It’s Official

February 25, 2008 on 3:45 pm | In Programming, ZDLSharp | By QBasicer |

After toying more with Qt, I’m pretty sure that the Sharp bits in ZDLSharp will be replaced. For the most part, it’s going to be re-engineered using the ZDLSideKick code I have lying around. Since my Qt code is lots more class-y than it’s ZDLSharp cousin, things will roll together way better.

In addition, I’m going to be forced into using GPL. I also plan on using the SourceForge CVS from now on, and I’ll even accept patches and fixes from others! The advantage of Qt is that I’ll be able to move across platforms fairly transparently. I started compiling Qt on windows today, so it’ll be ready to go for a release. I’m also changing my development release system. Before now, I was more release-happy. Now that I plan on using Linux full time, I’ll have two streams for releases: a more stable release that doesn’t happen often, and more beta releases. The source will be released for the more beta releases, and this will allow Linux and Windows devs to compile it and test it out, while leaving the Windows end users to be on a more lagged release stream. While this sounds not as good, it will actually result in more and better releases (so I can code any time, instead of booting to Windows).

The original ZDL was developed to reduce complexity, and I must keep that in mind. One of the new cool features of ZDLSharp 3.0.5.3q (signifying a qt release), is that it’s resizable, and will accommodate DPIs other than 96.

4 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. I’m pretty sure that the Sharp bits in ZDLSharp will be replaced.

    Yay! Maybe you’ll get the ages 3+ rating after all! … Wait, does it still have small parts?

    It would be nice to have a new ZDL that doesn’t require weird stuff to run. Just remember not to get too complicated. For example; I thought people would love the launchable *.zdl file idea, being able to make a special ZDL config that can be run from explorer sounded like a great idea, but nobody seemed to care about or use it. It’s a bunch of weird code that nobody uses which increases the likelyhood for bugs.

    I wouldn’t stray too much from the original ZDL’s design if you want people to switch. That seems to be the problem with a lot of other projects is they get too complicated. People wanted simple and I delivered.

    Comment by BioHazard — February 25, 2008 #

  2. In actual fact, I’m keeping the base stuff of ZDL pretty much untouched, but allowing it to be used more powerful, if the user wants it. It’d be nice to build a bigger and better update system, but I’m not sure if anybody actually cares: It would take a lot of funkyness IMO.

    People may find the interface a tad more bulky, in that the controls are native sized, not tiny little things, but the interface is the same. I’ll see how it goes.

    Comment by QBasicer — February 25, 2008 #

  3. How unstable do you imagine a graphical config editor to be :P just sayin’

    Comment by jason — February 25, 2008 #

  4. Just look at some of Apple’s stuff. They almost never even know what the actual error is: “Unknown Error -153402″

    <unrelatedrant>

    What is so hard about writing meaningful error messages? For example, if you give iCal (the one with 10.4) a bad URL, when it tries to connect and fails, it should say “Error connecting to [URL], maybe the remote server is down?” but instead I get “Unknown Error -1125″ which is very hard to troubleshoot. Especially when Apple’s website says “Oh that’s an unknown error. You’re on your own with that one.”

    Iyaa!
    </unrelatedrant>

    Comment by BioHazard — February 26, 2008 #

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez. I rewrote the CSS because I'm cool like that.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^