to 2.5.6. The previous one (2.5.4) doesn't have the newest features, but is stable.

Besides fixing the bugs, I added a very simple feature I realised I could've added very long ago, because it was so easy: it is now possible to copy the clipboard between two instances of Bliss, so you can copy parts of a track into another. And well, I've updated the version both in R4K site and in my repository at NotABug. Take a look: https://notabug.org/xlucas/bliss/releases. Anyway... that's it for now!

[afullo]

It seems you solved also the UTF-8 issue on Windows, great! 

[Cas]

Did I?    Great! 

I actually did touch a few things that were very buggy until they worked fine, so yes, there's a chance that this fixed other problems too. I concentrated mainly of getting things stable again.

[afullo]

Yes, I tried to insert vowels with diacritical marks, and they worked, as they already did in Ubuntu!